Turning the horror of a massive earthquake into a world premiere Melbourne Festival piece

By Paul Ransom.

“The main impact is that your body just doesn’t forget,” explains Sara Brodie.

For the Christchurch born choreographer and creative force behind Fault Lines, (a tri-national collaboration between New Zealand, China and the Melbourne Festival), the earthquake experience is not just a news event. She had a production in season when her hometown was struck by the deadly 2011 quake. “Your nerve endings are all spring loaded,” she adds. “It’s a sensitivity; even to someone moving on the sofa.”

However, Fault Lines is bigger than Brodie’s own quake drama because at the centre of the work are the renowned Leshan Song & Dance Troupe from Sichuan Province in south west China, which was devastated in 2008 by an earthquake that killed 69,000 people and left whole towns in permanent ruin.

As an artist and fellow quake survivor, Brodie was clearly inspired by the opportunity to work with Leshan. “To go overseas and meet dancers from the other side of the earth who’d been through the same thing was quite an incredible journey,” she recalls. “It was really very humbling for me last November when I went to the epicentre of the quake to see that the Chinese have actually gated the town off, so that it’s now a memorial town; but one which was has completely fallen down.”

Brodie’s commission though, was not to make a documentary but to create a seventy minute dance work to premiere at this month’s Melbourne Festival. Whilst choreographers are used to weaving intense emotional themes into their moves, both the scale and particularity of the earthquake experience created unusual artistic and ethical hurdles.

“I was very aware not to dwell on the anguish, although it’s intrinsic to people’s experience. You’ve got to honour that experience and memory but at the same time it’s not about putting that on display,” Brodie points out. “Many of the dancers lost people very close to them, but the earthquake there was four years ago, so there is that distance of time. Maybe that makes it slightly easier to talk about and to delve into. Mind you, some of the images are just completely and utterly harrowing.”

One of the more obvious practical difficulties was working across language and cultural divides to create a coherent final vision that would satisfy both Chinese and Western aesthetics. As Brodie reveals, “One the biggest challenges is that you’re in the hands of your translator. A lot of the times you’re explaining something and wondering what’s getting lost in translation; but we did reach the stage after about three weeks where we didn’t really need too much translation.”

In addition, Brodie and her Chinese charges grew up in very different creative cultures. “I was surprised to learn that the company doesn’t do class every day like we do in the West; and also they really put you on a pedestal. Your word is law and when you ask for an opinion about how things went you really don’t get one, which is strange for me.”

Indeed, when the Kiwi choreographer arrived in Sichuan late last year and started developing the piece, she began the process in what for her was a fairly typical fashion. “Improvising was incredibly new to them,” she remembers. “Their previous choreographers had just said, ‘do it like this: five, six, seven, eight, here we go’. So, being asked to do exploratory work was really new, but also something they really relished.”

First founded in 1959, The Leshan Song & Dance Troupe has carved itself a reputation for its ‘ethnic Chinese’ style; perhaps more akin to folk than ballet. With a diverse membership base (in terms of age, training and experience), they represent a thread of Chinese cultural practise that few in the West will be familiar with. Having said that, the troupe has toured extensively and won a host of international awards; in fact Fault Lines will mark their fourth trip to Australia.

For all of the shared horror of Sichuan and Christchurch, Sara Brodie and Leshan have tried to elevate their work above the rubble. Rather than a sole focus on grief and terror, Fault Lines zooms in on some of the oddball humanity that such particular adversity evokes. Fellow quake survivors will doubtless note the ‘insider’ observations.

“There’s also quite a bit of humour in the piece,” Brodie surprisingly declares. “We’ve taken a slightly quirky look at the information that’s given out to people about what to do in an earthquake. When people are forced out of their usual spaces they start interacting differently.”

For members of the Leshan Song & Dance Troupe this meant being forced to sleep outside for five nights, despite Leshan city’s distance from the epicentre. “They described it almost as being like a street party,” Brodie notes with a grin.

With original music from composers Gareth Farr and Gao Ping, Fault Lines is a piece that picks through the debris to find ways of remembering and reconstructing. By bridging language and dance culture differences, it also proves that the rub of tectonic plates can sometimes be more creative than destructive.

By Renata Ogayar.

Opera Theatre, Sydney Opera House
June 14 2012

Opera Warriors, produced by Shanxi Huajin Dance Art Troupe and choreographed by Xing Shimiao, had a successful opening night at the Opera House last Thursday night, 14^th June.

The cast consisted of over sixty highly talented and extremely flexible dancers from China, including celebrated artists who danced at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics Games in 2008.

The story of Opera Warriors is set in northern China at the beginning of the 20^th Century. It is about the journey, life, loves, fears and death of three very talented Peking Opera protégés, and their challenges to bring pure beauty to the stage under the strict training of their theatrical master. The Peking Opera is well known for its artistry and distinctive performance styles. However, such perfection, derived from the Chinese traditions and extremely disciplined training methods, is only experienced by the selected few. After their intensive training, they successfully gain entry into a theatrical group and their lives are driven by destiny.

