Many of us are too young to have lived in the 1950s and 60, the heyday of the E.Sha song and dance troupe, however, TELDAP’s film archives allow us to cross the barrier of time and space and pay a visit to the era of E.sha, one of the most famous troupes in Taiwan from 1950s to 1984. 

TELDAP newsletter has specially chosen 13 news films relating to dance and entertainment from 1953 to 1967 from the more than 5000 publicly available in the National Film Archives’ Vcenter. We heartly invite you to slowly savor them.

1953，Folk dance night
1955，Debbie Reynolds visits Taiwan to comfort the troops
1956，Huang Qing-shi entertaining the troops
1957，A performance by the Huang Qing-fang Song and Dance Troupe
1957，A ballet performance by Xu Qing-gao
1961，A performance by Toho Song and Dance Troupe
1961，Sleeping beauty, the musical
1962，A song and dance scene from th film “Wufeng”
1962，Li Shu-fen Song and Dance Troupe
1962，Bob Hope and Lana Turner performing for US troops in Taiwan
1963，A performance by Yunsha Music and Dance troupe (the predecessor of E.sha)
1966，Paris Song and Dance Ensemble performs in Taiwan (The year of the Cultural Revolution in China)
1967，Shochiku Kageki Dan from Japan performs in Taiwan

In these films we can see and feel how Taiwan was in the 1950s and 60s, the height of the Cold War. We can also realize that cultures from different sources mixed together on the island, developing art and mass culture. All the local and oversea sources formed Taiwan’s all-embracing international cultural character. The black and white images bring back happy memories of the past to us. We hope you enjoy it.