Melancholic Mambo

2019 Melancholic Mambo

Nong Nao field research × circus creation × video art exhibition × Taiwanese tent

Nong Nao is an acrobatic performance from Taiwan's traditional funeral rites, the oldest ceremonial acrobatics. Like a dance of grief, it harmonizes and sublimates mourning, balancing sorrow and joy. Like a circus, it brings poetic joy to difficult times. Its acrobatics and crotales try to ferry collective sorrow from the shore of heaviness to a shore of light, freedom and dance.

After a year of field research, study and training, Thunar Circus developed from the fading Nong Nao tradition a circus body and a work both traditional and contemporary.

Outdoor tent theater, National Theater & Concert Hall plaza, Taipei, 12–14 July 2019.

Reviews

"An accessible non-narrative production. It is like a circus show, also like a street vendor performance. I find it very touching and fascinating." LIN Hwai-Min, Cloud Gate Dance Theatre

"The most fun show in Taiwan recently." Show Ryuzanji, stage director

"He smoothly transforms rare folk beliefs into moving contemporary art." QIU Kun-Liang, Taipei National University of the Arts