The Peony Pavilion
China Jinling Dance Company
January 5, 2012
David H. Koch Theater
New York, N.Y.
By Carol Pardo
Copyright ©2012 by Carol Pardo
Tang Xianzu’s epic opera "The Peony Pavilion,"a story of romance tested and triumphant, dates from 1598. When it was produced in full at Lincoln Center in 1999, the spectacle, with subplots and underlying political commentary, clocked in at twenty hours. This adaption, created in 2008 and shown for the first time outside China, runs a shade under two. China Jinling Dance Company, founded in 1955, specializes in "programs that encompass fashion, nationality and the special characteristics of South China," so it is not surprising that its version is less spectacular than pretty. Forget subtext and subplots; just sit back and enjoy the show.
Marketed as a descendant of "Romeo and Juliet" with the tag "A timeless story of forbidden love", this adaption owes more to the story Orpheus and Eurydice, revised, and ending happily. The setting is spring. Du Liniang a 16 year old girl is so drunk on the idea of love that not even poetry can quench her thirst. As she dozes in the peony pavilion, she encounters Liu Mengmei, a young student with a bright future. They fall into each other’s arms and make love. Du Liniang wakes to realize that it was all a dream. Love-sick, she succumbs to a broken heart, though not before painting a self-portrait on her death-bed. Liniang’s wandering soul catches sight of her lover as he finds her portrait at a market stall and purchases it. She reveals herself to him. They swear eternal love just as she is spirited off to the netherworld. But love conquers all (with help from Liu Mengmei’s academic credentials—the infernal judge determines that a well-educated man with a future must be in want of a wife). Du Liniang is restored to earth and life, and marries her lover.
The story lent itself to dance (though a bright future might cause some problems), though its telling bounced between East and West, sometimes uncomfortably, most noticeably in the score. The music began as a meeting of Western tonality with Chinese accents, like biting into a slice of freshly cut ginger, but deteriorated into sugar syrup reduced, all sweetness and sludge. The dancing also blended both points of view. The articulation of the feet, bent but stretching through the joint with the supple sensuousness of a cat in the sun, is mixed with quotes from the tradition of Chinese acrobats. But there is also a move straight out of "Arden Court" while the lovers’ pas de deux of recognition and fidelity uses the scroll portrait to connect the dancers. "La Bayadere is not far away—on the contrary. Whatever the sources, the choreography by a trio, Ying Zhiqi, Lu Ling and Wu Ning, all connected to the company, again lacks rhythmic variation, lacks spice. On the other hand, Du Liniang’s death scene began somewhere between a Feydeau farce and silent movie acting of the stiffest sort. Villagers bringing possible cures and art supplies heedlessly slammed the doors of the gate to her home. Her parents railed at the heavens and at each other as if semaphoring fate. But as the girl slipped away, all the coming and going became an expression of mounting panic and grief.
Similarly, Du Liniang’s need to be acknowleged by her lover propelled the second act. Desperation drives the plot, but the road to a happy conclusion lacked twists, hills or pot holes. Everything should have built to the scene in the netherworld where the heroine, tortured, holds fast to her love. This hell had all the menace of a round of bumper cars. Unspeakable crimes executed behind pennants elicited reactions once again straight out of silent movies. Women presumably chained to columns, seemed to be waiting for Vera Zorina in "Goldwyn Follies." Love needed to be threatened before it could be rewarded. Instead, love just waited it out, unperturbed.
Perhaps everyone put too much faith in their audience’s familiarity with the tale, or in the sets (by stage art designers Zhou Danlin and Yuan Ye). The opening image, somewhere between a modern painting of a peony and the design for a 50’s era headscarf, gave way to a film which grows from a drop of water falling into a pond to a scroll paining, with credits. Old met new and transported us to the world of "The Peony Pavilion." Equally beautiful, though static, was the evocation of the marketplace, all black and gold like a sage’s lacquer writing box. The costumes, light, flowing, colorful, were pleasant, but without the visual force of the sets.
Due to injury, the opening night performance was danced by the understudies, Han Bo as the student and Xu Xinyu as the romantic adolescent. His long limbs seemed to increase his height every time he extended them in space. But in the duets, which keep the dancers in close quarters (they have sex on a lily pad, a little above the stage, with no margin for error), he was often uncomfortable. She was focused and intense, never letting the plot line go slack, and confident, ready to carry the evening. But she could not provide the grit needed to create a pearl rather than just a pretty night out at the theater.
