Just as the road — taken or not — figures large in Western literature, doorways play a prominent role
in traditional Chinese culture.
What lies within and beyond the
doors we pass everyday and those we don’t was the inspiration for Taiwanese-born, Austria-based ballet choreographer Allen Yu’s (余能盛) production for Chamber Ballet Taipei (台北室內芭蕾).
Last year Yu was feeling battered by his
self-imposed annual struggle to mount a
full-length ballet, and that was before Typhoon Morakot forced him to postpone the opening night in Taipei.
“When I came back last year I felt society and most of the people here were not so happy because of the economic problems ... I really thought a lot about doors ... if you think deeply, outside the door, inside the door, there can be happiness, sadness, war, divorce, reunions,” he said. “I also think about how many doors you pass every day. You get up, you go past the bathroom, you go past the closet, you go out of the house, to the car, to the elevator, go to work, to school and then go back home again. You can not get away from a door.”
Not surprisingly, this year’s production, which had its premiere in Tainan last weekend and opens tonight at the Metropolitan Hall, is called The Door (門).
The show is divided into two parts stylistically and musically. The first half, set to Italian composer Nino Rota’s La Strada suite, is more dance theater than straight ballet.
“When you hear the music you feel happy, sad. It’s so direct, it gave me lots of ideas,”
Yu said.
He took an old Chinese expression involving six doors and developed a story for each one. However, on stage there will be seven doorways, because, as he said: “In the beginning everyone has to go through the door of life.”
The stories range from the door to a job — which, in a nod to the World Cup, involves playing soccer — to a jail door (which is one you want to go out of) to a red-light door where “young girls are being sold by the mafia,” to the front door of an apartment building, where a watchman has worked for 30 years and has “seen so much, he decides to enter a Buddhist temple. He shaves his hair and sheds his clothes” to embark upon his new life, Yu said.
“Every scene is from the door’s perspective,” Yu said, adding: “The door is the turning point
of life.”
Part two switches from dance theater to
neoclassical ballet, while the music shifts to Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances.
“That’s the best music he wrote for us dancers,” Yu said.
“I have 12 doors on stage, different sizes, put together they are like a wall. The music is very serious and tense. I set up it up so it is totally [the] opposite of the first piece. I want to show the door that you cannot walk away from. We all walk into the wrong door [at some point] in our lives,” he said.
As usual with Yu’s work, several dancers from Europe take the leads in the production — Nadja Saidakova, from the Deutsch Oper Berlin; Richard Szabo and Nistor Laura from the Vienna State Ballet; and Daniel Cimpean, formerly of the Damstadt Staatstheater, who has danced in several of Yu’s productions in Taiwan. Another familiar face will be conducting the Taipei Symphony Orchestra — Dutch conductor Anthony Hermus, who was here two years ago for La Dame aux Camelias.
Yu said the Rachmaninoff requires 70 musicians, which means the orchestra pit at the Metropolitan is going to be very cramped.
Since this year’s theme is doorways and life choices, it seemed natural to ask Yu why he decided to do another show when he seemed so disillusioned last year. It’s not as if he doesn’t have enough to do with his main job as deputy ballet director and choreographer at the Graz Opera House.
“I talk with many, many people, dance professors, [sponsors]. They all said they would continue to support me ... if I decide not to do it, I would feel so sad because so many people have supported me for so long. I really thought a lot about it when I went back to Austria,” he said. “This year’s situation is much better, everything was set up by February.”
So Yu chose to walk through the doors to return to Taiwan for another production.
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