Listings
Martial Art in Dance in Shanghai Date: Jan 19-20 — 7:30 pm Venue: Shanghai International Dance Center
Price: 80-680 yuan Choreographer Zhao Liang will premiere his latest creation “Martial Art in Dance”, which involves kung fu, during the 19th Shanghai International Arts Festival. Four young contemporary dancers and three martial artists will put on an intense show of saber play, swordplay, cudgel play and tai chi at Shanghai International Dance Center. Zhao says “martial arts” and “dance” in Chinese are phonetically similar, with distinct presentations but the same root. With the theme of “intoxication, exaltation and simplification,” Zhao chose a simple stage setting of only black, gray and white for the work. Crossover music with elements such as minimalism, cello and Chinese pipa (Chinese lute) is used to portray the clash between contemporary and traditional features. Contact: 010-6655-0000 TR Warszawa: Two Swords in Beijing Date: Jan 20-21 — 7:30 pm Venue: Beijing Tianqiao Performing Arts Center
Price: 99-580 yuan Grzegorz Jarzyna’s Two Swords is the first premiere for the famous Polish stage director and founder of the TR Warszawa punk theater to be produced in China with an international group of actors from China, Poland and the United States. The script is based on a story by Lu Xun, one of the most important Chinese writers and essayists of the 1st half of the 20th century. Written in 1926, the story is a variation on the ancient Chinese myth of a sword-maker murdered on the orders of the king and of the swordmaker’s son who wants to avenge his father’s death. In this symbolic story, Xun asks about the price of exposing the truth and shows the kind of sacrifice struggle for justice requires. Grzegorz Jarzyna delves into Chinese mythology in search of values that have been forgotten in today’s world.
Contact: 400-610-3721 Theater I Am a Moon in Beijing Date: Jan 13-14 — 7:30 pm Venue: National Center for the Performing Arts
Price: 160-280 yuan I Am a Moon tells five heartwarming tales about the five protagonists’ growth, touching upon their relationships with others and with themselves, and upon the “trace of body.” The moon embedded with meteorite craters would signify a beautiful metaphor. When we were born, we had a near perfect body and pure soul, and all of us seemed to be as beautiful and pure as everyone else. However, as time went by, we grew up, leaving traces on us so relentlessly. Some traces came thrillingly and heart-wrenchingly, while others were branded into the skin without anybody knowing about it, some came from within ourselves, and some came from others. The traces are hard to eliminate, so we are unique in our own special way. We are just like a bright moon, which is embedded with meteorite craters that grew out of its impact.
Contact: 010-6655-0000 Pilobolus: Shadow Land in Shanghai Date: Jan 13 — 7:15 pm Venue: Shanghai Oriental Art Center Price: 180-680 yuan Shadowland combines multimedia, projected shadow play, and front-ofscreen choreography in a wild evening of storytelling that is uniquely Pilobolus. Pilobolus pioneered this new form of shadow theater in advertisements for Hyundai and at the 79th Annual Academy Awards where it performed, through shadow, iconic images of the films nominated for Best Picture. Shadowland is a natural evolution of Pilobolus’s groundbreaking experiments in shadow creation. Developed in 2009 by Pilobolus’s directors and dancers in collaboration with the lead writer for SpongeBob SquarePants, Steven Banks, and with music by American musician, producer, and film composer David Poe, Shadowland is a universal and intimately portrayed experience that is both intensely dramatic and comedic.
Contact: 021-5456-2471 Quorum Ballet: Rite of Spring in Shanghai Date: Jan 24 — 7:15 pm Venue: Shanghai Oriental Art Center Price: 180-680 yuan The work’s premiere on May 29, 1913, at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees in Paris, was scandalous. In addition to the outrageous costumes, unusual choreography and bizarre story of pagan sacrifice, Stravinsky’s musical innovations tested the patience of the audience which started to the off fullest. with excerpts Rite of Spring, of Swan ballet Lake dancers interpreted Carlos Pinillos by renowned and Filipa Castro Nacional from the do Portuguese Bailado, had Companhia guest ballet Teun Van dancers Roosmalen Maria Selestskaja from the Royal and Ballet of Flanders perform too. This was followed by a powerful performance by contemporary Quorum dancers in “A modern perspective” about complex relationships.
Contact: 021-5456-2471 Laputa: Castle in the Sky Concert in Beijing Date: Jan 19 — 7:30 pm Venue: Beijing Concert Hall Price: 100-320 yuan It’s not Disney on Ice, but this multimedia concert featuring songs from Studio Ghibli animated classics — including the eponymous Laputa: Castle in the Sky, as well as Kiki’s Delivery Service, My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke and the Oscar-winning Spirited Away — has a charm and appeal that fans of the Japanese animation studio won’t want to miss.
Contact: 021-5456-2471 China National Traditional Orchestra in Beijing Date: Jan 13 — 7:30 pm Venue: National Center for the Performing Arts
Price: 100-500 yuan As a national-level orchestra directly under the Ministry of Culture, China National Traditional Orchestra, founded in 1960 under the direction of former premier Zhou Enlai, is regarded as the standard-setter, model and benchmark of China’s folk music performance. The Orchestra, made up of folk orchestra, chorus and art creation center, boasts a group of musicians and sharp-sighted managers. Li Huanzhi (1919-2000), famous composer and former chairman of China Musicians’ Association, had served as its first president and now Xi Qiang, Chinese string instrument artist and musicologist, is at the wheel.
Contact: 010-6655-0000 The Producers in Shenzhen Date: Jan 18-21 — 7:30 pm Venue: Nanshan Culture & Sports Center Grand Theater
Price: 180-880 yuan Based on Mel Brooks’ much loved Academy Award-winning movie, The Producers is a hilarious musical comedy that has taken Broadway and the West End by storm, winning a recordbreaking 12 Tony Awards and 3 Olivier Awards. Impoverished by a string of flops, New York producer Max Bialystock recruits timid accountant Leo Bloom to help him pull off Broadway’s greatest scam. They aim to produce the worst show ever and run away with millions, but they soon learn that show business can kick you in the teeth.
