A talented dancer and choreographer, Lo has brought much luster and sparkle into the modern dance scene on the island. Once appropriately dubbed the "diamond-bright" dancer, she is best noted for her solo performance in Requiem, in which she kept up a spin for over ten minutes. The act, described by one critic as "harder than landing on the moon," testified to her remarkable physical vigor, power of equilibrium and balance, and a daring spirit which challenges the limits of the human body's flexibility.

During the more than twenty years of her dance career, Lo has never ceased to present challenges for herself either on the stage or off it. As she said, "In the field of creative dance, there are always new challenges lying ahead of a dancer. A dancer should never be satisfied-he or she should be constantly exploring new realms."

Currently the artistic director of Cloud Gate II, director of the Taipei Crossover Dance Company, and an associate professor at the National Institute of the Arts in Taipei, Lo's recent glories included an award conferred by the National Culture and Arts Foundation, a top arts prize in Taiwan. In a press conference held to announce the award winners for the year 2000, Yang Chou, editor-in-chief of Journalist Magazine, cited persistence and self-discipline as well as creative energy as factors behind Lo's winning the prize. Indeed, without persistence and discipline, it would be hard for a dancer to shine for a good twenty years.

Behind the artist's persistence and discipline is a burning passion for dance. "Dancing is inseparable from my life now," said the dancer-choreographer. "Even if one day the audience no longer wants to see me on stage, I can still dance at home. I think the best reward a dancer can get is dancing itself."



Lin Huai-min: Lo's mentor


Lo rose to stardom when she was a member of the Cloud Gate Dance Theater, one of the most prominent professional dance troupes in Asia. But before she joined Cloud Gate, becoming a professional dancer was the last thing she'd ever dreamed of.

"I started learning to dance when I was five, with ballet and folk dance... Although I enjoyed it very much, I thought that it would merely be something for performance at galas or festivals. The idea of dancing as a career had never crossed my mind."

Thus, after graduating from elementary school, she bundled up her dance shoes and put them away on the shelf. Like most other children on the island, she had to plunge into her studies through junior and senior high school to prepare for the competitive joint college entrance examination. The gifted dancer had an aptitude for academic learning too. Six years later, she breezed through the exam and became a student at the prestigious National Taiwan University, where she majored in English literature.

While at university, with more time to pursue her love of dance, she joined Liu Feng-hsueh's Neo-Classical Dance Company. Liu taught her modern dance (which Lo soon fell in love with) and was the first to show her that dance could be a serious art. Nonetheless, her life would never have taken its decisive turn had she not entered the Cloud Gate Dance Theater.

By the time she became a member of Cloud Gate, she had already graduated from university and spent a year in New York. Compared with other dedicated dancers at the company, who had made up their minds when they were little to become professional dancers, Lo seemed to belong to a different clan. "When I was young, I had no ambitions at all and all I could think of was playing and having fun. As much as I loved dancing, it was just like an interesting game that I had a lot of fun doing." Thus, when she first joined Cloud Gate, she still didn't think that she'd stick to dancing for the rest of her life-her initial idea was to give herself two years' time to "have some fun there." Although she later spent twice that time there, her work attitude and uncooperative ways often sparked conflicts between her and the troupe's artistic director, Lin Huai-min.

"Because I was so fond of having fun, I often went to discos at night to dance. Then in the morning I would skip classes offered to the troupe and only show up in the afternoon for rehearsals." For Lin, who was strict in discipline, such behavior could not be tolerated.

He often said words to provoke her: "Your life has been too smooth-that's why your dance isn't profound and moving enough." But at the same time, he also kept encouraging her to do choreography and soon gave her the chance to dance the leading role in the Legend of the White Snake.

"Although Lin often threw cold water on me, he was also the one who kept giving me chances," Lo said of the contradictory relationship between herself and her mentor. "I wanted to run away from him, but I couldn't because I knew that everything he said was right."

In addition to giving his dancers solid technical training and encouraging them to try their hand at designing dance pieces, Lin also invited painters, architects and writers to give regular lectures. When the troupe toured abroad, he told the dancers to visit museums and galleries. "Lin laid in us a very good foundation in the arts and humanities. He taught that dance was not only concerned with the movements of the body. It had to go beyond that if you wanted to become a real artist."

Through the experiences of touring around with Cloud Gate in Europe, America and Asia, Lo developed from an amateur into a fully-fledged professional dancer. The members of the troupe had to face different audiences and adapt to different stages almost daily. "We paid attention to every detail, including how to take curtain calls and how to walk down from stages, which we rehearsed under Lin's rigorous direction. I must say that I received a complete and thorough training at Cloud Gate. It was only after I joined Cloud Gate that I became a real dancer."



A career taking off


Lo left Cloud Gate in 1982 to pursue further studies in New York. Three years later, she obtained a master's degree in dance from New York University. During her stay in the metropolis, she also took courses at the Martha Graham School, the Alvin Ailey School of American Dance and the Jose Limon School, and participated in various theatrical productions, including the Broadway musical The King and I starring Yul Bryner.

