∞ Infinite Cycle
Kuo-Shin Chuang Pangcah Dance Theatre
*Premiere: Oct. 14, 2023 at Performance Hall of Hualien County Cultural Affairs Bureau, Hualien, Taiwan
*Taipei Edition: Nov. 17–18, 2023 at Wellspring Theater, Taipei, Taiwan
About Projection Design
∞ Infinite Cycle is a work by Indigenous choreographer Kuo-Shin Chuang, grounded in the fixed movement motifs that remain from roughly a dozen ritual songs of the Pangcah (Amis) ilisin (Harvest Festival), which have largely been lost. The piece embodies the imagery of “infinite cycles” in ceremonial music and dance.
Video & Projection Designer, Lee Kuo Han, deconstructs and reassembles the dancer’s core movements along two narrative threads:
(1) the body is composed as landscape, symbolizing the passage from the mountains to the city;
(2) the gaze shifts—from humans looking at humans, to ancestral spirits looking at humans, and finally to machines (video systems) observing humans—interweaving multiple perspectives.
Through this interplay of gazes, the work reflects on the spectacularizing gaze that accompanies modern society’s incursions into Indigenous lands, and seeks to rekindle a reverence for ancestral beliefs.
The Pangcah (Amis) are a matrilineal society whose core belief centers on the sun—ina, a word that also means “mother.” Hands compose an eight-pointed solar motif, invoking both maternal lineage and the sun.
Layers of colonization and modernization displaced Taiwan’s Indigenous peoples from their homelands, pushing many Pangcah to migrate to cities for work. Feet stack into the silhouette of high-rises, tracing this historical trajectory.
In the annual ilisin festival, community members link hands, moving in cyclic steps and shared song. The projection brings this ritual practice onto the stage.
Tafalong, a Pangcah community in Taiwan’s eastern mountains, orders daily life by the sun’s course. Bodies compose a mountain range, while the eye’s gaze signifies divinity and the sun.
As the bodily mountains recede, a sun formed of eyes remains—quietly expanding into a cosmos. Through deliberate negative space and reduction, the projection articulates a Pangcah worldview.
Contemporary tourism spectacularizes ritual: labor is displaced and the sacred is framed as image. A loop of live capture and live projection enacts an “infinite cycle,” staging the community’s bind between being seen and being taken.
Against the “eyes above” that figure a divine gaze, the “eyes below” denote spectators and tourists. When looking becomes occupation, the dancers are submerged and nearly erased—revealing how modern visual culture consumes traditional bodies.
Video
Credits
Kuo-Shin Chuang Pangcah Dance Theatre
Artistic Director＆Choreographer: CHUANG Kuo-Shin
Deputy Artistic Director: CHENG Ching- Hui
Lighting Designer: TSAI Chao-Yu
Costume Designer: HUANG Chih-Yang
Music Designer: Rockid LEE
Projection Designer: LEE Kuo-Han (Max)
Multi-Media Technician: YANG Kai-Chun
Photography: TANG Chien-Che, LIN Chun-Yung
Dancers: KAO Yi-Fan, lciyang‧NAMOH, Uti‧MAYAW, LIN Chih, Sawmah‧KAROH, YU Gao-Yi-Cheng, Yi Jiang‧A TING, WU Jing-Ru, WANG Yu-Yuan, HUNG Ti, LI Hsi-Ya, HSU Wei-Li, LAI Jia-Ling, TSENG Yu-Fang, Dongi‧KIMI, TSAI HO Chia-Han, LIU Yu-He, CHIO Wei-Yi, CHU Yu-Ying, PU Chen-Xuan, SU Hsing-Yu, WU Tse-Kang, CENG Zhi-Qi
