Happy marriage of dance and Canto opera
Hong Kong Dance Company (HKDC) in collaboration with Utopia Cantonese Opera Workshop produced an experimental work, Waiting Heart — a tribute to Tong Tik-sang (1917-59), the legendary Cantonese opera playwright. The 90-minute piece, based on Tong’s classic opera, The Legend of the Purple Hairpin, premiered on August 31 at Hong Kong Cultural Centre’s Studio Theatre.
Waiting Heart combines two art forms — Chinese dance and Cantonese opera — on the same stage, which opens “unexplored possibilities of presentations”, according to Wilson Fung, chairman of HKDC.
The Legend of the Purple Hairpin premiered to acclaim at the Lee Theatre in 1957 when renowned Cantonese opera stars Yam Kim-fai and Bai Shet-sin performed in the Tang dynasty love story. In the five decades since then the story has seen many subsequent adaptations, across different art forms.
The original story ended in tragedy. Abandoned by her husband Li Yi, the heroine Huo Xiaoyu breaks into the mansion of the Grand Commandant in an attempt to get her beloved back. She dies. Li Yi then fails in his plan to seize power and pays a heavy price for his faithlessness and betrayal of love.
Tong gave the story a “happy ever after” ending to meet the demands of traditional viewers of Cantonese opera. In the HKDC adaptation of the story artistic director Yang Yuntao has made an audacious experiment. Tong’s script was turned into a more precise and less complicated story. Both Yang and his collaborator Rex Ng, creative director of Utopia Cantonese Opera Workshop, felt a shorter version was better suited to contemporary theater and to the viewing habits of today’s audiences, especially the younger generation. They also left the ending open to interpretation.
The lead pair, Huo Xiaoyu and Li Yi, is performed by dancers as well as Cantonese opera performers. In the last chapter, when Li Yi (played by Hong Hai) finally meets the dying Xiaoyu (played by Li Pui-yan), Li Han and Pan Lingjuan, principal dancers of HKDC, perform a marvelous duet on the upper circle of the theater, reminding the audience of the couple’s past romance. The simultaneous presence of two pairs of performers from different periods in the story adds to the tension, culminating in a mysterious ending.
Set designer Jan Wong too has broken fresh ground by blurring the boundary between viewers and performers. She divided the stage into four alleyways in which dancers, musicians and Cantonese opera singers perform and interact with each other. Stall seats are set back to back along these alleyways. Performers come and go, appearing from one end of the alleyway and disappearing past the other. The design seems inspired by life itself: you never know who you will meet along the way and what you will find on the journey.
Some of the arias in The Legend of the Purple Hairpin were borrowed from A Moonlit Night on the Spring River, a famous pipa solo piece in ancient China. Taiwan-born composer Lee Che-yi rearranged the melody and combined it with modern music elements. He wrote several cello pieces to describe the romance between Li Yi and Xiaoyu, creating a sorrowful atmosphere when Xiaoyu finds that her beloved husband has ruthlessly abandoned her in pursuit of fortune and fame. Lee’s work explores how different genres and styles of music can be remixed for contemporary Cantonese opera in a natural and harmonious manner.
Waiting Heart was a particularly challenging piece for Yang, Ng and their collaborators to pull off. Both Chinese dance and Canto opera are complex art forms, combining elements of music, dance, theatre and visual arts. In fusing dance, theater and Canto opera, the biggest challenge is in connecting the concepts in a way that highlights their combined strengths while at the same time staying true to the original art forms. The HKDC Waiting Heart does this with great aplomb.