Day two in Hangzhou, we caught an evening show of Impression West Lake. It is, in fact, a very well documented experience according to Google… so I won’t go into too much detail about what it is and just stick to my impressions.
I was more or less enthralled for the entire performance. The director, who (i guess) was also responsible for the Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony celebration, made use of natural backdrops, color, sound, light and dance all to very good effect. It wasn’t perfect, but I must admit that the novelty value of people stepping and dancing “on water” almost never wore off and probably prevented me from noticing many potential flaws.
The drum piece was my favorite, and the storm one just after that. (They might have been part of the same movement.) I loved the innovation in using water, sound and light in synchronization with the music and dancing. (there are videos of both… just couldn’t help myself)
The dancing was toned down, but it was “good enough”, both in complexity and execution. There is only so much you can do when people are so small to the audience’s eye: really elaborate motions lose their effect at such a distance, really difficult acrobatics might be too risky on such an unconventional stage. The costume direction was thoughtfully done to make the dancers as visible as possible: big sleeves, primarily single-color robing.
If I had to complain about one thing, it would probably be the lack of focus on story. I don’t watch enough live theater to really judge, but I get the feeling that the unique staging provided a large enough distraction that the story and resulting choreography suffered. The performance was based on a very famous Chinese legend, Lady White Snake, which owes its origins to Hangzhou… so it’s an appropriate choice. And while there are many variations to the story, you would think they’d keep at least some of the details intact. Not so… they basically reduced the entire thing to four overly simplistic acts: boy meets girl, girl and boy fall in love (and get married), boy and girl are separated (for totally inexplicable reasons…), boy recalls their time together and mourns.
Mmmyup, that was it. Or at least as much as I could glean from it. And this is already knowing how the myth went before watching the performance. I do recognize that the lack of speaking capability might have been an intimidating factor in making the plot too complicated, but I think they were too interested in the stage setup to really explore all their options for bringing across the story, as a result.
Still, generally speaking, just about everything was too pretty to look at to complain. Even if I would have preferred a variation with a happ(ier) ending. Or at least some kind of resolution. >_>
Very lovely. Judicious use of technology to enhance the performance, rather than overpower it, and they didn’t forget to use traditional “low-tech” theater techniques to dazzle the audience. Hope to see more work like this in the future… it’s definitely one way in which simple video could never hope to compare.
Off to Fujian tomorrow, for my last two days in China. :x
