Autumn 2018 Newsletter
(October 2018)
Dear Living Tao friends:
I am writing this on Labor Day weekend at the River House in Oregon. How quickly another summer has gone with the flow on the Rogue River merging into the Pacific Ocean, where our Tai Ji Deck is at the mouth of this great expansion of flowing water along the “Watercourse Way”. The view is truly inspiring! 
We accomplished a great deal of focused, concentrated learning in the two weeks of this summer’s gathering. Reviewing everything we had been learning through the past years during the first week and continuing to creatively explore the next circle with our
never-ending choreographic inventions and challenges. 
Mama Huang’s Ba Ji motifs became natural ingredients in our recipes, as one move led to another in the organic flow of spontaneous and intrinsic happenings. It was much fun, becoming effortlessly Wu Wei in its simplicity and easy flow.
After the departure of our intimate group of international friends who came from Finland, Canada, Japan, Hong Kong and around America, I enjoyed another August birthday with my own family, made especially precious with grandchildren here for a few days.
I stayed on ten more days enjoying much needed leisure and solitude at my beach house. Every morning after my daily Tai Ji with the waves, I contemplated how to become the Beach, while honoring myself – “Being Infinite as a Grain of Sand”. (Thank you, James Broughton, our Divinely beloved “High Kuku” late poet friend!) Feeling very grateful to be able to enjoy cool and clear air, while so much of the inland Northwest remains often dense with smoke from forest fires all over the Western states.
Right after my return to Illinois, the Krannert Center of the Performing Arts will launch a double season from September 2018 to May 2020, to celebrate the Center’s 50th year anniversary. It’s hard to believe that my wife Suzanne and I were amongst the KCPA’s first artists-in-residence performing during the inaugural month in the Spring of 1969.
Counting my blessings that half a century later, I am still able to contribute to the festivities with two upcoming performances. The first will be my collaboration with the Jupiter String Quartet dancing in two pieces; one by Stravinsky, which I had choreographed and performed during my graduate years at Bennington College in the early 1960s. The other piece is by the Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer who was inspired by the 1973 publication of my first book “Embrace Tiger, Return to Mountain”. While we had corresponded with plans to get together, it was not until more than 3 decades later, when we were both teaching and performing at the Oregon Bach Festival that we were able to do so. Murray had composed his #6 String Quartet based on the Tai Ji motifs and offered me the opportunity to choreograph this piece for myself. And now this will happen when, synchronistically, the Jupiter String Quartet has become the current KCPA resident artists with me in the same town. Here is the performance information:
February 7, 2019 — Sonic Illinois: Jupiter String
Quartet with Chungliang Al Huang
My other participation will be in the finale of the 2018-20 KCPA 50th celebration in March of 2020. I will join with other artists/performers to re-stage the Gustav Mahler “Das Lied von der Erde”, his masterpiece song cycle inspired by the Tang Dynasty Chinese poems, with additional visual and kinetic enhancement to make this classic a total aesthetic sensory experience. The internationally renowned baritone Nathan Gunn, who is also a resident at Champaign-Urbana, is slated to sing one of the two parts. The eDream team who helped created the fantastic visual kinetic CHI-images for my 2013 performance of “The Tao of Bach” at Krannert will again be on the creative team for all the visual-kinetic magic we wish to create. Do be tempted to come for this once-in-a-lifetime world premiere event in March of 2020. More details will be forthcoming in our future newsletters.
Before leaving for the Living Tao Lan Ting/China in mid-October, I will be in New York September 21st to join the Peace Day event together with my colleagues from the Zhou Enlai Peace Institute of Honolulu to participate on a TAO Panel presentation at the United Nation.
On the same day I will attend another one of Joan Baez’s “Fare thee
well…Tour” concerts.
Also, while in NY, I will teach at the Katonah Yoga Center where I
had taught last June—a reunion with many of our East Coast old friends. For my own treat, I hope to enjoy
a couple Broadway shows that week too. My hosts in the City will be my old
friend, the film maker of “Compassion in Exile” about the Dalai Lama and
“Fierce Grace” about Ram Dass. Also, while in NY, I will teach at the Katonah Yoga Center where I had taught last June—a reunion with many of our East Coast old friends, including Yoga Teacher, Carlos Lu who will be my host.
Next my focus, with Gitta Legler our dedicated Living Tao friend who has helped me to coordinate our recent Lan Ting China journeys, will on the October-November trip to Guizhou, Yunnan, Tiantai and Wu Yi Shan.
Once again, we will travel with a group of international friends of diverse expertise and age to share the experiences of new places with a thoughtfully planned itinerary, to delve deeper into learning of China’s cultural and ethnic diversity – marveling at beautiful scenic spots not yet spoiled by overwhelming tourism. How I wish more of our long time Living Tao friends could join us this time.
Lastly, I’d like to announce a new book by Jane English, a RAINBOW of TAO, 
with a foreword that I have written for it. The book includes a compilation of quotations from the Tao Te Ching and Chuang Tsu with accompanying photographs by Jane. It has been spiral bound, so thatyou can leave it open for contemplation.
We will think of you all and send much Joyful Dancing CHI-eers from China.
Chungliang