Draft:Lai Tsui-shuang

Lai Tsui-Shuang (Chinese: 賴翠霜; pinyin: Lài Cuìshuāng) is a Taiwanese dancer, choreographer and founder of Lais Creative Dance Theater who gained recognition in the Dance community by winning the 7th Taishin Arts Award in performance art category in 2008. Her works primarily focus on addressing and highlighting social issues such as domestic violence, population aging and environment protection, and most of her dance movements incorporate elements of daily routine. She often collaborates with Taiwanese and German dance groups and performs in Taiwan and Western countries.

Early life
Lai Tsui-Shuang was born in Tainan. Her family ran a book rental store, where Lai gained inspiration for her dances through comics. At the age of 14, seeing the neighbor’s child wearing a tutu sparked Lai’s interest in dancing, leading her to learn to dance in a dance club.

During her junior high school years, she directed her first dance for the classroom and graduation performance, which inspired Lai’s passion for choreography. Lai initially attended dance classes at Taipei Municipal Zhong-zheng Senior High School and transferred to the National Kuo Kuang Academy of Arts (now known as the National Taiwan College of Performing Arts) due to academic pressure. Lai then attended the Chinese Culture University. From 1989 to 1991, she participated in the Taipei Capital Ballet and performed with several Taiwanese dance groups, including the Guo Mei-Xiang Dance Theater, Godot Theatre Company, and Paper Windmill Theatre.

After graduating from Chinese Culture University in 1997, Lai entered the Folkwang Universität der Künste in Germany with the assistance of Xu Sheng-Neng  and joined the Flokwang Tanz Studio in 1998 as a solo dancer. She collaborated with several choreographers, including Henrieta Horn, Malou Airaudo, and Joe Alegado, to compose dances together and present their works in Italy, France, Sweden, etc.

In 2002, she received an invitation from Romanz to return to Taiwan and took part in the Asian Youth Choreography Camp, which provided opportunities for her to expand her networks in Taiwan. Two years later, she became a freelance dancer and choreographer, working with a German choreographer ﻿Suna Dörü-Yoltanz. In 2005, she engaged in collaborative work with Nathalie Larquet and Leonard A. Cruz and was invited to work with other artists in both Taiwan and Germany.

Lais Creative Dance Theater
Lai Tsui-Shuang founded Lais Creative Dance Theater in 2011. The term “Creative” in its name represents the breaking of stereotypes and limitations. The purpose of Lais Creative Dance Theater is to develop and promote various forms of dance arts in Taiwan

Lai has gathered those who are professional or talented at dancing in Taiwan, publishing new works every year. Apart from professional dancers, Lai collaborated with the Culture Affairs Bureau of the Tainan City Government to launch a dancing workshop for amateurs around Taiwan and created artworks like Their Stories (2020). Lais Creative Dance Theater’s members mostly are female. In the first work of the theater Drawer(2011), all the dancers are girls.

Lais Creative Dance Theater performs their artwork at both domestic and international art events as a special guest.

Lai's dance movements frequently incorporated elements of daily routine, which was considered conducive to the audience's sense of relatability. Lai claimed “Our dance moves are very much rooted in everyday life, and there are also some elements of drama in them. So, our dance is relatively down-to-earth, connecting not only with society but also with our immediate surroundings and environment." The media of expression are diverse, often combining elements like visuals, text, and live sound. Through theatrical narrative forms and relatable moves, Lai hopes it can bring the audience closer to the world of artistic creation.

Collaboration
Lai started to work as a freelance dancer and choreographer in August 2004. :3   After that, she worked together with several choreographers and joined many performances of other dancing groups, such as Chu Ting Art Group, :34 Liau muo-ci Company, Assembly Dance Theatre, :1 and Dance Forum Taipei  in Taiwan.

She also received invitations from dancing groups and organizations including Italy Milan Festival, the German Dancing group, Christine Brunel, and Colorado State University. :3 The experience of collaborating with foreign companies allowed Lai to gain insights into various cultures and to be inspired. Lai noted that after studying and working abroad, her creativity became less limited by the narrow sense of dance, thinking that dance could be combined with everything. :101

In 2008, her collaborative work as a Dance director with Capital Ballet Taipei Dance Company, Surround, won her the 7th Taishin Arts Award. This is her most representative work, since it showed her style of dance movement and also made her famous among the Taiwanese dancing field.

Aside from her experiences of choreography, she has held dance lessons with other organizations, including Puo-Suo Company in 2006 and Cultural Affairs Bureau, Tainan City Government druing 2017 to 2019.

Original works
Lai founded Lais Creative Dance Theater in 2011, where she has been creating original works.

Lai's works primarily explore social issues including environmental protection in About and population aging, specifically Alzheimer's disease in Blackout - My memory derailed. She aims to make dance more meaningful by combining it with social issues and the difficulties faced by minorities. She also emphasized the need of those overlooked in the shadows, stressing that they require attention, care and help.

Until 2022, fifteen original works had been produced, including 2 series: Blackout (2015) and Northern/Southern City series (2018-2019).

Her original works include:

Home Temperature (2013)
Home Temperature mainly focuses on the issues of family and domestic violence. The title Home Temperature can be interpreted as a question asked to the audience by Lai: What is the temperature of your family at? Is it a flaming 100℃ or a freezing -100℃? The story is based on Lai's sister's experience of falling victim to domestic violence, combined with other cases collected by social welfare organizations. To present the domestic violence scenes realistically on the stage, she abandoned the abstract aspects of dance and added dramatic lines. Although the tone of the performance is relatively sorrowful, Lai still believes that by performing Home Temperature, she can bring a glimmer of hope and positivity.

Stranger (2019)
Stranger explores the emotional state of the outsiders or wanderers in a foreign land, addressing the feeling of instability and a lack of belonging they experience. It also expresses the condition of individuals who are unaccepted and ignored by mainstream culture, ultimately leading them to become outsiders marginalized and excluded by society. Lai mentioned that she chose this topic due to her personal connection, having experienced being a stranger when she was abroad.

Reflection (2022)
In Reflection, Lai attempts to discuss the topic from a psychological perspective, which is how people can better understand the value of existence and self-consciousness. She said that the starting point of Reflection is finding humans fascinating, and the core is discovering the connection between our inner reflections and the external world. Facing the impacts and the changes in their personalities caused by family and friends, the question is how people can find the balance in between. Perhaps the answer remains unknown until they have been through the trials of life.

List of her other original works until 2022


 * Drawer (2011)
 * About (2012)
 * S.T.O.R.Y (2014)
 * Blackout - Germany (2015)
 * Blackout - My memory derailed (2015)
 * Sounds Body Memories (2016)
 * Mambo Rock (2017)
 * Midway (2018)
 * Traveler (2018)
 * Home Temperature+ (2020)
 * Dream me (2022)
 * The frames (2022)

Awards
Lai won the 7th Taishin Arts Award in 2009 with the work Surround in the category “Performance Arts”, and was subsequently nominated five times. The five nominated works and the year of nomination are Premiere in 2010, Drawer and Waiting for the next in 2011 , Home Temperature in 2013 and S.T.O.R.Y in 2014.