Blending a variety of Asian traditional arts, “Spiral of Life” explores memories before birth and the afterlife. In the spiral of life, do you remember what you forgot? Do you believe you can retain memories when your life ends? Which memory would you keep?

“While watching my daughter grow during the past two years, she reminded me of some forgotten memories I once experienced,” said Hoi Chiu. “These kinds of feelings are challenging to express in words, so I’ve chosen to use sand painting, movement, dance, martial arts, video and masks to share my thoughts about life and death. The original music and live singing will take you to a magical place between worlds.”

The play is based on three engravings by the acclaimed German artist Albrecht Dürer, entitled “Melencolia I”, “Knight, Death and the Devil” and “St. Jerome in His Study”. The engravings act as a key to explore historical, philosophic and religious issues. Different incidents are woven together, sometimes in a derelict chapel in the middle of an English wood, sometimes in the lovely German city of Nuremberg. The story tells of a tragedy in Nuremberg before Germany was condemned for the Nazi sins of World War II. Here, in a lovely city built on the Pegnitz River, Dürer made his masterworks. Here the arguments of Luther’s reformation raged. Here the Nazi party held its rallies, here the Allied bombers dropped their explosives and incendiaries, and here, in a ruined city, the trials were conducted after the war. Should the innocents also bear the consequences of war?