Raise the Red Lantern (Ballet), Zhang Yimou

Zhang Yimou is omnipresent these days. Other than making movies, TV commercials, he moves from opera (Turando in Forbidden city) to Olympic opening ceremony, and to ballet (Raise the red Lantern). Lately he has been busy staging a series of spectaculars using real locales in GuiLing, Lijiang, and West Lake, combining stage design, music and dancing in the backdrop of famous landscapes. His next project is opera again, in collaboration with Domingo and Tan Dun and under a comission from New York's Metropolitan Opera. Zhang’s talent certainly hit a jackpot with the audiences. His usage of colors and patterns is overwhelming, beautiful and crowd-pleasing. He borrows freely from many classic elements of Chinese aesthetics and fused a unique style that is easy to bank on. The critics of Zhang have been attacking him for lacking of substances, accusing him of running out of ideas. But Zhang soldiers on, and no one could predict what he would do next, although it is surely not anything too surprising.

The Chinese National Ballet is touring US with “Raise the Red Lantern” at this very moment and I got a chance to watch its Berkeley show with my friend Andrew. The only other ballet I ever watched from the same company was “Don Quixote”, back in 1997 when I was in Guangzhou. Chinese ballet inherited the entire Russian training system and produced a number of award-winning principal dancers. But while it could succeed in techniques, it often failed to deliver . After all, ballet is a very Western art form, and all these ballet classics are stories set in old Europe and how could you expect these Chinese dancers to truly interpret these foreign characters using body movements? There have been many attempts to choreograph ballet with contemporary Chinese themes. The most famous example is probably “The Red Women Bridget”, produced in the heyday of Culture Revolution by Mrs. Mao. Since ballet is a rather confined and rigorous form, I was curious how this one would work out, and how on earth Zhang Yimou could direct a ballet.

The film version of “Red the Red Lantern” is probably Zhang’s best film in his career. Based on SuTong’s original novel, it unfolded a complex social-political drama with clarity and elegance. The ballet, however, departed from the original plot significantly. It eliminated all the side characters, tightened up the story line and made the whole thing a classic melodrama that is emotionally charged but psychologically simplified. Rape, rebel, adultery, punishment, redemption and execution, each plot twist has a clear climax that can be danced. Here Zhang is at his best in creating visuals and tension-filled atmosphere using his usual tricks. Two most famous scenes, the raping scene and the death scene, stand out not because of the choreography but because of the stage effects such as shadow play and fluttering of fabrics and fake snows, which are clearly Zhang’s creation. The opera scenes and the colorful sleeve dance resemble what he did for Athen’s closing ceremony. 

But the choreographers (Wang Xinpeng and Wang Yuanyuan) apparently wanted to innovate on their own. They fused Chinese wushu and other traditional elements into the ballet’s form. The mahjong piece, danced by a group around mahjong tables, broke further away from the classic ballet and ventured into modern dance. The purists may get offended by all these fluffy stuff and wanted something more traditional, but for audiences who do not necessarily need to hold on to the old concept of ballet or appreciate it from old point of view, the performance is surely a powerful and dazzling experience, and for the national ballet company who is so eager to showcase a new Chinese art that is both contemporary and ancient, “Raise the Red Lantern” could not be a better choice to tour US. Whether it can stand the test of time and become a classic, only time can answer.