“The Feast of Han Xizai”
The Han Tang Yuefu Ensemble
The Joyce Theater
New York, NY
November 3, 2009
by Kathleen O’Connell
copyright © 2009 by Kathleen O’Connell
Taiwan’s Han Tang Yuefu Ensemble opened a weeklong run of its 2002 work “The Feast of Han Xizai” at the Joyce on Tuesday as part of Carnegie Hall’s citywide “Ancient Paths, Modern Voices” festival. “Feast” isn’t a restaging of a traditional Chinese opera; it’s a new work constructed from ancient Tang Dynasty materials, some of which are still part of a living tradition, some only recently recovered through scholarship.
The piece is an attempt to bring to life both a famous painting and the refined aesthetic of the culture that produced it. How well it does the latter is for the experts to decide, but the work’s unhurried, serene restraint and the gentle beauty of its music and movement were a welcome respite from a performance culture that currently seems hell bent on pushing everything it can to the limit and then some.
Artistic Director Chen Mei-o founded the ensemble in 1983 to research and champion the Nanguan style of music, which had been carried to Taiwan from the mainland by a wave of migration out of Fujian province in the 17th century. In 1995 she established the Liyuan Dance Studio, which allowed the ensemble to explore the style’s links with Liyuan musical theater. She and the ensemble’s Chief Dancer Hsiao Ho-wen choreographed “The Feast of Han Xizai” using instrumental music from Nanguan opera scores, songs combining Nanguan melodies with Tang poetry, and Liyuan theater’s gestures and steps.
The work takes as its starting point episodes depicted in The Night Revels of Han Xizai, an eleven-foot Tang Dynasty hand scroll dating from about 970 AD. Billed as an opera, it’s less a drama than a series of vignettes by bound together by the slenderest of narrative threads. Han Xizai, a cultured imperial official and bon vivant, muses on the fall of the Southern Tang dynasty and throws one last party before he disbands his household’s troupe of dancers and musicians. Six guests—including a writer, a scholar, and a monk—join with Han (Chen Shaw-chi), dancer Wang Wushan (Hsiao Ho-wen), Concubine Li (Chen Hsiao-wen), and their companions for an evening of music-making, dancing, flirting, and tea-drinking. Thanks to its consistent tone, nice touches of dramatic detail, and the performers’ ability to suggest that their characters were members of a real community, “Feast” felt like a coherent piece of theater rather than a grab-bag of Liyuan dance’s greatest hits.
Even at their most boisterous the music and dancing were lyrical and sweet–tempered. Gliding across the stage with a gently rocking sway, Hsiao Ho-wen and her four compatriots spun out a delicate filigree of stylized hand gestures, pausing to accent the music with a tilt of the head or a subtle shift of axis into a gently curving pose.
The men’s movements were bigger, bolder, and more angular—there were even a few moments of virtuosic display—but they too were characterized by balance and composure. The program notes suggest that the Liyuan style cross-pollinated with the contemporaneous puppet theater. The rocking move-pause-move-pause rhythm of the dancers’ steps and gestures; the harmonious but independent movement of the head, torso, and limbs; and the finishing “click” of a hand or foot as it reached the end of its trajectory did recall string puppets.
There was a judicious balance of solo and ensemble work, the latter often built around props. One delightful ensemble for five couples had them play small percussion instruments in carefully-timed, split-second partnership while they danced. In another, the women danced while playing clappers made out of two short slats of wood held in each hand; when the rhythm accelerated to a bravura trill, it sounded like the song of insects on a summer night. All of the dancers were engaging, but Hsiao Ho-wen (formerly of Taiwan’s Cloud Gate company) was especially so. Her expressive dancing made Wang Wushan into a real and moving character; she was riveting merely sitting on the floor and nodding along graciously while the musicians played.
The always intriguing music was more than just a background for dancing; sometimes it took center stage. About midway through the work, Chen Hsiao-wen emerged with a pipa (a lute-like instrument); while she played and sang a plaintively beautiful song, the rest of the cast sat and listened, joining in to sing along with the refrain.
Yip Kam Tim’s stage setting was simple but beautiful: a few painted, golden-hued silk screens; softly glowing lanterns on tall stands; low tables set with elegant drinking cups and serving vessels; some carved benches; a chair. Austin Wang’s lighting bathed the scene in an elegiac, candle-lit glow. Five musicians sat upstage, sometimes visible, sometimes partially obscured by one of the translucent screens. The dancers and musicians wore long, softly flowing silk robes in rich but muted colors, also designed by Yip.
The Han Tang Yuefu Ensemble regularly presents its work at art festivals throughout Asia and Europe. It last visited New York in 2003 for the Lincoln Center Out of Doors festival. Let’s hope it won’t be another six years before they return.
copyright © 2009 by Kathleen O’Connell
Photos: Lium Chen-hsiang
