Lin Hwai-min (; born 19 February 1947) is a Taiwanese dancer, writer, choreographer, and founder of Cloud Gate Dance Theater of Taiwan.
Biography
Family
Lin was born in Xingang, Chiayi. He came from an intellectual family. His great-grandfather was a poet and a businessman who founded a school during the Japanese colonial period. His grandfather was a doctor and his father, Lin Chin-sheng, obtained a law degree from the Tokyo Imperial University. After Chiang Kai-shek established rule in Taiwan in 1949, Lin's father held several important political positions, including the office of Chiayi County Magistrate from 1951 to 1954. His mother Lin Cheng Pen-pen graduated from the Tokyo Economics College. He is the oldest of five children.
Childhood and education
Lin's family enjoyed the arts. His father loved visual arts while his mother enjoyed classical music. Lin was exposed to different art forms and culture very early on in his childhood. He would go on to say that "My story has all along been a mixture of Taiwanese-Chinese, Western and Japanese influences - my parents were educated in Japan."
Lin attended Chun Wen Elementary School in Chiayi for one year before transferring to Taichung First High School. He next moved to Weido, a private Catholic Brothers’ boy school. His father encouraged him to take on law studies at the National Chengchi University but after a year, he switched majors to journalism. Graduating with a degree in journalism, Lin was drafted into the army with an office job in communications in Taipei.
At an early age, Lin showed great interest in writing and reading. He published his first story in United Daily News at the age of fourteen. At the age of eighteen, he was engaged as one of the contract writers for Crown, one of Taiwan's biggest magazines. In 1969, his story entitled Cicada that narrated the theme of Taiwanese "Lost Generation" gained popularity amongst the younger generation. This love for reading and writing would later help him conceptualise his artistic vision in his works. For example, he was greatly influenced by Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace while composing his notable work, Legacy. Later, he would inculcate a love for reading in his dance company by giving the dancers each a book in between practices and performances and engage in book discussions with them.
Encountering dance
Lin was first introduced to dance at the age of five, when he saw the British film The Red Shoes. He was so mesmerized with the movie that he began dancing for his family. His interest piqued further after he saw a performance by American José Limón Dance Company in Taichung. In the 1960s, when modern dance was gaining popularity in Taiwan, Lin enrolled in a dance studio but gave up after three months as he felt he could not learn much from it. Later on, Lin attended workshops by renowned dancers such as Chungliang Al Huang and Yen Lo-Wong.
In 1969, Lin left for the United States on a scholarship to study journalism at the University of Missouri. At Missouri, he received a fellowship to the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program to study under renowned poet, Paul Engle. At UI, he participated actively in theatre and fine arts. He also attended a Modern Dance course taught by Marcia Thayer. Lin would later on refer to her strong passion and dedication to the art of dance as an important influence. It is from this increased involvement in dance and fine arts that he sharpened his interest and enrolled in a summer course at Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance in New York, where he would later on spend most of his time upon receiving his master's degree from Iowa to hone his artistic skills and knowledge.
Career
When Lin returned to Taiwan in the 1970s, he started writing and choreographing as well as teaching at the National Chengchi University and the Chinese Cultural University. In 1983, he created the Department of Dance at Taipei National University of the Arts and since 2000, he has been serving as the Artistic Director of the Novel Dance Series for the Novel Hall dance venue in Taipei.