CURSIVE II...
| Winner of the Age Critics' Award |
| Chosen by a panel of Australia's eminent critics to review the cultural offerings and to honor the event they considered the finest at the 2003 Melbourne International Arts Festival |
| Winner of the Patrons Award |
| Chosen by festival patrons as the most outstanding production at the 2003 Melbourne International Arts Festival |
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If you missed this show by Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan – the main opening event of the Melbourne Festival – you missed perfection. This 70-minute tribute to the strokes, whorls and infinite graduations of Chinese calligraphy concentrates the audience's attention with an authority that only a great performance can achieve. |
| --Sunday Age, Melbourne |
| Cursive II is currently the best that can be seen on the international dance stage. |
| --Die Welt, Germany |
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When the curtain ascends to show a solitary dancer moving with exquisitely silent grace, the beauty of Cursive II is cast. What proceeds only embellished an opening that is commanding without being ostentatious and highly energetic while seeming to be effortless. The work is so visually simple and entrancing that there is no choice but to enter the meditative world of the dance. |
| --Sunday Herald Sun, Melbourne |
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Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan's seductive and engrossing Cursive II makes the old new again. By blending more tai chi in its familiar modern dance and martial arts vocabulary, Cloud Gate has found another glorious way of dancing for itself, where the dancer's energy, and the impetus to move at all, comes from deep down in the body. This choreography about worked surfaces creates much more than surface. It's a mesmerizing, interior work in which 21 superb dancers perform with an intensity that reveals their individuality, whether in tight formations or alone. Liquid arcs and helixes, fragile winged postures and whirling, flying kicks fill the space. Better yet is the meditative welling up and release of energy flowing from spine to limbs to unfurling, tendril-like toes and fingers. The harmony of energies, of dance and sound, could not be more perfect, leaving festival first nighters in a rare, contemplative mood. |
| --The Australian |
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Cursive II is an exquisite exercise in the balancing of opposites, presented in an aura of uncluttered simplicity, allowing no distraction from the dance. There is exceptional attention to detail; not a hand, a finger, a toe is irrelevant in the overall design. The dancers perform with a palpable intensity that reaches into the auditorium. More than just a display, it is also a spiritual exercise. |
| --The Age, Melbourne |
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Slow-motion unfurling of arms and legs is so smoothly paced that you could wonder at times if there is movement at all. Then, suddenly, a fast moving action sequence, fed by Chinese martial arts traditions, has one person or an ensemble of dancers slicing through space with electrifying power. While the more macho sequences go to the men, there is no mistaking the strength of the women. The flexibility and control of these performers is phenomenal. At the end, when a single figure is silhouetted against a doorway of light on the darkened stage, there was a collective gasp of appreciation from the audience. That was how it was. |
| --The Sydney Morning Herald |
| Cursive II defines the beauty and poesy of dance in a far-eastern perspective. It is of a disturbing, almost achingly painful beauty. |
| --Ballet International |
