“This will increase our public profile, and people who didn’t know about us before will know us now,” said Masequa Myers, executive director of the center. “This new relationship will make available resources and give us exposure that the center deserves. We will be a bigger part of the tourism promotion, and visitors to the city will know the South Side Community Arts Center is a place you must see.”

In the 16th century, gazing out from the decks of ships off the coast of China, Portuguese sailors saw it: a great green mass, thick with mountains and trees, rising from the sea. “Formosa!” they exclaimed—“beautiful!”—anointing the verdant place that would come to be known as Taiwan. In this new work, choreographer Lin Hwai-min and his Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan take that appraisal as inspiration for their own work of abstract beauty born from land and lore.