Reinterpreting Chinese tradition

Beijing Dance/LDTX reinterprets traditional Chinese operas in One Table N Chairs Jonah Kessel

"If you have too much of a culture, then you have a pressure," said Willy Tsao, choreographer and founder of Beijing Dance/LDTX, an acronym for "Lei Dong Tian Xia," meaning "Thunder Rumbles Under Heaven" in Chinese.

Tsao was one of three choregraphers who created the innovative One Table N Chairs, a modern dance deconstruction of traditional Chinese operas, that was recently performed in Beijing's Haidian Theater. It was the second time the piece had been performed in Beijing since 2000, when the audience reception was particularly horrible, Tsao said.

"People were not understanding why we would do this to our 5,000-year-old culture," Tsao said of the piece he choreographed with Li Hanzhong and Ma Bo nearly a decade ago. "In China, all the works carry a strong, noble message. People are used to this kind of storytelling. They expected it, but did not get it."

"It's like Swan Lake," Tsao said. "They hear the music and because they recognize it immediately, they want to see the steps and the swan."

While Tsao admits audiences today are much more open to reinterpretations of its venerable operas, it is still hard for Chinese audiences to disassociate these iconic songs and images with the original, and furthermore to accept the abstract.

But Tsao feels that abstraction is nothing new to Chinese art forms. "In my interpretation," said Tsao, "Chinese culture is deeply abstract: the calligraphy, even the operas. In the past 50 years this has really changed. These days they want it all in the first three minutes. They don't have the patience to think, to feel, to get into the atmosphere."

Willy Tsao is unarguably the father of modern dance in China. In 1992, Tsao moved to Guangzhou from Hong Kong to found the Guangdong Modern Dance Company, the mainland's very first professional modern dance company. He then went on to found Beijing Dance/LDTX in Beijing in 2005. In June 2009, founded LDTX II and most, if not all modern dancers and choreographers in China today have either studied under him, or studied under someone who has.

As Tsao tells it, his passion for modern dance was sparked as a youth. "I saw my first modern dance performance in Hong Kong. It was by the Louis Falco Company. I saw that and I really felt something. I felt alive ... And when I came back to Hong Kong for my MBA, I decided to make it into my career."

In One Table N Chairs, Tsao and his collaborators use a single table and two chairs in their piece as a direct reference to the only furniture seen onstage during a Chinese opera. It is through these three pieces of furniture that the dancers convey fragments of narrative.

The table becomes the home, the marriage bed, the grave; the chairs, of unequal heights, convey power struggles and in a subsequent piece, a heavenly throne. While the incorporation of furniture into choreography is nothing new to modern dance, it is highly unconventional for Chinese opera and in the case of One Table N Chairs, marvelously rendered.

Their austere and metallic colors, both of the furniture and the costumes, are intentional. According to Tsao, "We did it to remove everything for what we think of as 'Chineseness.' In Chinese opera, the table and chairs are wooden, the costumes and the makeup really ornate."

"With the movement we said 'Okay, take a traditional movement and then leave it.' Music for me, is very jazzy, sexy, traditional follows certain rules and routines. The body is very reserved. My idea was to have the dancers actually do what the music and the lyrics suggest."

Beijing Dance/LDTX will next month perform Walk of Life, choreographed by Ma Shouze.