Princess Changping and her husband Zhou Shixian appeared in three different dimensions: the ancient, the ancient-modern, and the modern epoch to unfold the eight scenes in the classical Princess Changping. So did the Golden Boy and Jade Girl, who act as ornamental transitions between the scene works...
After spending an evening with the Princess Changping, I began to question myself, 'Have I been holding onto some high expectation (for the collaboration between the Director Tang Shu-wing and Choreographer Xing Liang) and overwhelmed with anticipation prior to watching this performance, which explains why I am now feeling rather disappointed with their new creation?'
As with what the Director has described earlier, the new interpretation of Princess Changping will espouse the quintessence of 'concreteness' from drama and 'abstractness' from dance, ensuing in an innovative poetic finesse. Collectively, they adopted Chinese dance as the frame-work of the archetype, and complement it with the liberated spirit of modern dance, and he expressive visual influence of modern theatre, so as to inaugurate a revelation which looks after the tradition, and at the same time intermingling with new-fangled ideas.
Personally speaking, the dance failed to blend in as an integrated whole. I could visualize the efforts in every scene from a different perspective, by knowing it and feeling it. The framework and the composition supporting the re-interpretation is explicable. Yet there is something amiss…the poetics. Undeniably,Princess Changping itself is already a renowned personification, be it in Drama or Cantonese Opera versions. For the very same reason, the elegiac ingredient which begets Princess Changping at the outset, has somewhat been misplaced in this dance-drama revision.
Nevertheless, most of the scene works were beautifully created with atmospheric intentions. The repetitive pathways, the overlapping stratum of lynching lanterns, the single light source from the far back of the rear stage…when all's said and done, they satisfied the rituality of picturesque.
On another instance, the choice of music and other stimulus for accompaniment were adequately suitable for the theme of the dance. There was an element of surprise in Scene 4 whereby the original music from the Cantonese Opera Princess Changping (namely Snow Swallow and Goodbye My Love) was finely tuned in the background. However, towards the closing stages of the last Scene 8, it became just as expected for the Death of the Princess to be replayed, as a punctuation mark to fulfill the nostalgia.
On the whole, Princess Changping hit its accomplishment under a different light… to arouse the attention of the unsatisfied into another round of theoretical debates.
「看舞‧析舞‧論舞——舞蹈賞析及評論寫作計劃」由國際演藝評論家協會（香港分會）和香港舞蹈聯盟合辦及統籌。
本網站內一切內容之版權均屬國際演藝評論家協會（香港分會）及原作者所有，未經本會及/或原作者書面同意，不得轉載。