Act One opened with the introduction of grand sets, stage lights, orchestral music and various performers creating live photographs in the village of Xishun. A theatrical group commenced their daily training where the three protégés, brothers Wang, Smart Wu and Heidou, were introduced to the story.

The three talented dancers demonstrated their strength with highly technical jumps and tricks, all of which required extreme flexibility. At one point during this scene, there was a rope hanging from the ceiling. With one foot on the ground and the other looped through the rope in the air, one of the brothers began his technical training. He took his leg into an attitude forward, then to a rond de jambe to the side and continued backwards, landing in the splits with one leg still in the air, demonstrating his elastic-like flexibility.

Act Two followed with a choreographic section based on strength, balance and control.  Upstage left was a traditional Chinese theatre house with a balcony. A group of five ladies with traditional Chinese costumes and extremely high platform wedges entered, walking along the 10 centimetre wide rail of the balcony. The choreography demanded delicate footwork, balance, control and flexibility, whilst successfully holding a ponche. This was a challenging task for the dancers, and it showed with a few nervous wobbles. However, to everyone’s surprise, there was a reveal that shocked everyone. These ladies were actually men!!

Come Act Three, the theatre was crowded, full of noise and excitement, and the audience was enchanted by Smart Wu’s performance. Suddenly a gun was fired; chaos broke out and the scene erupted in sword fights and dramatic moves underpinned by expression and emotion.

Acts Four and Five continued with the clever use of props, more balancing acts and further surprises. At this point in the story, several years had passed and Heidou had a new life in the wilderness with only Yan-Er and monkeys for companions. Through enlightenment and new life experiences, he revolutionised the face of Chinese performing arts and became the famous ‘Monkey King’.

The highlight of the evening was the skill and agility the dancers all brought to the stage including the effortless landings of all their jumps. The talented performers were rewarded with a standing ovation.

Opera Warriors was a wonderful visual spectacular combined with intricate costumes, extravagant sets, dancing, lighting and music and was the perfect way to celebrate the closing of the Year of Chinese Culture in Australia.

State Theatre, Sydney    
June 24 2011

By Lynne Lancaster

From a touristy/ethnographic point of view alone this show is fascinating, giving us a glimpse of various Chinese dances we would normally never get the chance to see. At times eerie and mysterious, The Legend Of Shangri La is mostly bold, vibrant, noisy and colourful, with some hypnotic, powerful drumming in Act1 and lots of singing and folk dancing in lines by huge ensembles.

This show is the official opening production of ‘The Year of Chinese Culture in Australia’. Chinese superstar Yang Liping, the company’s artistic director, choreographer and principal dancer, was born in Yunan and wrote quite informatively in the bilingual programme about how she spent more than a year researching the folk dances and songs for the show.

The show opens with the rising of the sun and a creation legend, then takes us on a journey through various areas and climates of the province and on the way looks at some of the dances performed in various areas by different peoples of the province. We are taken from desert to snow in a stunning section called ‘ Pilgrimage’ that among other things features not only Tibetan Long Horns (unplayed) but some incredible Buddhist masks and costumes that are breathtaking. There is a ‘stomping dance’ where the dancers do exactly that in gender defined lines. For one dance we are solemnly informed in an English voice over that the dancers made the costumes themselves and it took a year to do so. The multicoloured, heavily embroidered costumes are superb as is the very effective lighting by Sun Tianwei.

In the ‘Tobacco Box Dance’ the dancers use boxes like castanets and become dragonflies, ants looking for food and other sculptural forms. In ‘Pilgrimage’ there is a wonderful section of rhythmic dance with long red ribbons /scarves. In other numbers the huge lines of colourfully exuberant dancers weave in and out, up and down or side to side, and split and form small groups and circles in huge waves of traditional folk dance movement, performed with precision and verve. At times parts are almost Priscilla Queen of the Desert like, at other times there are small almost break dancing solos or Michael Jackson like choreography. However, the stage is not at times quite big enough to hold the huge number of dancers in the various ensembles, with some of them spilling onto the side steps where necessary. This was quite awkward.

The drumming, especially in Act 1, is incredible. Hordes of boisterous young girls whip themselves into a ferment. There is a section for the young athletic men, acting wild and primitive with long hair and fabulous makeup, who use a giant sun-like disk shaped drum. There is an electrifying solo where the drum goes from a whisper to a tumultuous roar, then everything explodes in a frenzied orgy of energy. 

Yang Liping is featured in two dances. In the first half she performs a moon dance in silhouette, mermaid like with a long skirt emphasizing ‘The Feminine’. Choreographically it is full of rippling arms and at times you could see a Graham and possibly Ailey influence. She also spectacularly performs at the end of Act 2 with a ‘Spirit of the Peacock’ dance. Her almost impossibly articulated arms ripple, fly, whirl and become the head of a peacock. Ethereally beautiful, she has a proud, erect yet sinuously curved carriage of her body in this work. As in many romantic ‘white’ ballets (think Swan Lake, Giselle) she is later joined by an ostentation of other peacocks in stunning parade. There are some exciting, quite effective ultra-violet lighting effects here and a wonderful unexpected visual coup de theatre to close the show.

Overall, a fascinating glimpse of Chinese culture.