Contact: 021-5456-2471 The Metropolitan Opera Opera Film La Sonnambula in Beijing Date: Jan 20 — 1:30 pm
Venue: National Center for the Performing Arts
Price: 60 yuan Just as a young woman is about to marry her sweetheart, she is discovered — by the entire village, to say nothing of her fiance — asleep in the bedroom of a stranger. It takes the young man two acts to figure out that sleepwalking is to blame, and everything ends happily. Natalie Dessay as Amina and Juan Diego Flórez as Elvino deliver bel canto magic and vocal fireworks in Mary Zimmerman’s 2009 production. The Tony Award-winning director transfers Bellini’s bucolic tale to a rehearsal room in contemporary New York, where an opera company rehearses La Sonnambula — and where the singers are truly in love with each other.
Contact: 010-6655-0000 A Coproduction of NCPA and Li Liuyi Studio King Lear in Beijing Date: Jan 20-28 — 7:30 pm Venue: National Center for the Performing Arts
Price: 180-680 yuan King Lear is NCPA’s third production of a Shakespearean play, after A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Hamlet, this time in cooperation with Li Liuyi’s Drama Estudio in Beijing. As a tribute to the master playwright, the NCPA has extended a special invitation to the script supervisor of the Royal Shakespeare Company to coach the actors, and selected Yang Shipeng’s rendering as the rehearsal script. German-born set designer, Michael Simon and Academy Award winner for Best Costume Design, Emi Wada combine talents to recreate the bard’s cast of characters and ruined palace. Additionally, the renowned theater actor, Pu Cunxin, gives a stark portrayal of Lear’s departure from the height of glory and lapse into vagrancy. Lear’s three daughters’ vastly different personalities are brought to life on stage by Yang Qi, Lu Fang, and Wan Qianhui, respectively.
Contact: 010-6655-0000 The Metropolitan Opera Film The Pearl Fishers in Beijing Date: Jan 21 — 7:30 pm Venue: National Center for the Performing Arts
Price: 60 yuan Bizet’s rarely heard opera returned to the Met for the first time in a century on New Year’s Eve 2015, in Penny Woolcock’s acclaimed new production. Star soprano Diana Damrau sings Leila, the virgin priestess at the center of the story. Matthew Polenzani and Mariusz Kwiecien are Nadir and Zurga, rivals for Leila’s love who have sworn to renounce her to protect their friendship — and who get to sing one of opera’s most celebrated duets, “Au fond du temple saint.” Nicolas Teste is the high priest Nourabad and Gianandrea Noseda conducts Bizet’s supremely romantic score.
Contact: 010-6655-0000 Phillipe Entremont Piano Recital in Beijing Date: Jan 21 — 7:30 pm
Venue: National Center for the Performing Arts
Price: 100-480 yuan Throughout his career, Phillipe Entremont has played and recorded with many legendary conductors including Leonard Bernstein, Eugene Ormandy, Seiji Ozawa, Pierre Boulez and Leopold Stokowski, among others. Additionally he has pursued a career as a conductor, and previously held the posts of Music Director of the New Orleans Philharmonic Orchestra, the Denver Symphony Orchestra, the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra and the Vienna Chamber Orchestra where he has been given the title of Lifetime Laureate Conductor. In 2015, in conjunction with the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris, he created the ENSM Chamber Orchestra.
Contact: 010-6655-0000 Mozart, L’Opera Rock in Shanghai Date: Jan 13-21 — 7:30 pm Venue: Shanghai Culture Center Price: 200-1,000 yuan Mozart, l’Opera Rock is a French musical about the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart from age 17, using both original pop-rock compositions as well as existing music composed by Mozart. With class Baroque-styled costume design and magnificent stage design, this show perfectly illustrates the incomparable talent of Mozart. The musical premiered at the Palais des Sports de Paris and caused a huge sensation.
Contact: 400-610-3721 NIGHT LIFE & ACTIVITIES Miracle: The Bellini Family and the Renaissance in Shanghai Date: Jan 13-23 — 10 am Venue: Shanghai Himalayas Museum Price: 10/80 yuan Curated by Dr Luigi Bellini, director of the Bellini Museum and the 21st-generation successor of the Bellini Family, and Shen Qibin, founding director and chairman of the board of the Shanghai Himalayas Museum, Miracle: the Bellini Family and the Renaissance will feature 459 masterpieces of art from the Renaissance onward, including paintings, sculptures, manuscripts, furniture, decorations, tapestries and tableware as well as crowns from noble families. Other than the presentation of artworks and treasures, the exhibition, by the use of new media and AR technologies, will “re-create” the Bellini Museum in Shanghai, offering audience a chance to vividly experience the culture and life scenes of the Florentine during the Renaissance.
Contact: 021-5456-2471 SPORTS Canadia n Women’s Hockey League — 2017/18 Season in Shenzhen Date: Feb 3 — March 4 — 7:30 pm Venue: Shenzhen Universiade Center Price: 128-888 yuan Founded in 2007, the Canadian Women’s Hockey League was created with two goals in mind — to create a place for the highest-level women’s hockey players to continue to compete and hone their skills and to create a future for the sport of women’s hockey. On June 5, 2017, the league revealed at the Hockey Hall of Fame that it would expand into China with the Kunlun Red Star WIH, a women’s team associated with the Kontinental Hockey League’s Kunlun Red Star men’s team. The league soon added a second Chinese team in the Vanke Rays.
Contact: 021-5456-2471