The German director Lukas Hemleb has something of a mixed record in Taiwan with his bold avant-garde takes on traditional performance arts. He played a major part in the success of Han Tang Yuefu’s (漢唐樂府) brilliantly conceptualized post-modern reworking of the The Tale of the Lo River Goddess (洛神賦) in 2006, as he also did in the failure of the massive and depressingly self-congratulatory orgy of Mackay — The Black Bearded Bible Man (黑鬚馬偕), a three-hour long mixture of Western and Chinese traditional opera, in 2008. With Feather (羽), he returns to a smaller canvas, moving from the National Theater (國家戲劇院) to the Experimental Theater (實驗劇場) and working primarily with nanguan (南管) virtuoso Wang Xinxin (王心心) to create a work that is described tantalizingly as a “nanguan contemporary opera.”
Nanguan, probably the most ancient Chinese musical form still currently practiced, is, superficially at least, about as archaic as it is possible to get. The form dates back around a thousand years and is most notable for its glacial pacing and complex musical structures. With The Tale of the Lo River Goddess, which made extensive use of the nanguan form, Hemleb created a richly ornamental production that fascinated with its rich costumes and formal sophistication and became an important stepping stone for nanguan into the cultural mainstream.
With Feather, he is playing a much bolder game. He has turned Wang into a dancer, as opposed to her usual role as principal instrumentalist, and matched her with first-generation Cloud Gate (雲門舞集) dancer Yeh Tai-chu (葉台竹) and experimental theater talent Li Yi-hsiu (李易修) on stage. The performance ranges across a variety of styles, morphing from what might be an intimate chamber concert into contemporary dance, with the austere formalism that characterizes nanguan woven through the theatrical canvas.
The production is based loosely on the myth of the cowherd and the weaver maid (牛郎織女), but the conceptual approach abjures simple storytelling for a more complex and suggestive expression of the age-old love story. Wang plays a woman who drifts through time from the distant past to the here and now, and Yeh serves as a channel of communication between the mortal and the divine, while Li serves as a bridal shop owner who tends to Wang’s time-bending romantic passions.
Speaking about the production last month, Wang said Hemleb had pushed her out of her comfort zone with this production, taking her away from the protective position behind a pipa (�?, which she often occupies in her own productions, and forcing her into a more dynamic engagement with the theater space.
The synergies of bringing together Wang, who has created a solid following in Taiwan for the severe discipline of nanguan, dancer Yeh, and experimental theater talent Li, has proven a success with tickets already sold out. Both Yeh and Li have studied nanguan, with Li describing himself as Wang’s student in nanguan. By integrating the alternative theater and contemporary dance scenes with Li’s and Yeh’s involvement in the work, Wang will be able to bring nanguan to a wider, and most importantly, younger audience, who given the chance may well discover that its formal beauty is not so alien after all.
The production is co-sponsored by the Maison de la Culture d’Amiens, will tour Europe next year and has its first overseas performance at the New Vision Arts Festival in Hong Kong in October.
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