East & West & Red All Over

Zhang Yimou is among the first generation of filmmakers to work under the restrictive eye of the People’s Republic of China; he is also among the first to have his movies distributed abroad, where they have gained international acclaim. His “Raise the Red Lantern” (1991), which depicted the concubinage of a university student to a feudal lord, was nominated for an Academy Award for best foreign-language film. Mr. Zhang’s adaptation of the movie to the stage, performed by the National Ballet of China, made its New York City premiere on Tuesday as part of the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.Mr. Zhang’s eye for composition and mastery of movement – his other films include the martial-arts epics “Hero” and “House of Flying Daggers”- make him an optimal candidate for the unlikely crossover from the big screen to the dance-theater stage. His cinematic understanding of scene development lends a brisk clarity to the ballet’s action and establishes dramatic tension between the characters. His artful direction and lighting design prove that Mr. Zhang can do just about anything he wants and it will be visually brilliant. In fact, “Raise the Red Lantern” illuminates the sore need for such talented “directors” in other story ballets.The cinematic scope of the production is obvious from the opening prologue, which replicates a mood-setting credit sequence. A corps of shadowy ballerinas crisscrosses on pointe through the labyrinthine glass corridors. Each holds red lanterns that glow like fireflies as they swarm about to Chen Qigang’s boding atmospheric score, which unites Western and Eastern instruments. Reed pipes and a string orchestra create a sound that is instantly recognizable as movie music; cymbals and gongs reverberate above a low hum of violins, interspersed with the distant warble of a female voice.Not surprisingly, the libretto replaces the film’s political allegory with a saccharine (and safe) tale of forbidden love between the concubine and her former lover, a Peking opera actor. We are first introduced to the heroine, played by Zhu Yan, in a nostalgic solo of longing extensions and heartsick contractions. As she remembers her lover (Sun Jie), he appears behind her in full operatic regalia and casts a benevolent influence, lifting up her arms without touching them. When her dream vanishes, four strangers approach in ambush, each tilting and shifting a wooden panel that slowly entraps her inside a bridal palanquin.As the concubine tries to escape from the clutches of her new master (Huang Zhen), she finds herself bound by a long red bolt of fabric. They disappear behind a scrim until only their silhouettes are visible in a phantasmagoric display reminiscent of traditional Chinese shadow puppetry. The bolt of fabric becomes a billowing lake of satin that engulfs them both. When she slowly peeks out from underneath the bedsheets, as it were, she resembles a chrysalis, born again into her new life.The choreography, by Wang Xinpeng and Wang Yuanyuan, is crisp and functional, abandoning academic steps for modern combinations that portray a character’s emotions (reading a bit like a primer for Anthony Tudor’s more chilling and evocative expressionism). In particular, we can see the contentious relationship between the master’s wife and his first concubine. Identified by the color of their high-collared cheongsams, they partner each other with bold effrontery and resistance, culminating in a hair-pulling pas de deux.Although Mr. Zhang relies increasingly on special effects in his movies – the superhuman leaps across buildings, the levitation above surfaces of water, the pendulous sword fights through tree vines – he exhibits remarkable resourcefulness with the tools of the theater to create flashbacks and montages. His achievement is evident in the perfect intelligibility of the risky story-within-a-story he establishes when the master and his women watch a stock piece of Peking opera called “Changbanpo,” in which two wives find themselves captured behind enemy lines. In order to strengthen the parallel between the two plots, the opera continues in the background while the heroine and her former lover rendezvous illicitly and the first concubine, danced by Meng Ningning in a sympathetic performance, espies them.The third act is preoccupied with the usual business of denouement. The first concubine hatches a plan to win back the master’s favor, but the gambit backfires and the three become reconciled to their fate in a closing pas de trois. In a memorable final scene, a white backdrop becomes a bloody canvas as executioners beat the wall with clubs dipped in red paint and the three characters feel the blows upstage, collapsing under an elegiac snowfall.The production draws together China’s leading artists – many of whom are based internationally – in an attempt to draw box-office attention to a company that was created on the Soviet model. (Mr. Zhang and the company once collaborated on a piece of agitprop called “The Red Detachment of Women.”) At under two hours, this evening-length ballet appears to have been streamlined for the better since it premiered in China in 2001.Though the production is an imaginative feat in stagecraft, the choreography is merely serviceable, and, for all its articulation and clarity, tends to grow mawkish. But the staging, Jerome Kaplan’s costumes, and Zeng Li’s set design more than compensate. This was a gripping pleasure from beginning to end.Until October 15 (30 Lafayette Avenue at Ashland Place, 718-636-4100).

East & West & Red All Over

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