KYL/Dancers Calming yet Invigorating
Chi Movement Arts Center
Philadelphia, USA
July 2009

By Merilyn Jackson (rewritten for AsiaDanceChannel.com)

Unlike New York-based Chinese choreographer Shen Wei, whose large-scale works were presented at the Kimmel Center in February 2009, Lin focuses mainly on small, human-scale dances. Though a retrospective of his work could fill, say, the Wilma Theater's stage for a week, the show on Saturday, sans theatrical trappings, is more suited to his studio's salon-sized - 32-by-42 feet - open space.

Live performance imparts human connection like nothing else, and never more so than when an excited crowd creates a crush, as it did Friday evening for Kun-Yang Lin/Dancers. Their Philadelphia debut concert, called "A-U-M: Moving Reflections on Nature and Humankind," was a sold-out, two-night show at the Painted Bride.  He initially wanted to title the concert Prayer for Peace, in conjunction with the Beijing Olympics.

The packed house had staffers scrambling to add two full rows to the 200-plus seats, and the K-YL dancers soon took charge with "CHI."

Veteran company members Jillian Harris, Kimberly Miller and Jennifer Rose joined Philadelphia dancers Jumatatu Poe and Scott McPheeters, to music by master percussionist Glen Velez. Harris opened and closed "CHI" in silence, arms wafting at chest level, setting the tone for this calming yet invigorating show.

Taiwanese-born Lin moved his New York troupe to a South Philly studio last year, adding Poe, McPheeters, Olive Prince, Elrey (Starchild) Belmonte, and apprentices Helen Hale and Eiren Schuman. They make a company of nine fierce dancers tempered by a self-limiting economy of motion.

Inspired by the South Asian tsunami of 2004, "Emptiness of Snow" paired Prince and Harris like dark and light sisters. Poe's slow-turning arabesque commanded attention.

The pinnacle of the evening was choreographer/dancer Janis Brenner's solo danced by Lin. Brenner originally created "Uzu Maki" - Japanese for "eye of the storm" - in 1994 for Eddie Taketa, drawing a haunting soundscape from music by Tan Dun and Ushio Torikai.

The redoubtable Lin reinterpreted the forceful dance and gave it a Chinese name with the same meaning, Shun-Woa. In 60 yards of bronze silk skirting, Lin draped his body with origami-like precision, making organic images: a molten mire from which he emerges as a pillar of fire, and a boulder that shape-shifts into an old beggar. Or were these images reversed? No matter. The magic was not just in the watching but in the mirage that lingers in shadowy light.

Catherine Tsung-Ying Lee designed the lighting for all of Lin's works, including the world premiere of the program's ending, "A-U-M," a Hindu evocation of creation, balance, destruction and renewal. Starting with warm-up exercises, its seven dancers moved into attraction and repulsion, desire and fear of desire, corporeality and shadow; and, once getting the yin and yang of it, conducted group breathing exercises that fortified the audience with a shared experience.