Young performers live their dream, on and offstage
Members of the China Disabled People’s Performing Arts Troupe dwell on talent not differences
Anyone who saw the China Disabled People’s Performing Arts Troupe in its 2012 local debut already understands that, apart from delivering a colourful evening of dance, music, song and more, the troupe serves as an inspirational reminder of what talented young artists can achieve despite obstacles that might be insurmountable for some.
The Beijing-based troupe returns to the GTA this week with a refreshed version of My
Dream, its celebrated, globally toured variety show.
To be a professional-level dancer demands incredible discipline and years of training. It also requires an acute sensitivity to music, which in most instances serves as a choreographic propellant. Imagine, then, the challenge of becoming a dancer if you are seriously hearing impaired. Yet this is what the troupe’s men and women have mastered, whether performing lyrical classical ballet, Chinese folk dance or moving to a Latin beat. But how do deaf dancers perform without hearing the music?
If the music follows a regular rhythmic pattern they internalize the beats, stamped out for them loudly on the studio floor during rehearsal.
In performance, they follow “conductors” placed strategically onstage whose gestures convey the music’s tempo, rhythm and phrasing.
As one such conductor explains: “I am their visual music.” Even so, watching My
Dream it’s easy to forget that most of these extraordinary young performers have never heard a note. The troupe also includes blind musicians and singers and, depending on the company roster from season to season, performers with a variety of physical and intellectual disabilities. The troupe’s members, however, don’t dwell on these differences. They’re focused on developing and perfecting their varied talents.
As with Toronto’s 44-year-old Famous People Players, the China Disabled People’s Performing Arts Troupe members are emphatically not looking for sympathy or expecting audiences to make special allowances. Quite the opposite; they are confident in and proud of what they do. Their primary concern is to present the best show they possibly can. Although the troupe’s My
Dream would be unthinkable without a performance of its precision-perfect Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva (Thousand Hands Dance), the program changes from year to year according to the talents of its members. It could be a Peking Opera excerpt, a physical comedy routine or a jazz number.
Says artistic director Tai Lihua: “This time there will be eight new items in the show that we’re presenting abroad for the first time.”
Tai joined the fledgling troupe as a teenage performer 28 years ago. It was originally launched in 1987 as an offshoot of the China Disabled Persons’ Federation by a former government official, Liu Xiaocheng. Liu had been deeply moved by witnessing a performance by a small group of artists with disabilities. He then made it his mission to reshape the public image of a group too often marginalized in Chinese society. Liu travelled the country recruiting promising talents and shaping them into a professional troupe.
Initially amateur and parttime, the troupe was soon touring internationally as a compelling United Nations advocate for the cause of people with disabilities. By 2002, the troupe was working full-time and, with a well-established repertoire and high level of training, became an independent, professional organization.
Today, the China Disabled People’s Performing Arts Troupe has grown to the point that it has been reorganized into two troupes. The one visiting Canada has an average age of 22, the junior troupe 18.
Liu died last year in his mid-70s, but his legacy is monumental and his presence within the company still very much felt.
“Mr. Liu devoted his life to people with disabilities,” says Tai. “He gave up a comfortable life and, on retirement, channelled his pension into the company. He cared for every performer’s growth like a grandfather. You can encapsulate Mr. Liu in three words; love, dedication and wisdom.”
Tai had already assumed dayto-day running of the company from Liu, but he moved into a modest apartment in the building that houses the troupe and maintained a benevolent watch over what for him had become family. Younger troupe members, who live in clean but somewhat spartan dorms at the troupe’s headquarters, attend academic classes at a nearby school for the disabled. They return to the company in the afternoon for classes and rehearsals. After a break for supper they’re back to work for more rehearsals or, for some of the deaf members, speech rehabilitation classes. Working and living together creates a special bond among the performers. They don’t compete. They support each other.
“In life, some things are given to us, some things are withheld over which we have no choice,” says Tai, “but we can always choose our outlook on life, look more on the positive side, and face life’s disappointments with a cheerful and grateful heart.”
The members of China Disabled People’s Performing Arts are vibrant proof that when you have a dream and the unswerving will to pursue it, there is little that can stop you.
My Dream is at Mississauga’s Livings Arts Centre, 4141 Living Arts Dr. Thursday. See livingartscentre.ca or call 905-306-6000. It’s at the Toronto Centre for the Arts, 5040 Yonge St., Nov. 10. See tocentre.com or call 1-855-985-2787.