Tuesday night’s Sony Centre performance of Return on a Snowy Night by China’s Guangzhou Ballet will be a wonderful reunion for Toronto-based, Chinese-Canadian choreographer Xing Bang Fu and his old friend Zhang Dandan, artistic director of the Guangzhou company. In 1980 Xing and Zhang were friends and students in the Guangzhou ballet school but their paths diverged when Xing accepted a scholarship with the Washington Ballet and Zhang went off to Beijing to dance with the National Company.
Zhang founded the Guangzhou Ballet in 1994 and six years later she commissioned Xing to choreograph two short ballets for her company, The Yellow River and The Butterfly Lovers, both of which have become modern Chinese classics and are still danced regularly by the company. In fact, after performing in Toronto this week, the troupe flies to Vancouver where Butterfly Lovers is on the program.
Return on a Snowy Night is a contemporary work danced to music by Fang Ming: a tragic story of forbidden love from the 1940s, it’s a classical ballet but with a distinctly Chinese flavour and Xing’s own hallmark fluid movements. The ballet captured top honours from the Chinese Ministry of Culture in 2010 cementing its reputation as a contemporary cultural touchstone, hence the current tour of Canada.
Xing and his right hand man, associate director and assistant choreographer Simon Sylvain Lalonde, are clearly delighted to see the Guangzhou Ballet make it to this side of the Pacific after so many trips in the other direction during the ballet’s formation. When the show captured all the top prizes in China’s version of the Oscars for dance, Xing admits he was thrilled.
“I don’t believe in prizes, I don’t believe in competition,” he says, “but I worked so hard on this that I feel like I should get something.”
Xing’s art has evolved tremendously since leaving China as a youth. He has studied classical ballet, gymnastics and martial arts and he has incorporated jazz and tap into his work and now, Butoh, the mesmerizingly slow Japanese form has taken a firm grip on his imagination.
For the moment, however, ballet is the name of the game. This tour by Guangzhou Ballet has the imprimatur of officialdom and is billed as a Canada – China Cultural Exchange.
“I’m a Chinese Canadian seeing my work performed in Canada so my emotion is very high,” says Xing. “I have many, many emotions all at once. And I know when the dancers see me and Simon in the audience, they want to do their best for us. I think they’ll do a great job.”
In China, artistic process is very often the product of committee but Xing agreed to create Return on a Snowy Night only if he was granted full creative control. Yes, the show was tweaked and changed during its initial tour of the Chinese provinces before its grand debut but Xing’s choreography is so unique, and so . . . foreign to the Chinese, that they could meddle only so much before the ballet fell apart.
“They didn’t know where to start,” says Lalonde, who was summoned to China repeatedly during the try-out phase. “It’s a new way of moving, it’s classical ballet but with a new vocabulary of dance with Chinese influences. It was a different planet for them.”
And it will be a different planet for its Toronto audience on Tuesday night. Look for Xing down front, he’ll be the one beaming brighter than the dancers.
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On Sunday (October 16) from 4 – 7 pm there will be a free workshop and cultural exchange at the Chinese Cultural Centre of Greater Toronto (5183 Sheppard Avenue East) including a session conducted by choreographer Xing Bang Fu featuring the dancers from the Guangzhou Ballet. Anyone can participate, no previous dance experience required. Email info@chinafocusgroup.com for more information.
NOTE: LiveWithCulture has been given two free pairs of tickets to Return on a Snowy Night; just leave a comment on this post, being sure to include your email address in the form so we can notify you if you win.
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This looks amazing! Would LOVE to see this!
The Chinese culture and dance tradition goes back 10,000 years. I am excited that a well-respected and nationally-recognized troupe has visited Canada to perform.
I would love to win tickets for my parents to see this! Their Chinese and don’t partake in a lot of cultural events and Toronto has so many to offer, but I think they would love this!
Congradulations !!! I just showed the interview and the video about the play ”Return on a snowy night” to your Grand Dauther Angelique and she started dancing like a ballerina.