Under-the-Bridge as a State of Consciousness: On TAI Body Theater’s Dance Work
Dancing Under the Bridge, choreographed in 2015 by Watan Tusi of TAI Body Theater, portrays the urban laboring lives of tribal members displaced from their homeland, using the dance group’s renowned footwork notations.1 The choreography is characterized by its narrative-free sequences, which occasionally erupt into hysteria. These elements collectively illustrate the emotional tension experienced by the displaced individuals on both a personal and communal level.
This was my second time seeing the performance. Unlike the 2015 version I saw at the Hakka Performance Hall in Hualien, where the tiered stage conjured visions of life beneath a city bridge, this time––in June 2024––the setting was the Former Hualien Brewery. Here, the boundary between audience and performers dissolved. We were all part of the same expansive floor space, united under the brewery’s high ceilings and exposed cement, which made every footstep and every sound the dancers produced echo clearly throughout the cavernous, empty workshop. On the night I attended, it was raining outside. The factory’s high windows framed the rain’s rhythmic patter, mingling with the splashes of passing cars and distant, indistinct murmurs from beyond.
Performance documentation, Dancing Under the Bridge, TAI Body Theater at the Former Hualien Brewery, 2024. Photo by Jingyi Lin. Courtesy of TAI Body Theater.
“This feels so much like being under a bridge,” I thought to myself.
Living in a tribe nestled in the East Rift Valley of Hualien, I see bridges as pivotal elements, carrying the rhythm of daily life. They connects people traveling for study, shopping, or sightseeing and consumption. Bridges ignite my curiosity about the wider world, serving as a vital path beyond our immediate surroundings and evoking memories of my father taking us on outings. More than just functional structures, they symbolize departure, longing, and the pursuit of dreams. In an urban context, however, the spaces beneath bridges often become fugitive zones on the urban periphery, activated by the underclass into vibrant ecosystems.
In the old brewery, the dancers make us peer into the fractured space beneath the bridge: The factory’s four towering concrete pillars became stand-ins for the bridge’s piers, while the concrete ceiling transformed into the bridge’s underside. At the start of the performance, two dancers wielded flashlights, and three others crouched by the pillars, carefully avoiding the light. Suddenly, one dancer rose to narrate, revealing that the figures hiding from the flashlights represented tribe members waiting in the city’s shadows after dark. The image of the dancers crouching and holding their breath to evade the light evoked my sense of tribal hunters, highlighting the tension they might feel when faced with a flashlight’s beam.
The performance began with a rather slow rhythm, enveloped in dim lighting and a tense atmosphere, making me feel as though I were trapped in a suffocatingly long night. It wasn’t until the dancers under the bridge began their movements that the long night seemed to end, and the construction site came to life. The dancers, pushing single-wheel handcarts or bracing against the intense vibrations of drilling machines, moved from one towering concrete pillar to another, transitioning from one worksite to another. Their bodies danced in sync with the rhythm of the machinery. The performance vividly depicted the alienation of labor. The labor of the people, unable to freely express their physical and intellectual capabilities, could not showcase their creativity or respond to the productive connection between individuals and society known to the tribal culture. Instead, the rhythm of their movements on the concrete floor conveyed the suffering of their bodies. The low hum created by the friction of their feet against the floor echoed like the resonant pung-pung sound of weaving in the tribe, emanating from the ubung loom.
Warping frame: A crucial step in textile preparation where warp threads are meticulously arranged on the frame to ensure even tension and alignment before being transferred to the weaving loom. Photo courtesy of the author.
That as an Unspecified Condensation2
The dancers run between the towering bridge pillars, moving like threads winding onto the beams of a warping frame. The pace quickens as the scene shifts to labor at a construction site, with bodies and footwork becoming more urgent and heavy. The story beneath the bridge grows more entangled as they begin to sing. To ease the alienation of intense labor, a few drinks are downed, and though their steps stagger, the dancers continue to follow the rhythm of their footwork. They sing love songs, expressing hidden desires, then suddenly grab onto a ladder and break into Western dance steps before sitting on a work trolley, allowing other dancers to push them as they sing leisurely—sometimes even playing a guitar.
For a moment, as the cycle of song and dance repeats across the construction site, the distinction between day and night on stage seems to blur. The fragments neither tell a story nor connects logically to each other. Just when we think the performance is depicting the lives of uprooted Indigenous people in the city, the next footwork sequence disrupts any attempt at understanding. Suddenly, the dancers pause, sit by a bridge pillar, stare ahead, inhaling deeply before exhaling heavily.
Through a few brief monologues and the portrayal of laboring bodies at the worksite, Dancing Under the Bridge offers more than just reflections on those living beneath the bridge. It opens up spaces of consciousness—intuitive ideas not yet fully formed—and engages our direct reactions to theatrical stimuli. In this theater, where there is no clear division between stage and audience, all the chaos and fragmented moments converge into a tangled mass of threads.
