BAM Affiliation Founder, choreographer, and artistic director of Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan, Lin Hwai-min studied Chinese opera movement in his native Taiwan, modern dance in New York, creative writing in Iowa, and classical court dance in Japan and Korea. An internationally renowned choreographer, Lin often draws from traditional Asian culture for inspiration to create works with innovative forms and contemporary relevance. He is a two-time winner of the National Award for Arts in Taiwan and holds honorary doctorates from five universities in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Among the international honors received by Lin are the John D. Rockefeller 3rd Award (New York), the Joyce Award (Chicago), the Ramon Magsaysay Award (considered the "Nobel Prize of Asia"), Best Choreographer honors at Lyon Biennial Festival, and the Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters from the France Ministry of Culture. In 2005, he was celebrated by Time as one of "Asia's Heroes" and in 2009 he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Movimentos Dance Prize, given every five years by the Movimentos Festival in Wolfsburg, Germany, in collaboration with the European television broadcasters ZDF and ARTE. Lin has been the subject of full-length television documentaries in Taiwan, Japan, and Hong Kong and, most recently, was featured in Discovery Channel's Portraits Taiwan: Lin Hwai-min, Opus Arte's Floating on the Ground, and ARTE/ZDF's Lin Hwai-min—Interface Between Worlds. Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan gave its most recent performance at BAM during the 2015 Next Wave Festival with Rice, a work Lin choreographed to mark the company’s 40th anniversary.