My father's family come from the village of Chiayi in Taiwan, where I spent a lot of my childhood. The rice field in that valley was immense and beautiful - it looked like a giant wave of rice. As children we'd roll around in the field. After harvest, the farmers would spread out their rice grains in an empty space in the courtyard. We loved to mess around with it. Pretty often we'd get caught and were beaten up. Rice is something you take for granted but is so precious. I grew up right after the second world war and at that time parents would demand of their children that not a single grain of rice be left in the bowl.
In 1978 I created a work for my company, Cloud Gate Dance Theatre, entitled Legacy, which depicted the pioneers of Taiwan and looked at the planting and harvesting of rice. In 1994 I made Songs of the Wanderers, for which I used three and a half tonnes of rice grains dyed gold. They served as the only set - they were used from backstage and from above, showering the stage. I never thought I would go back to this subject. But here we are. My new work? It's called Rice. A lady in my office says I have a rice complex.
From 1895 to 1945 Taiwan was occupied and ruled by Japan. During this time the farmers in the Chihshang region were ordered to grow rice for the imperial family. But the emperor's rice lost its reputation for quality after the war because the farmers began to use chemicals. Since the 1990s the farmers have been farming organically – they care more about the environment. In that village you don't see a single electricity pole in the field.
I visited the region in 2011 and wasn't prepared for its great beauty. When we were creating Rice we took part in the harvesting in Chihshang. We got up at 5am and went out to the fields. It was a back-breaking experience. But we got in touch with the wind and the sun, the drizzle of rain and the mud and the soil. You can create work in a studio but the elements of nature stimulate you physically. You press down into the ground and draw energy from gravity. You feel a sense of power from pushing into the soil with your feet. It was a wonderful experience and gave us a new perspective: it's not just dancing, dancing, dancing in the studio.
Throughout the show we use a lot of projections: rice grains swaying in the wind; fire when the farmers burn the remainders of the field before the next season; water slowly filtering into the earth and bringing forth a new beginning. It's a bright and warm show.
In the show I use folk songs in the Hakka dialect alongside music by Maria Callas. They are farmers' folk songs about the basics of life and about love. Nowadays machines do the hard work, but these are the tunes that were once sung when the rice was being planted – you would hear the words carrying across the fields.
