The successful 2013 Kuandu Arts Festival concluded with a grand ceremony, a 15-team parade around the neighborhood and an on-campus music performance featuring more than 300 freshmen on October 26.
The annual arts festival, marking its 20th anniversary since its first edition in 1993, has come to a point where its foundation has to reexamined, said TNUA President Prof. Yang Chyi-Wen while addressing the closing ceremony.
"Crossover," the theme of this year's festival, was meant to encourage artists to make cross-disciplinary explorations, accepting challenges, taking themselves beyond their limits, and breaking up boundaries.
He urged artists to help disseminate the power of art through more active social participation and wider connection with the domestic and international communities.
Prof. Yang noted that the Kuandu Arts Festival has always believed in arts being a form of social interaction. All of its activities – be they performing arts, film screenings, exhibitions, lectures, flea markets or parades – have always welcomed everyone from society.
The parade on the last day featured teams from different TNUA departments, and some from outside, including a group of drummers from an elementary school and a group of traditional Taiwanese music performers.
A few hundred paraders marched down the road from a temple nearby to TNUA, attracting large crowds of spectators on their way with their dancing, drumming, improvised acting and exotic costumes.
The parade was followed by a rendition of Pachelbel's "Canon" by TNUA's freshmen combining humming, xylophones, vibraphones and patting on their own bodies.