Comments on the Finalist

FOCA’s Moss employs the style of dance theater to change the character creation and narrative structure that are usually considered weaker in traditional circus art. With scaffolding, gasoline barrels, corrugated metal sheets and concrete walls, a set denoting labor-intensive manual work is created, which transforms intense circus actions and skills into something more than an entertaining spectacle for the audience. Moreover, the work forges new possibilities of daily objects and actions closer to contemporary living experiences for circus art, and converts scenarios of production into a source of narrative tension. (Commentator / WANG Po-Wei)

Artwork Introduction

Moss is co-produced by Formosa Circus Art and Peculiar Man. Drawing inspiration from FOCA’s rehearsal room in Shezidao and its surrounding environment, the work begins with the imagery of a disposed building erecting in front of tall walls and metal gates. Utilizing scaffolding in theatre for climbing, moving and blocking people’s view, the performers move between the scaffolding to climb up and let themselves freely fall. Meanwhile, they employ different acrobatic and circus techniques and props to stage various simple yet elaborate performances that defy stylistic classification. Through the physical movements and acrobatic performance, circus and dance theatre, the work portrays how people roam in memory, loss, bliss and sorrow.

About the Artist

Formosa Circus Art (FOCA) was founded in 2011. It combined traditional, local, street cultures and theatre art to amalgamate different genres and develop unique physical vocabularies and performance style with the objective of creating Taiwan’s diversified contemporary circus art. Its members come from different disciplines of performing arts, including stunt, acrobatics, jugglery, street dance, contemporary dance, martial arts, theatre, etc. FOCA is the only contemporary circus group that has more than ten full-time members in Taiwan, and is the only circus group that has consecutively received annual grants from the Ministry of Culture and National Culture and Arts Foundation since 2017 onward.

Peculiar Man was founded by TIEN Tsai-Wei and Jan MÖLLMER. Tien is a full-time dancer at Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch in Germany, and Möllmer is a performer at the studio of Greek theatre director Dimitris PAPAIOANNOU. They became friends in 2011 when they were studying at Folkwang University of the Arts, and began co-creating works in 2014 when they were both dancers at Folkwang Tanzstudio. They made finalist in the 15th Taishin Arts Award in 2016 with the work, The Man. Since 2017 onward, Peculiar Man have been continually invited to tour and perform in Germany and around the world.