“Listening” with her feet
Lin has been dancing for a long time, but it wasn’t interest that initially sparked her participation. Rather, it was a means of improving her health. Her kindergarten teacher recommended she start dancing to get into better shape, and once she started, she kept at it for over a decade.
Looking back, Lin thinks she was a pretty clueless dancer when young. It wasn’t until she was in college and was invited to choreograph a dance by an older student that she began to feel a sense of accomplishment and true passion for dance. Although it was only a short piece, the creative experience was deeply rewarding.
Long Chia, who has worked with Lin for four or five years, knows for sure that it hasn’t been easy for Lin. Lin’s hearing impairment is severe. “Whereas other people can listen to music and practice dance, I have to use my eyes to capture the beat and learn the moves,” Lin says. A dance that others can learn in a week might take three or four times as long for a hearing-impaired person. And in addition to the hardships she endures today, Lin also holds unhappy memories from studying dance as a child.
She experienced a lot of hurtful unfriendliness back then—perhaps, she thinks, because people didn’t understand the hearing impaired, and didn’t know how to interact with them. At any rate, the experience made her want to make a contribution on behalf of all deaf people. In 2011 she founded her own dance company, hoping to provide a relaxed and happy dancing environment for the deaf.
Many of the other members of the company are likewise deaf. Some of them initially lacked confidence, but as they gained opportunities to perform, their faces brightened and they took to moving more energetically on stage. Long Chia notes that one shy member of the group, Huang Xiaobu, at first just helped out by taking photos for the group. But then, with the encouragement of her mother and others, she joined the company and started to dance herself.
In addition to establishing a deaf dance company, Lin has even gone so far as to head south to Taichung week after week to teach dance to deaf children. One class went on for four months, and then in the last session Lin discovered that a student that had regularly come to every class was missing. It was only after she asked why that she learned that the students’ parents couldn’t afford the tuition. Lin thus learned that the families of many deaf people may find even reasonable fees a heavy economic burden.
According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, Taiwan currently has 120,000 hearing-impaired people, comprising roughly 10% of the nation’s disabled population. Cochlear implants cost tens of thousands of NT dollars, and the parents of many hearing-impaired children are deaf themselves. “Making ends meet for basic necessities is tough enough—never mind having the financial wherewithal to pay for their children’s dance lessons.” Consequently, Lin has kick-started the “Crescent Moon Plan.” Phase I involves Lin and her partners going on tour to raise funds to support dance education for the deaf.