“I work at a factory that makes thread. Sometimes we get a big bag of thread cheap, so we buy it. We’ve even swiped some—tossing it out the window for someone to catch below. We’d take it back to the village so our Payi could weave.”
Here, my cousin’s 2021 oral account of her urban work provides crucial insight into weaving. Just as we are fond of gathering threads from various sources and blending them into the piece we are making at the time, what may initially appear mismatched transforms into a rich tapestry that documents societal changes in real time, intertwining the personal with the social. This non-linear perspective may serve as a metaphor for understanding the dance work.
One interesting aspect of the play is that Indigenous people are sometimes mistaken for migrant workers from Southeast Asia. Additionally, the improvised songs occasionally switch to Taiwanese-Hokkien dialect. This setting highlights that those under the bridge are not only Indigenous people who have left their hometowns but also individuals from diverse racial backgrounds, all experiencing the alienation of labor. At this point, I no longer see just the threads (that is, the dancers moving under the bridge), nor the colorful interweaving of different strands, but rather an act of weaving itself.
“I was weaving all the while. It wasn’t until the loom broke that I realized my husband was no longer by my side. Later, I burned all the weaving tools.”
This oral account, which I’d like to keep anonymous, sheds light on how weaving may transcend material practice and becomes a profound state of being. This perspective resonates with my understanding of the dance work, suggesting that whether one is weaving or not, or whether one is leaving home or returning, this state of consciousness is encapsulated in the fragmented narrative. It reveals the complexity of life “under the bridge” and highlights the inclusivity the dance work aspired to. The performance is indeed fractured, disjointed, and even hysterical. However, it represents a form of performative resistance: the dancers release psychological pressure through a sequence of footwork notations while remaining deeply connected to their longing for home and their cultural identity.
Performance documentation, Dancing Under the Bridge, 2015. Photo by Varanuvan Mavaliw. Courtesy of TAI Body Theater.
Life’s journey is never linear—just as the dancers move through a series of disjointed motions. They perform distorted dance steps, occasionally blending in movements reminiscent of traditional festival dances. This distortion, mixed with fragmented and elusive words, expresses the bitterness of displacement and the longing for loved ones. The chaotic drama builds until the dancers are exhausted, collapsing against concrete pillars and exhaling heavily. The sound of their feet scraping the ground feels like a declaration of existence—both for those in the city, living under the bridge, and for the Indigenous villagers back home. As the dancers gaze into the distance, we in the audience find ourselves caught in their stare.
In the performance, there’s a notable shift from a clear distinction between day and night to a moment of temporal stagnation. During this shift, the dancers adopt a more improvised style, transforming their chaotic life experiences into creative acts. What may appear as a spontaneous, illogical, and fragmented performance could also reflect the complicated relationship urban Indigenous people have with home, one that is continually interrupted by reality.
Performance documentation, Dancing Under the Bridge, TAI Body Theater at the Former Hualien Brewery, 2024. Photo by Jingyi Lin. Courtesy of TAI Body Theater.
Dance as a Voice of the Dispossessed
As Dancing Under the Bridge features scant dialogue, some critics interpret its disjointed elements either as a challenge for cultural translation or, more benignly, as a puzzle with rich connotations. However, I would argue that the performance offers a state of consciousness “under the bridge” that addresses labor alienation and performative resistance. This approach goes beyond merely depicting contemporary Indigenous life and their pursuit of a better life in the city. Instead, it invites us to move past our frustration with discordant narratives and dialogues and to immerse ourselves in the consciousness of “under-the-bridge” throughout the play. The space beneath the bridge accommodates wanderers, while the dock in front may simply represent someone’s private mooring.
Rooted in a hybrid of Indigenous and working-class experiences, Dancing Under the Bridge interprets the world beneath the bridge by weaving together song lyrics, footwork, and mismatched threads into a rich tapestry of overlapping identities and stories. Through this under-the-bridge consciousness as a prism, the blending of elements allows us to witness a dance work that transcends the mere portrayal of a homogenized cultural tradition or the presentation of contemporary Indigenous experiences as static subjects for study. Instead, the performance reveals how alienated labor, repressed psychological outbursts, and fragmented language bring the audience closer to understanding suffering bodies, thereby deepening its resonance.
Translated by Zian Chen
1 Translator’s note: Watan Tusi, an Indigenous choreographer with roots in the Truku Swasal Tribe and an urban upbringing, has been developing his footwork notation since 2013 and continues to expand it. His notations are considered to set him apart from earlier Indigenous choreographers by incorporating everyday movements, such as the motions of industrial laboring bodies, without directly referencing traditional dance forms. As a Truku weaver, Watan integrates dowriq diamond weave patterns into the rhythmic structure of his notation. Additionally, the Truku concept of history, endaan, meaning “the steps taken,” also serves as a key influence.
2 The original Chinese title translates as That Dancing Under the Bridge. What’s lost in translation is Watan’s use of colloquial, fragmented language to intentionally subvert linguistic norms as an Indigenous Sinophone speaker.