Lo rejoined Cloud Gate when she returned to Taiwan in 1985. Fulfilling her roles on stage with glaring virtuosity and producing her choreography with creative dynamism, she was often awarded with due accolades and rave reviews and soon established her place as a famed soloist and choreographer. The New York Times, for instance, praised her performance as "dazzling" and "impeccable." She was thus frequently invited as a guest soloist and choreographer by many professional dance and theater companies.

Aside from choreographing and performing both at home and abroad, Lo also taught at the Dance Department of the National Institute of the Arts. As a teacher, she found great satisfaction in grooming young up-and-coming dancers. When asked what kind of dancers she'd like to train her students to be, she answered, "I hope my students can become people who have their own ideas, not just some copycats. Besides, they should be able to discover through dance that life is full of possibilities. I am most afraid of teaching them to think that the only thing they can do is dance."

After appearing in five hundred Cloud Gate performances, Lo began to scale back her appearances and concentrate her attention more on teaching and choreographing. But her urge to perform on stage never faded. In 1994, she founded the Taipei Crossover Dance Company with three other founding members of Cloud Gate, Chen Shu-chi, Yeh Tai-chu and Wu Su-chun. These veteran dancers were no longer up to the hectic performing schedule of younger dancers. But sensing that there was still a lot of unreleased energy and unexplored potential in them, they decided to combine dance with other art forms such as literature, theater, music and installation arts, and further expand their life on stage. The first-rate performance by the troupe members immediately caught the attention of the local as well as the international community. Their dance has been extolled as "displaying a fascination beyond human bodies." The company has since been invited to perform in Germany, England, Hong Kong and the United States.

Lo has produced many works that have won the troupe high acclaim, including The Dark Side of the Moon, A Place Where the Heart Is, and Chronicle of a Floating City, an experimental work involving dancing, singing and the use of art installations. In the most recent production, Incomplete Allegory, staged in Taipei in November 2000, Lo based her creation on a poem by the famed Taiwanese poet, Yang Mu. "Poetry and dance have a lot in common," Lo explained. "Whereas the former is a condensed and abstract representation in words, the latter is a condensed and abstract representation in movements. That's why I thought of translating poetic imagery into movements and steps."

Creative and versatile, Lo produces new works every year. Some of her choreographic arrangements are abstract, whereas others follow a story line. Sometimes she incorporates tradition in her dance, sometimes she deconstructs the stereotypical dance structure. She is definitely not afraid of breaking out of the confines of tradition. "I'm like an adventurer when creating-I don't like to fall into patterns or repeat what I've done before."

Lo welcomed another big challenge into her life in 1999, when she took the helm as artistic director of Cloud Gate II. As the Cloud Gate Dance Theater successfully built up its name in the international community, it was swamped with invitations from all over the globe and unable to spend much time in its home country. The troupe recognized the need to establish another dance company to "put down the roots of dance" in Taiwan. Therefore, Cloud Gate II, consisting of young dancers, was set up to undertake the task. Every dancer in the company was handpicked by Lo. Embracing a sense of mission, Lo hopes that by visiting and performing in every corner of the island, the company can introduce the beauty of dance to people in rural areas who have not had much of a chance to see it. After last year's devastating earthquake, the company also visited the disaster areas, hoping to cheer up survivors with its performances.

In her effort to contribute to society, Lo says she is influenced by her teacher, Lin Huai-min. Twenty years ago, Cloud Gate was in such dire financial straits that it was unable to pay the dancers' salaries. Lin thought, "Instead of sitting at home walled in by worries, why don't we open the door and go out and do something meaningful?" Cloud Gate gave numerous free performances in the countryside despite the fact that the company was almost bankrupt.

"I think a dance company has its social responsibilities too," commented Lo. "It has to care for the land it lives on and the people it lives with. Behind our performances is a wish to reach out and build bridges between people."



Everlasting love for dance


Born in 1955, Lo is now in her mid-forties. With such a long dance career, what she is most proud of is that her love for dance has never faded. "For me, dance is full of life force. Dance is my way to pay tribute to life."

She said that when she was young, her attention as a dancer was focused on how to perfect her dance techniques, such as how to do a swirl more expertly or master certain physical feats. But as the years went by, dance has become a way for her to communicate with her body. She carries on dialogues with it every day. "My daily communications with my body start with warming-up exercises. During the process, I will notice how certain muscles seem to have stretched more fully or how some parts of my body seem to feel differently. Although I have danced for so many years, I'm still discovering new things about my body."

Lo said that since she turned thirty years old, she has felt that her body no longer confines her, but is rather an extension. When she dances, she can feel her body opening up, like a flower slowly spreading its petals or a river flowing slowly. As her body opens up, so does her soul. "Dance has allowed me to become more open-minded and receptive. If people at my age still love dancing so much, it is because dancing has transcended mere physical movements and become a spiritual thing for them. It's hard to describe the feeling in words, but the joy and sense of achievement involved, which are for me far more important than wealth and applause, are the factors that keep me dancing."

As Martha Graham said, dancers find truth with their bodies and also think with their bodies. Through dance, Lo has found a way to communicate with herself, to connect with the world and live her life more fully. What better rewards can one get than this?