Christmas cheer can be an illusory thing in Taiwan. The sight of a tree decked out in bows and tinsel at a downtown department store fails to elicit Yuletide joy if you saw it there all summer long. Hearing Jingle Bells makes the average resident of Taiwan reach for their cellphone sooner than it makes them think of dashing through snow.
Still, for those of us who grew up celebrating Christmas, the traditional music of the holiday has a way of dusting off emotions we've collected since childhood. This weekend's production at the National Concert Hall, What Happened the Night Before Christmas? puts those emotions center stage in a show ideally suited for local audiences and their foreign friends.
Rather than a straightforward concert of Christmas classics, Taipei's New Philharmonic Orchestra and the Philharmonic Chorus have wisely chosen to tell the stories behind the music.
PHOTO COURTESY OF TAIPEI'S NEW PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA
Polar Express, Chris van Allsburg's 1985 children's book which Robert Zemeckis has brought to the screen this season, is the newest of these tales. It's the story of a boy who boards a magical train bound for the North Pole, where Santa Claus offers him any gift he wishes. He chooses a sleigh bell but loses it on the way home. When he awakens on Christmas the next morning, the bell is under his tree. The boy's mother believes the bell is worthless because it doesn't ring. What she doesn't know is that only those who believe can hear it.
Robert Kapilow composed music for the story, which the orchestra will perform under the baton of guest-conductor, John van Deursen.
Van Deursen has spent most of the past 17 years in Taiwan but now divides his time between conducting duties here and in his home country, Canada. In addition to his resume as a musician, he brings another unique qualification to this weekend's production; he is one of the few performers in a cast of some 100 with a childhood connection to the stories and music in the program. Despite this, he says his job is not to educate local audiences about the meaning of the holiday, but to let them experience it themselves.
"Over the past five or six years, Taiwanese have started developing their own thing around Christmas as a holiday that's about spending time with friends and family," he said. "I don't like to think of the program as teaching the audience about this music. It's more just sharing it."
The stories and music, he said, speak for themselves.
"Some Christmas music is just fun and doesn't necessarily have a lot of content. ? But Kapilow took the message seriously. Polar Express is about much more than fun, it has the spirit of love in it."
Su Hua-chien (徐華謙) will tell the story of the boy and his special bell as well as other, generations-old stories like T'was the Night Before Christmas, to an audience who may be hearing them for the first time.
Su has worn the boards of Taipei's better-known theaters, acting in a wide range of productions from Off Performance Workshop's Dancing Mermaid (
He'll be joined on stage by the Taipei Philharmonic Chorus, under the direction of Dirk DuHei (杜黑). DuHei has the distinction of being the first recipient of the Literature and Arts award, presented by the National Culture and Arts Foundation (國家文化藝術基金會).
Wubai Yuhsi (巫白玉璽) will sing baritone under DuHei's direction, and the Taipei Philharmonic Children's Chorus will chime in on a selection of Christmas carols.
The theatrical aspects of the evening will come under the direction of Lee Chien-chang (李建常), the 34-year-old playwright, director, performer and co-founder of Off Performance Workshop (外表演實驗團) who has been a driving force in Taiwan's experimental "little theater" movement. His major writing credits number close to a dozen and the shows he's directed have been among the most well-received of recent experimental theater productions.
"My family didn't really celebrate Christmas when I was growing up," he said. "But my mother would hang stockings for us and stuff small gifts into them on Christmas Eve.
It was this experience, Lee said, which has provided him with an emotional connection to the stories he's directed in this weekend's production.
"We didn't celebrate the meaning of Christmas, but I have the sprit of Santa Claus in my heart," he said. "I'm like the boy in Polar Express, I still hear the bell."
For your information:
WHO: The New Philharmonic Orchestra in conjunction with The Taipei Philharmonic Choir and the Taipei Philharmonic Children's Choir.
WHAT: What Happened the Night Before Christmas? (
WHEN: Tonight and Tomorrow, 7:30pm.
WHERE: The National Concert Hall.
TICKETS: NT$300 to NT$1,500; available at the door, by calling 02 3393-9888, or at http://www.artsticket.com.tw.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s