Department of Cultural Affairs

Since its inception in 1997, the Taipei Culture Award has honored 83 recipients. The 28th edition of the award received 51 submissions following nominations and recommendations from leaders in various cultural fields. After careful deliberation by the judging committee, the winners of this year’s award are Ssu-tuan Lin in the field of dance and Robin Erik Ruizendaal in the field of puppetry.

At 85, Ssu-tuan Lin (also known as Hsi-tuan Cho) continues to teach three classes a week and frequently delivers lectures at campuses. She is not fond of discussing theory, as she believes it is not “alive”. Instead, she talks about dance, about life, and about the path she has walked.

At 16, she began working as a model for the Department of Fine Arts at NTNU, while also taking ballet classes and auditing fine arts courses. However, her modeling career attracted harsh criticism. 

In 1961, at the age of 20, Lin held Taiwan’s first solo exhibition focusing on a single model. In 1965, she participated in a joint exhibition of photography works. Amid media controversy and debates over the boundaries of pornography and art, as well as the objectification of the female body, Ssu-tuan Lin led a revolutionary movement. After retiring from modeling, she devoted herself entirely to dance. In 1975, she held an unprecedented solo dance performance, collaborating with friends from various art disciplines. 

With her agile personality and a mind full of creative ideas, she did not settle for simply being a professional dancer but also found immense joy in teaching. Her dance teaching career began in 1963 when she founded the Eastern Art Dance Research Society (東方藝術舞蹈研究社) in Yonghe, marking the beginning of her journey in dance education. 

In 1976, she began teaching exploratory dance to children, fostering creativity through play. Her teaching not only benefited children but also helped women navigate new paths for their bodies. 

In 1978, she presented Life and Dance (生活與舞蹈). However, whether it was her approach to teaching or her philosophy of making art a part of everyday life, there were few who resonated with her ideas in Taiwan at the time. 

Lin longed to make a breakthrough, so in 1983 she traveled to the United States to study. By the time she returned to Taiwan, she had realized there were countless ways to teach. Her students at community colleges ranged in age from 20-something to 60-something, and the focus of her classes was neither technique nor dancing for others. Instead, she emphasized physical and mental health, holding that true harmony between body and mind was the core of her teaching. 

In 1986, she founded the Ssu-tuan Lin Dance and Music Arts Center (林絲緞舞蹈音樂藝文中心) to promote integrated arts education for children. Centered around dance, but supplemented with literature, music, and visual arts, the center aimed to use different artistic forms to stimulate various parts of body and mind, ultimately sparking deeper thought. 

In the late 1980s, she continued to work with children with autism through integrated arts, gradually helping emotionally and physically closed-off children to open up. She also founded the Integrated Arts Education Association of Taipei, which developed a systematic and logical approach to physical education to empower children with disabilities. 

“Everyone is unique, and that’s something I’ve come to understand more deeply with each lesson,” says Ssu-tuan Lin. With a tilt of her head and a twist of her shoulder, a new strength emerges, and she continues to move forward.

Robin Erik Ruizendaal is from The Hague in the Netherlands and specialized in Sinology, with a focus on Asian puppetry. He has been promoting and creating puppetry in Taiwan for over 30 years and through his work as researcher, curator, and director has gained a deep understanding of the soul of the artform and its immense potential for development in Taiwan. 

In his youth, Ruizendaal dedicated himself to studying Chinese and never gave up. He immersed himself in multiple languages and challenged himself during his university years by studying Sinology and exploring Chinese language, culture, arts, philosophy, and geography. 

In 1986, Ruizendaal went to China as an exchange student. He says of that time, “I wanted to find an art form that connected closely with the everyday lives of ordinary people.” 

That’s when he discovered puppetry. A year later, he went to Xiamen for research and was invited to the Quanzhou International Puppetry Festival, where he decided to fully immerse himself in the field. 

In 1991, Ruizendaal visited Taiwan for the first time and became captivated by television glove puppetry. While puppetry in other Asian countries was often tied to religious ritual, in Taiwan alone it had evolved into a form of mass entertainment. But while Taiwanese people would proudly proclaim puppetry as part of their cultural heritage, in reality Ruizendaal says bluntly, “everyone cares about it, but they just don’t want to watch it.” 

Confronted with this reality, he began promoting puppetry. In 1997, Ruizendaal was invited by Ching-fu Lin, director of Taipei Concord Hospital (協和醫院), to manage a puppetry museum and collaborate with the Taiyuan Puppet Theatre Company and Taiyang Theatre Company to create modern puppetry works, thus sparking a series of reforms. 

His first play was Marco Polo, which blended elements of East and West, featuring both Italian and Taiwanese languages and merging Nanguan (southern musical style) and Beiguan (northern musical style) with operatic singing. This bold move led to over 200 performances worldwide, including an invitation to perform at the Royal Albert Hall in London. 

By combining popular puppetry with contemporary issues, Ruizendaal has kept puppetry alive, ensuring it continues to tell stories that evolve with the times. Taiwan is Gone (台灣不見了) was a project involving 21 indigenous communities in Eastern Taiwan, where people created their own puppets and performed for their families in their native languages. I Have a Name (我有名字) tells the story of children who suffered during World War II.

Looking toward the future, Ruizendaal, who has served as a judge for the National Creative Drama Competition (全國創意戲劇比賽), shares his excitement: “This is truly incredible. This is the world’s largest puppetry competition… This is a Taiwanese treasure!” 

For years, Ruizendaal has been polishing the window of puppetry, inviting the world to peer into a place that preserves the soul of culture.