At the Opera House, dozens of performers sweep across the stage in richly colored costumes, telling stories through movement and music. At Symphony Hall, lithe acrobats do everything from multiple plate-spinning to extreme body balancing. Boston stages will be filled with examples of Chinese art forms thousands of years old when the Chinese New Year Spectacular and the Golden Dragon Acrobats perform this weekend. Organizers of the family-oriented events say these are not nostalgic shows, but opportunities to take a new look at extraordinary elements of Chinese culture.
"It's really a fusion of old and new," says Bill Fegan, manager of the Golden Dragon Acrobats, who perform Sunday at Symphony Hall, presented by
Fegan says director Danny Chang travels to acrobatic schools throughout China to discover and develop unique acts. "Each major city has a school with anywhere between 80 and 100 students," Fegan says. "Danny is able to select the most interesting performers and acts so we have a wide range of talent that covers both traditional and new approaches to acrobatics."
Vina Lee, choreographer and principal dancer in the Chinese New Year Spectacular, which plays at the Opera House through tomorrow, says her show gives audiences tastes of many different aspects of China's 5,000-year history. "It's like a variety show," she says, "with all kinds of music and dance."
Lee, who trained as a dancer in China before immigrating to Australia in 1990, says she and her collaborators spent most of 2003 trying out different dances and music before coming up with the combination that the New Year Spectacular has been touring with since 2004 and that audiences will see at the Opera House.
"We discovered the costumes and the animated backdrops orient the audience and help us move from one story or dance sequence to the next," says Lee. "All of the textures onstage, especially color, are important."
The stories included in the show reflect universal themes, Lee says. "Chinese people believed culture was a gift from heaven, and so the legends had a moral or a lesson to teach," Lee says. "An abstract idea like loyalty is not just a word, he is a character, Yue Fei, that people could identify with. He has a personality and challenges to overcome that tell us how important the quality of loyalty is, and this is something we can act out in one sequence. The Moon Festival is another event that may be familiar to many Asian people, but through dance we can explore the ideas of romance and selfishness that are at the heart of the legend of the Lady of the Moon."
Lee, who graduated from the Beijing Academy of Dance and won the Guangzhou Region Professional Dance Competition for her performance in Chinese classical and ethnic dance styles, says that it's important to mix contemporary experiences with traditional styles of storytelling. This contemporary approach, she says, is most obvious in the New Year Spectacular's music. "We blend modern Western instruments with traditional Chinese ones, so that the melody is Chinese but the music behind it is Western," she says. "It's wonderful to hear the familiar and the not-so familiar sounds work together."
Although the Spectacular will be in Boston a few weeks before Chinese New Year, Lee says, "I hope it inspires people to think about beauty and goodness, ideals that are important all year round."
The Golden Dragon Acrobats are at Symphony Hall Sunday. Tickets: $37-$58. 617-482-6661, celebrityseries.org. The Chinese New Year Spectacular is at the Opera House today and tomorrow. Tickets: $38-$120. 800-954-4604, ticket.ntdtv.com/boston.
Evenings of 'Jewels'
Tonight and tomorrow night, Tony award-winning actress Blair Brown ("Copenhagen"), Mark Blum ("The Cherry Orchard" at the Huntington Theatre Company) and Mia Barron ("The Rivals" at the Huntington) will perform selected readings as part of "Baroque Jewels," a Handel and Haydn Society's performance of instrumental and vocal works by Purcell, Handel, and Blow. Philip Pickett, founding music director of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre and the New London Consort, will conduct; Huntington artistic director Nicholas Martin will direct the actors, and soloists Nathalie Paulin and Jason Grant will sing.
At Jordan Hall. Tickets: $34-$67. 617-266-3605, handeland haydn.org.
Notes
The Providence Black Repertory Theatre in Rhode Island was forced to close for two weeks after part of its ceiling collapsed in its café. Tonight the company will hold a reopening celebration starting at 5 p.m. with impromptu theater, African drumming, poetry, and hip-hop performances. Suggested donation is $15. Patrons can also donate to the "Save the Ceiling Fund." 401-351-0353 x102, blackrep.org. . . . Brendan McNabb, who just finished performances in SpeakEasy Stage Company's "The Mystery of Edwin Drood," has been filling in for an ailing Paul Farwell in the Lyric Stage Company's "Adrift in Macao." McNabb went on Sunday after the theater canceled Friday and Saturday's performances.
