Slava’s Snow Show met its promise of dazzling spectacles and clowning humor at the National Theater in Taipei, performing on Thursday night for a nearly full house.
Russian Slava Polunin and his troupe of six clowns were funny, mischievous and heart-warming. They displayed impeccable timing in all of their routines, whether it was in choreographed movement or a silly gag. But even more impressive was the flow and pacing of the overall show — each skit shifted subtly in tone, from the surreal to the humorous, and back again, which kept the audience engaged throughout.
During intermission the clowns remained on stage “to play.” At first they observed the audience quietly, arms folded. Then, one by one, the clowns climbed off stage onto the shoulders of various members of the audience; they looked like young children climbing down a tree. The audience gathered around the clowns, only to be surprised by an ambush. The clowns suddenly sprayed water at the audience while the Peter Gunn Theme started to play. The children in the audience laughed gleefully, while some well-prepared adults put up their umbrellas.
The second act began with another series of gags, which eventually led to a touching skit where Polunin’s coat comes to life. The two formed a friendship, with Polunin dancing with the coat in a brilliantly performed miming routine. Then they parted ways, leaving the audience in silence. The mood of the stage grew desolate and lonely, and the sound of a howling wind in the distance grew louder, leading to the show’s finale: an impressive “snow blizzard” made of paper confetti that blew throughout the entire theater.
The show hit a perfect balance in mixing simplicity and grandeur. The beautiful stage props and effects always served the skits, and never distracted from what the performers were doing.
Although many attend this long-running show knowing what to expect, the real fun and joy is in how Polunin and his clowns lead us through their world.
Meanwhile, Taiwan’s two major art forms got a good airing last week with the Taiwanese Opera Collective Performances (台北市歌子戲觀摩匯演), a series of 13 gezai operas at Taipei’s Mengjia Park (艋舺公園) and the Taipei International Puppetry Festival (第一屆大台北國際偶戲節), which had two days of performances at the Danshui Taipei Metro Station on Friday and Saturday.
Both of these free outdoor performances were aimed at sparking interest in traditional local art forms, and it was sad to see such relatively small audiences for the high-quality acts that these festivals brought together.
At the performance last Sunday by the Formosa-Zephyr Opera Troupe (臺灣春風歌劇團), the sultry evening did not keep away local residents from the park, located in front of Taipei’s Longshan Temple (艋舺公園) and a popular evening gathering place — but there was a disappointing lack of people obviously from other parts of town there to watch the show. The opera was well-staged and visibility good, and the grounds could clearly have accommodated many more. There was also quite a lot of interest in watching the what was going on back stage, as the tent flaps had been raised so that puppeteers preparing to perform could catch a little of the breeze.
The gezai performances will continue until July 20.
The crowds at the Danshui Metro Station to watch the puppets were also disappointingly small, though performances by Jean-Luc Penso of the Theatre du Petit Miroir (法國小宛然) and Margaret Moody of the Galapagos Puppet Theater (美國如宛然), generated greater interest than performances by local groups held earlier in the day, despite the superior staging and virtuosity of the latter.
On Saturday night, thousands of people braved the heat, humidity and rain-slicked grounds of the National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall plaza to see a free performance by Cloud Gate 2 (雲門2). This reviewer and Israeli Economic and Cultural Representative Raphael Gamzou, who was standing nearby, estimated the crowd at well over 10,000, but Cloud Gate Dance Theatre (雲門舞集) staff said as many as 40,000 people watched some or all of the performance.
Choreographer Wu Kuo-chu’s (伍國柱) Oculus (斷章) is an intense piece, and there was a risk that its feeling might be lost in the vastness of an outdoor performance. But while the special visual effects — the video projections of clouds and sky — at the back of the stage were almost invisible if you were watching the two big screens on either side of the stage, the emotions in Wu’s work shone through. Wu’s choreography and choice of score combine to plumb the depths of both anguish and joy without edging into schmaltz. The troupe performed admirably overall, but Yang Ling-kai’s (楊淩凱) solo toward the end of the piece was a heart-wrenching wonder.
Out of concern perhaps for the hundreds of very young children in the crowd, or maybe for legal reasons, the women wore flesh-colored tops instead of going bare-chested in the first part of the piece.
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