A romance between the east and west, the cheongsam fashion, the chic captivating choreography, the underlying jive and cha-cha-cha rhythms... every bit of the ballet Suzie Wong, is really Hong Kong.
Hong Kong Ballet will show its premiere gala of Suzie Wong on Friday at Sha Tin Town Hall. Just as Stephen Jefferies, the artistic director of Hong Kong Ballet, said, Suzie Wong, a culture-clash romance, is a perfect reflection of local characteristics of Hong Kong, where West meets East and various cultures are interwoven.
The ballet Suzie Wong, based on the novel "The world of Suzie Wong" by Richard Mason, tells about a bittersweet love story between a western artist Jack and a Chinese bar girl Suzie Wong with intriguing background. The novel was repeatedly adapted into plays in theaters on Broadway in New York and London. With the film version starring William Holden and Nancy Kwan in 1960, Suzie Wong created a fascination for Hong Kong to the world.
Having stayed on the post of the Artistic Director of Hong Kong Ballet for around 10 years and is about to leave this summer, Jefferies wished to do some creation really Hong Kong to commemorate his days in this city. Suzie Wong is the story.
"It's a simple love story very reminiscent of life in Hong Kong today with its diverse and multicultural society but so shockingly controversial for the 1960's era," he said. "Only in Hong Kong can we produce a ballet like this."
To evoke the nostalgia of the 1960s in Hong Kong, Jefferies has concentrated on the popular dances of the era, the cha cha and the jive. Other forms of dance like waltz, tango and ballet are also included in the show.
"I have greatly enjoyed working on the creation of the ballet, from the very beginning of research to the end. It's unique, not like anything else that we have done before. It is extremely Hong Kong," he said.
To Chris Babida, who takes the triple role of composition, conducting and music orchestration in the ballet, Suzie Wong is his first ballet music, so he felt excited and thrilled about the whole idea.
Born in Hong Kong, Babida was very familiar with the story of Suzie Wong in the 1960s. "The script itself with the leading male character and the lady character was enough to inspire me to write a piece of melody with both cultures, foreign and Chinese," he said.
When writing the main theme, he chose the Chinese melody for the chorus part, for he felt that had the strongest character in the script. Then followed by a foreign oriented verse in which he inspired himself imagining that he was in a musical show in London hearing great melodies of Andrew Lloyd Webber.
"I finished writing this theme which took no more than an hour, quite surprisingly," he said. "In this ballet, I combined oriental texture with lavish contemporary types of orchestration to match the feeling at that time. The Big Band sound was also very obvious during that era."
Sometimes called the "Godfather of Pop and Cross-over Music," Babida was satisfied with his maiden ballet music. "We finally summed up with a very colorful, variable and exciting music ranging from Latin to Jazz and some classic textures as well and so on," he said. "It's a magic, definitely interesting, and above all, really Hong Kong."
(Xinhua News Agency March 16, 2006)
