Montreal-based artist explores Taiwanese nostalgia in science fiction-inspired immersive performance

Montreal, get ready for a multi-dimensional journey where science fiction meets manga.

From April 9-12, Montreal-based Taiwanese-Canadian interdisciplinary dance artist and light designer Nien Tzu Weng presents ‘The Lightest Dark is Darker Than the Darkest Light.’

The production will take place at Montréal, arts interculturels (MAI) downtown.

Weng explains the meaning behind the name taps into a few different dimensions, drawing on elements like light, space, and the transformation of 2D to 3D, influenced by her work as both an artist and a light designer.

“I work with weight. I’m a dancer so there’s a lot of different layers of meaning by using light and dark. So I’m trying to play in between these intensity and unfolding some density of where I come from and or like the experience I have,” she said.

Weng has lived in Canada for 15 years. In this project, she mixes art with personal stories, using light, materials, and sound to recreate scenes from Taiwan. She explores her deep feelings of nostalgia and connection to her homeland. She looks back at her past to understand what she missed and why she left. This helps her create a new story in her art.

“I left home when I was 17, and I think there’s many things that happened in the past five years, I guess, and especially the pandemic. And it really stretched out time and created this huge distance, and it made me also have a lot of time to think about where I am at, where I’m at in my career, and also where I live here.”

She adds that as her mother gets older, she’s been thinking a lot about how long it’s been since she moved to Canada and learned English, and settled in. Over time, she feels like her memories of her past are becoming blurry and harder to recall.

“And why did I actually leave, and how much do I miss the time that I was not here?” she asks herself. “There’s a lot of wonder and a lot of questions because I’m here and I’m alone, but all of my family is in Taiwan, and it’s been almost 17 years of trying to find my own way, find my home here.”

She explained that her work is about going back to a moment from her past when she left home. She wore her high school uniform when she left, and now she’s wearing it again during the production to revisit that time. By doing this, she wants to understand how things have changed and make new memories that connect her past with her present.

Weng says she left home for many reasons, mainly to pursue dance. The place she grew up was very conservative, and she felt limited by the education and experiences she had there. Moving to Canada was part of her dream to escape that, and now she’s trying to heal and understand her past better.

“I’m a grown up, I want to grow up, so I wanted to go back to my childhood to find out more information. Maybe I was faking all the memories I had in the past, so I was not sure. So I just decided that I wanted to do this project. Also, my family doesn’t know what I’m doing here, so it’s also a way to bring a crew and bring my work, bridging this world, sharing with them my process and work here.”

The title {光 (陰 | 影)}之∞ (Guāng Yīn): The Lightest Dark is Darker Than the Darkest Light is based on Taoist ideas. 光 [guāng] means “light” and 陰 [yīn] means “shade” or “dark.” Together, they represent “time,” which is a key theme in Weng’s work.

With a team of digital artists, videographers, sound designers, and augmented reality experts, she has created an immersive experience that takes the audience on a journey through time and space. The show mixes old traditions with new ideas, creating a dreamlike world that feels mysterious and unknown.

“It’s really magical, actually. All the collaborators I work with, they’re really there with me, and they really want to make this dream come true, trying their best to understand my culture. And also, I’m trying to figure out, oh, actually, it’s true, I’m working here with all the collaborators I’ve worked with for years, and they don’t really know where I come from. They didn’t have the chance to come, so we’re really trying to do a lot of dialogues to bring the meeting point together.”

She’s describes the space as a mix of different elements, like a hallway where time feels unclear. With projections and live recordings, it’s hard to tell what time or reality you’re in. She says at time it feels chaotic, and she’s exploring how we see reality in our modern world, where things can seem real but also confusing.

In this performance, Weng also looks at how yin and yang balance in the body. Dance, movements, memories, glowing robots, and different characters all mix together, blending the real world with the virtual world.

“I grew up with yin and yang, it’s kind of like the extremity of the opposite side, and I grew up with a Taoism tradition, like most of the, I guess, people living in Asia or in China or Taiwan or many places.”

She explains that yin and yang also relate to her experience with traditional Chinese dance. In this dance, she explores the balance between opposite parts of the body. It’s not just about black and white, but about what’s in between and finding balance between those different elements.

“This work, it’s really about that in the principle in the body too. It’s really, how do you say, this paradoxical mindset and trying to grab and hold on to it and live and it is like the fluidity of the cloud or the water and the energy.”

She hopes people will feel a sense of possibility from her production. She wants them to see how different art forms can connect and interact with each other, and she hopes to share that experience with her audience.

“There’s going to be a lot of friends and also a lot of new friends, and I want people here who are maybe from Taiwan or from Asia to feel the possibilities or be inspired by the work, that the technology available to us is able to travel back in time or to feel.

“We use some AI and then some augmented reality, like a lot of high-tech stuff, and I don’t want people to feel like, ‘Oh, that’s really far from our life.’ I think it’s really present in our daily life and how to use these technologies and materials to really connect with our body. This presence is really special to nowadays, especially for new generations.”

Weng says she’s putting a lot of heart into her work, creating an experience that mixes light, dark, playful, and hopeful elements, and she hopes people will enjoy it.

“I bring my home here actually and I think people would be really interested.”

“We have two spaces and I’m going to, with the team, bring this journey of blending reality from one place to the other and going into something light and something dark, and something really playful and really hopeful. So I hope people would really enjoy the experience.”

She expressed gratitude for her mom’s support during this process, and showed excitement about her family members joining remotely via livestream.

“I’m hoping to see some nuance, some phenomenon, through this experience.”