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Rite of Spring

 
Stephanie Green Review by Stephanie Green 3 Published: 25 Aug 2019 Festival Theatre Show Dates: 1 Jan 1970-24 Aug 2019

Luscious colours, hypnotic dance, the exotic (to westerners) Chinese/Tibetan interpretation of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring should make Yang Liping’s Peacock Contemporary Dance Company an extraordinary show. Devised in three parts, Stravinsky’s music book-ended with Tibetan music composed by He Xuntian, there is much to admire; gasp at and ponder but sadly the piece is too beautiful, almost saccharine and instead of the visceral dance experience Stravinsky’s music demands, it is anodyne.

Much to admire, gasp at and ponder but... too beautiful, almost saccharine.

As the audience enter, we see thirteen female performers already on stage sitting cross-legged meditating. Their heads adorned with a circle glinting with jewels and we can guess that these are deities come down to earth. They sit on a vast circular form of thousands of brick shapes joined together with others scattering the stage, and throughout the show a monk pieces them together like a jigsaw. What they signify is unclear.There are additional programme notes but so many it’s hard to know what’s relevant before the show.

There are wonderful visual effects, not least the vast golden bowl that dominates the set designed by Tim Yip (well-known in the west for his work for Akram Khan). We can guess that this is the heavenly sphere. The dancers sway and flutter their long finger nails. This arm and hand movement is a familiar trademark of Yang Liping who has been called the Peacock Princess in China since 1986 when she gained nationwide fame for her dance piece Spirit of the Peacock – a development of a folk dance from her own Bai culture in the Yunnan province of south-west China. The most stunning of these visual effects are the long green nails fluttering in ultraviolet light, symbolising the green shoots of spring. Lined up behind each other, their feet clamped in stirrups, the dancers then perform impressive back bends, swaying backwards and forwards.

The sacrificial dance of the virgins to Stravinsky attempts wild abandon but unfortunately pales in comparison with Pina Bausch’s visceral interpretation (revived in London earlier this year). In Liping’s version a shaggy-maned lion-head appears – the god which the chosen victim will be sacrificed to. A male dancer then slips out of the lion-head and simulates sex with a splay-legged dancer and they perform various acrobatic convolutions. Confusingly, there seem to be more than one girl about to be chosen and this goes on far too long. The final chosen one ends up stuck with pieces of the brick jig-saw. Baffling and clumsy, even if one did know or could guess the meaning.

The additional programme booklet explains that these bricks form thousands of six-word mantras which are incantations in Tibetan Buddhism, an obsession which must be lost to achieve enlightenment and reincarnation. This is part of the problem of this show. Too much needs explaining, instead of being imaginatively or dramatically felt by the audience. That said, the male ‘god’ who ravishes the girls is clear enough, he is ‘desire’ but when as Lion he bites off the head of the chosen victim with a great chomp the effect is bathos rather than frightening. The show ends on a brilliant image of the victim reincarnated: flying and then standing in the shining bowl as a stream of gold pieces pour down on her from above. And still plodding away, the monk trudges by with a basket loaded with brick pieces oblivious to the girl’s ecstasy, a superbly humourous touch, contrasting heaven and earth.

A mixed experience then as a dance performance. The beautifully illustrated booklet is something to treasure though, as an introduction to Tibetan Buddhist philosophy.

Amir Nisi

Stephanie Green

Stephanie Green has reviewed Theatre and Dance in Edinburgh since 2011 but previously travelled widely, mainly in Eastern Europe and Russia, writing about puppetry. She also studied shadow puppetry and sacred dance in Bali. In the 1970s, she trained as a puppeteer at the Little Angel, London and later worked at the alternative In the Heart of the Beast Mask and Puppet Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A. After training at the Place, the London School of Contemporary Dance, in her 20s she then gave up dancing until starting again in her 60s just for fun. She has recently danced in a community group with Barrowland Ballet (at the Edinburgh Fringe, 2013), Oceanallover and at the South Bank, London as part of the Festival of the Silver Age. She is also a novelist, playwright and poet. www.stephaniegreen.org.uk/

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The Blurb:

This exhilarating reinterpretation of The Rite of Spring draws on Tibetan concepts of the cycles of life and rebirth and the indivisible unity of humankind and the natural world. Taking inspiration from Chinese and Tibetan symbols of nature, Yang Liping creates a preface and a coda, framing Stravinsky’s totemic work as the second of three tableaux — Incantation, Sacrifice and Renewal.

A household name in her native country, Yang Liping has won huge international acclaim for her extravagant, breathtakingly visual dance works, blending Chinese aesthetics and modern expression in a distinctively personal movement language.

A provocative new perspective on Stravinsky’s revolutionary ballet of sacrifice and renewal, this is a radical Rite, whose Chosen One willingly gives herself for the good of the community, journeying from terror and doubt to knowledge, empowerment and reincarnation.

Bringing together an international creative team — including Oscar-winning designer Tim Yip — and 15 dancers, this is a visually ravishing work shot through with Eastern philosophy, startling colour and images of striking beauty and strangeness, all accompanying Yang Liping’s elegant, dreamlike movement. Parts I and III feature a new musical score from Chinese composer He Xuntian, influenced by traditional Tibetan music. Strikingly original, this is a Rite of Spring unlike any version you’ll have seen before.

Yang Liping Choreographer Tim Yip Designer Stravinsky The Rite of SpringHe Xuntian Music, Parts I & III

A co-production between Edinburgh International Festival, The Peacock Contemporary Dance Company, Sadler’s Wells London, China Shanghai International Arts Festival, Melbourne International Arts Festival, DYRS Group, Brisbane Festival, Stanford Live and Beijing Poly Theatre Management Co., Ltd.

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Tim YipInstagram

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