COURTESY OF KAMSTAR ARTIST MANAGEMENT
"Begin from Here" by the Lily Cai Chinese Dance Company.
Dancing Lily Cai wants to take you on an exquisite journey, expressed through the artistry of the Chinese dance.
through history
By Gary C.W. Chun
gchun@starbulletin.com
The celebrated Bay Area choreographer and her six-woman dance company will present three of her works, ranging from elegant interpretations of ancient classical dances to Western-influenced contemporary works, at the Leeward Community College Theatre tomorrow.
COURTESY OF KAMSTAR ARTIST MANAGEMENT
A soloist forms a flowing ribbon design in "Strings Calligraphy."
Since Cai's 1983 arrival in California, the former Shanghai Opera House principal dancer has made it her mission to integrate her native dance culture with both ballet and more modern forms.
She's made a special effort to familiarize non-dance Hawaii audiences (her company performed on Maui and the Big Island last weekend) with her stylized work by leading the program with her 1993 work "Dynasty Suite," her interpretations of four classical dances from the early Zhou, Tang and Qing dynasties, up to a solo in the modern Dai style.
"Even though the dance style is very much Chinese, it's not a hundred percent in order to bridge the gap with a Western audience," she said by phone from Hilo last Friday.
The suite begins with a basket dance from the Zhou dynasty, with dancers in long, blue dresses carrying slender poles across their shoulders with baskets at either end, with the stage lighted by striking visual designs and patterns. The dance from the Tang dynasty shows courtly dancers throwing high-arching red silk ribbons into the air.
The Qing dynasty dance arranges a promenade of dancers, dressed in richly embroidered attire and headdresses, walking on high platform sandals. A solo "straw hat girl" then performs in the contemporary Dai dance style before other soloists join her, each representing the previously shown dynasties, leading to a stunning finale.
THE NEXT WORK, "Begin From Here" (1996), is "my personal journey as an immigrant to the U.S., a new life as I started from zero and a woman's feeling of the joy of starting anew," Cai said. "My intention was to basically create a Chinese folk dance with a modern look."
COURTESY OF KAMSTAR ARTIST MANAGEMENT
Mandy Huang (from left), Tammy Li and Phong Voong perform the Qing dynasty dance from "Dynasty Suite."
It's here you can see Cai fusing her classical training with contemporary idioms. Dancers in red silk suits standing on pedestals wave ribbons into geometric shapes at a dizzying pace, while a trio with orange silk fans walks through the seeming chaos. A soloist spinning low to the ground enters, whipping her long hair with abandon.
The last piece, "Candelas" (1997), is set to the fourth movement of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 5, the familiar and solemnly beautiful Adagietto for strings and harp. "Setting the Western music of Mahler to my choreography was a perfect match," Cai said. "For the first time here, we see and feel a very circular emotion, just going on and on like a rolling ball, an endless feeling.
"The posture and movements are circular as well. Feelings like these as expressed in this mode of dancing is unusual because Asian culture is relatively straightforward, but there's an inward energy to it that's very appealing to me."
The dancers carry these small sources of light with such a controlled sense of reverence that the piece becomes an elegant, intimate expression of humility, respect and self-sacrifice.
CAI HAS PERFORMED with her company in the past, but now says she'd rather be the artistic director. "I have six fine young women in my company, all of them Chinese -- only one of them is American-born and the others are from mainland China.
COURTESY OF KAMSTAR ARTIST MANAGEMENT
Dancers perform their modern techniques in "Candelas."
"I feel that if they don't have that particular cultural background, that 100 percent feel from their own blood, it wouldn't work out. I prefer Chinese because my interest is in the Chinese woman. It's a different quality, a uniqueness of the sensual and the self."
It's that same feeling of unique expression that brought Cai to this country.
"It's here where I can concentrate more on my work -- in China, I felt I had to spend too much time dealing with people.
"I'm very pleased to be here now. When I visited Shanghai 18 years later (in 2001), nobody there believed that I lived so long away from home. Even though I was born and raised there, the Chinese people I meet who don't know me can somehow tell that I live (in the U.S.), and that feels wonderful because my artistry has definitely changed since I left Shanghai."
Cai's audience has certainly grown. Her company has performed to Northern California audiences as diverse as 16,000 Deadheads when they opened for the Grateful Dead at an Oakland Coliseum concert. About the same number saw the dancers perform for Pope John Paul II during a San Francisco visit.
COURTESY OF KAMSTAR ARTIST MANAGEMENT
"My intention was to basically create a Chinese folk dance with a modern look." --Lily Cai, Choreographer
She still calls the Bay Area home and keeps a busy schedule of maintaining a home season (where, with the help of city grant money, she creates one or two new pieces a year), touring and choreographing special projects.
On her return from Hawaii, she'll be working on a commissioned piece for the 25th anniversary of the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival to be held in June, as well as flying to New York to audition dancers for the Santa Fe Opera world premiere of "Madame Mao" by Bright Sheng in August. The opera will tell the story of Jiang Ching, the idealistic young actress who married Chairman Mao Zedong and stage-managed the Cultural Revolution -- only to have her dreams squelched after the 1976 military coup.
Featuring the Lily Cai Chinese Dance Company 'Dynasties and Beyond'
Where: Leeward Community College Theatre
When: 8 p.m. tomorrow
Tickets: $20 and $25
Call: 455-0385
Click for online
calendars and events.
