Life and Leisure
Another first
By Chen Jie (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-11-26 07:59
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The NCPA will celebrate its third birthday by debuting the dance performance Marco Polo. Chen Jie reports
The National Center for the Performing Arts (NCPA) will celebrate its third anniversary in December. The country's largest theater produced a Peking Opera on its first anniversary, a Western opera on its second and is now collaborating with China Oriental Performing Arts Group (COPAG), the country's largest show production company, to create a dance for its third birthday, Marco Polo.
It wasn't hard for NCPA to settle on the company's artistic director, choreographer Chen Weiya, the veteran who assisted Zhang Yimou to direct the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008. But it wasn't so easy for Chen to choose a story and tell it through body language.
He had planned to create an original story about how a Beijing woman's destiny reflects the city's fate at the turn of the 19th century. But when he heard of composer Zhang Qianyi's opera about Marco Polo, he decided to do a dance performance based on the story of the Venetian merchant who traveled the Silk Road and stayed in China for some 24 years.
"When I invited Zhang to join the team to create the dance, he was composing an opera adapted from Marco Polo's travel experience in China," Chen says in the meeting room of his Oriental Performing Arts Company, in Beijing.
It was difficult to interview Chen as he has been spending most of his time in Guangzhou dealing with the opening and closing ceremonies of the Asiad.
"He described to me some scenes, such as how the merchants walk through the Gobi desert on the Silk Road, the gorgeous royal palace of Kublai Khan (1214-1294), how Marco Polo learned about and enjoyed Chinese people's lifestyle in the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) I immediately realized these were perfect scenes to dance to."
The choreographer could not help standing up from the sofa to explain these images through his gestures and movements, Chen says
"Also, it's an international story, which fits NCPA perfectly. Marco Polo is probably the most famous Westerner who traveled on the Silk Road. He reached further than any of his predecessors, beyond Mongolia to China, and even became a confidant of Kublai Khan.
"He traveled through China and returned to write up his experiences, which became the greatest travelogue. Therefore, we believe the dance based on his story will be easily appreciated by both Chinese and Western audiences," Chen says.
The NCPA and the COPAG have shown their ambition for the production by inviting La Scala's leading dancer Mick Zeni to perform in the title role.
"There's nothing better than having an Italian dancer dance as the Venetian merchant. This is a real East-meet-West production and we plan to tour Italy soon, which means some 600 years later Marco Polo returns to his home country," says Gu Xin, general manager of COPAG.
The dance will begin with a contemporary young Italian man's visit to an old library, opening Marco Polo's travelogue and going back in time. At the end, Marco Polo walks across the desert to leave China and the multi-media technology will make him disappear into a big book and finally the young Italian man will close the book.
"It's interesting to choreograph for a classic male ballet dancer and a female trained in traditional Chinese dance. They learned different routines. But like many other fields, fusion is the trend and we don't care what kind of dance you learned, as long as the body is moving," Chen says.
What challenged the choreographer was that when the initial excitement about some big scenes in his mind was over, he found he had to create dramas.
"It's hard to depict a travelogue through body language. A good dance must touch people emotionally, which means we need moving stories, vivid characters and some dramatic plots. But we could find little of this in the travelogue," Chen says.
After historical research and brainstorming with the playwright Zhao Daming and composer Zhang, they created a love story between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan's princess, against the background of the Mongol invasion of Europe.
The Mongol empire spreads westward and conquers state after state. Kublai Khan is proud of his power. The defeated country sends an ambassador to beg for peace and plead for Kublai Khan's princess to marry the king. Khan is hesitant to marry off his daughter to the defeated country but the princess, who is in love with Marco Polo, hates war and cannot bear to see the slaves and prisoners of the war. She stands up herself and accepts the marriage offer. Marco Polo sends off his lover to the country far away and finally leaves China.
"Thus an epic dance involving love and regret, war and peace comes out," Chen says, "What's more, the audience will follow Marco Polo as he travels throughout China. Through his eyes the audience will see both the bravery of the Mongols, the vast desert and grasslands in North China and the southern people's refined life in the land of milk and honey."
Dancer Yin Shuo will collaborate with Zeni to perform as the princess. The 23-year-old became known overnight after she performed the only solo dance, Silk Road, at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. She was the backup dancer to Liu Yan, but when Liu was injured at the last dress rehearsal, Yin took her chance.
In that two-minute solo, Yin's graceful dancing of the goddess with the long ribbons on the Silk Road impressed the world. But even before then, she had won many national awards and was acclaimed by those who knew her.
"It's the first time to work with a Western ballet dancer but so far we have worked pretty well and I have enjoyed it very much," Yin said after a few days rehearsal with Zeni.
"He is powerful and inspiring and makes me feel like he is the real Marco Polo. It's really an interesting project," she said.
(China Daily 11/26/2010 page20)