After the China premiere at Guangzhou's Xinghai Concert Hall on Friday evening, Chinese Whispers, an original amalgam of contemporary music, ballet and film will tour Beijing and Shanghai for two shows, one at the Forbidden City Concert Hall tomorrow and the other in Shanghai on Saturday.
Featuring Australian dancer Jo White, Hou Honglan who is a principal soloist with the National Ballet of China, and Australian pianist Gabriella Smart, the show draws upon music by Chinese contemporary composers Huang Anlun, Jia Daqun, Qin Yi and Tan Dun as well as Tasmanian composer Constantine Koukias and Australian Carl Vine.
For more than a year, Shanghai-based Australian producer Barry Plews has been developing Creative Futures, a programme of cultural collaborations between artists from Australia and China.
More than 30 projects are involved, beginning small in an Adelaide suburban arts centre, but now including big companies and scheduled to finish in Beijing in 2008.
The premiere production Chinese Whispers, which made its debut in March in Australia, "is a cultural exchange to introduce the art and artists of Australia and China to audiences in both countries," said Plews, who has been involved in the annual Shanghai Arts Festival for a number of years.
It was Plews who persuaded Hou, a famous Chinese ballerina, to appear in Chinese Whispers.
"I'm always interested in doing different things, and this is an interesting project and quite a challenge for me as well," she said.
Hou has danced classical and contemporary roles, including the part of the first wife in Zhang Yimou's ballet version of his internationally acclaimed film Raise the Red Lantern, shown in London and Paris last year.
Chinese audiences will see a version a little different from that of those in Australia, as dancer Anastasia Humeniuk is pregnant and can no longer fly under aviation rules, and so her place has been taken by Jo White.
In the original version, the contrast between the two dancers was startling. Hou is tall, willowy and lissome, with glorious extension.
Her long, tapering arms cut through the air like rapiers and her legs seem to extend endlessly.
If Hou is an airy sprite, Humeniuk is the Earth mother.
The obviously pregnant dancer's movements were contemporary, raw and, by necessity, closer to the ground. Notwithstanding her condition, in the opening show in Australia, she displayed amazing agility and performed with seemingly effortless grace, a standing split.
But, Plews told China Daily White is a good choice for a slightly different interpretation of Chinese Whispers, although the pregnant Humeniuk was something special in the original.
"White will dance the same part as Humeniuk, with the same choreography by Amanda Phillips. She is as tall and soft like Hou and they make an impressive couple too, just different from Hou and Humeniuk," said the producer.
Phillips's choreography is wistful and dreamy.
Repeatedly, the dancers drift between the spotlight and the half-darkened edges of the stage, their shadows projected on the walls like spectral presences.
White gave an impressive performance in Guangzhou. She moved with precision and elegance, each step and gesture cleanly delineated.
Although only collaborating for a short time, she and Hou danced together naturally and with a definite chemistry between them.
They moved freely in their simple black costumes designed by Jason Dallwitz, with bare feet, sweeping arm movements and rippling undulations ascending from the feet to the hips, through their backs and along their arms.
In the midst of the dance is Phillips' engaging film "Where There's Only," which won Best Dance Film at the Australian Short Film Awards in 2000.
Filmed in the beautiful, but haunting space of the Tunnels at The Lion in North Adelaide, the film draws on ideas of history, memory and appreciation and is a work that ultimately explores and celebrates notions of diversity and co-existence.
The universal themes and ideas behind her film make it an ideal complement to the other musical and artistic elements that make up Chinese Whispers.
(China Daily April 19, 2005)
