The Melbourne Festival carnival has rolled around for another year, and this year the programming focus seems to be on works of scale. American artist Taylor Mac's 24-hour extravaganza A 24-Decade History of Popular Music has been programmed, as has Chinese choreographer Yang Lingping's contemporary epic Under Siege, which I was lucky enough to see last night. Fusing contemporary dance with centuries-old Chinese artistic traditions such as Peking Opera, Under Siege was an undoubtedly impressive but not entirely satisfying spectacle, and a fascinating insight into artistic traditions almost entirely divorced from the Western hegemony that dominates the Australian stage.
The story comes from Chinese history, and recounts the power struggle following the collapse of the Qin dynasty that resulted in the establishment of the powerful and long-lasting Han dynasty. It's a well-known story in China and has been countlessly adapted for stage and screen. Indeed, it appears to have attained a mythic status as a foundational cultural narrative. It's a classic story of battle and betrayal - two competing powers, a conniving general who switches sides, a devoted concubine, an epic battle - as troubling as it is to compare everything to a Western frame of cultural reference, much in this narrative is decidedly Shakespearean. What I found most curious about this show then was that it was almost entirely divorced from the human implications of the story, and in a lot of ways operated in spite of the bodies on stage, not because of them.
That being said, there were a great many impressive things in this show. The design, by Tim Yip of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fame, is stunning. Hanging over the stage is an undulating canopy of scissors, points down, and an unsettling snipping and clinking is woven into the sound design. This canopy moves in surprising and often very beautiful ways, and lends versatility and the potential for intimacy to the immense State Theatre stage. The scissors were also a strong visual link to the narrative, which was signposted by exquisite paper cut-out characters created live on stage by Wang Yan, who sat serenely in a downstage corner in a nest of white paper. This in turn mirrored the white costumes of the two musicians, who were intermittently on the stage playing traditional instruments, and the white costume of the narrator, Peking Opera performer Guo Yi. This kind of slick dramaturgical synergy ran through the entire design of the show, and gave it a technically impressive feel. The paper cutting was a fascinating intervention into the idea of theatrical time, and underpinned the grand historical narrative with a meditative and detailed sense of the live creation of story. The lighting was extensive, and in a lot of places very beautiful indeed with wonderful use of hazing effects, but felt as through it was designed for the stage rather than the performers.
The performance itself drew from highly distinctive Chinese performance traditions, especially that of Peking Opera, which has a unique style of narration and delivery. Guo Yi was an impressive performer, and commanded the stage during his passages of narration. The narration and the paper cut-out titles preceded danced vignettes, which often ended in a blackout before the next narrative bloc. This way of structuring and communicating a story created a gulf between the different ways of telling - the physical communication of the dance felt like a different story to that being communicated through the narration, and this distance between modes of artistic creation resulted, I believe, in a detachment from the humanity of the story. The minutiae of bodily movement didn't seem to belong to the same universe as the grandly historical and often gnomic narration. The choreography was a fascinating mix of martial arts, contemporary dance, and Chinese movement traditions such as Tai Chi, and the physical prowess of the performers was undeniable. Interesting and surprising stage shapes were created throughout the performance, but the transmission of affect and emotion from the human bodies on stage to the human bodies in the audience just wasn't there.
There was, however, an exception. Playing devoted and doomed concubine Yu Ji, in the Peking Opera tradition of males taking on female roles, Hu Shenyuan's dancing was sublime. Nearly naked, the performative ambiguity of his gender was embraced, and the long lines, grace, and affective communication of his dancing was the high point of the show dramaturgically, emotionally, and physically. He was a magnetic presence on the stage, and the human heart of the show.
The visual climax of the show was the last fifteen minutes, in a vignette called 'Death and Remembrance', where an immense carpet of blood red feathers was pulled onto the stage and rolled through, thrown, and spun in a meditation on the casualties of war. Combined with lighting and some clever hazing, the stage became washed in a gauzy cloud of blood, and the thrown feathers made breathtaking airborne compositions. Visually, it was luscious and outrageous and utterly spectacular. Dramaturgically, it felt as though the show had perhaps not earned this climax, and the human tragedy of war was lost in the spectacle.
I am interested in the ways in which cultures tell and retell their foundational myths - to what extent to these myths become divorced from themselves and instead become vehicles for other things? This particular show felt like a vehicle for spectacle - for inventive and surprising design, for large-scale theatrical magic - but for spectacle in spite of a human story not because of it. Myths survive within cultures because they contain elements of human truth, and their retelling is a reiteration of a foundational humanity - shared flaws, desires, and triumphs. Without this foundational significance underpinning the narrative vehicle of myth, the spectacle of its retelling can feel curiously empty. Under Siege was undoubtedly impressive - it looked beautiful, and was made by an accomplished team of artists - but I walked out of it somewhat unsatisfied by a spectacular artwork made in spite of the living, breathing, feeling bodies on stage.