Review-Plateau Bluebells-Hong Kong Dance Company
24-11-12
By: Meaghan McGurgan
"A Plateau Bluebell is a folk song; an ode to feminine beauty and her virtues."- HK Dance Company
My expectations for Plateau Bluebells were set high. HK Dance Company is my favorite dance company in town. Over the years they have created some of my favorite pieces. I have come to expect great pieces of modern Chinese dance that fuse traditional Chinese folk dance with modern dance. Plateau Bluebells is based on a Shaanbei legend by the same name. The company was kind enough to provide a short version of it in the program to help us understand the story. Many people in the audience knew the story and the characters before they came. This was my first time with this story.
I loved the show overall. The production values are high. It's well worth the money, it's different, and well conceived as a piece. The visuals created between the director and the design team are really amazing. It's a really pretty show. The props master for this production did a spectacular job. The amount of details put into the tiny objects on the stage was staggering. My favorite moment in the show was the dance with paper fans. The design choices in this moment and the execution from the female dancers was perfection.
The direction by Leung Kwok-shing is spectacular. His use of the space in Bluebells is really well executed. He uses every inch of the Grand Cultural Center Stage and makes it seem as vast as the Mongolian desert. You feel like you're out in the open. The movable rakes in the scenic design added a lot of depth and height to the stage pictures.
This may be a cultural difference thing but I think you have to see this show for Act 2 alone. It's hilarious! (But I don't think they intended it to be...) It was the talk of the ferry on the ride across the harbor back to the Island amongst the expats. Let me paint a picture for you. 10 cute boys dressed as paper horses while girls dance around them with ribbon dance sticks attached to their heads. The horses are made of shredded paper and they end up looking like giant pinatas. I think because they were dancing with such conviction is the reason that we got a good giggle out of this section. It's an ironic kind of funny, if you like cute boys dressed as pinatas.
I only had a few small criticisms of the show. Both the program and the legend describe the character of Zhou as an old man. The actor cast in this role was incredibly hot and 25 at the oldest. I easily would have ran away with the villian in this show. He was sexy and despite his ability to dance the role well I couldn't see a girl refusing his love. An older person should have been cast to make it more believable.
This leads to the other part. I don't think the adaptation of the story was very good. The couple was already in love 5 minutes into the story. We had very little time as an audience to grow to like Stony and Bluebell as individuals before they were seperated. Therefore, I had very little invested in them when Stony was fighting for her. Later when the poisoning happened it was very unclear whether they knew were being poisoned or not. They seemed awfully happy to be committing suicide. The show was great performance wise but had an overall confusing adaptation of the story to people who had never heard it before.
I still would recommend this show to anyone who loves dance, Chinese culture or dancing pinatas. There's live music provided which makes the value of the show even greater as live music makes a show so much better. Go see this show, I think you'll really like it!
Plateau Bluebells is playing at the Grand Cultural Center in TST until Sunday. For more information click here.
Comments
jenny
agree. zhou was way too sexy! i would have ran away with him.
24 November 2012David
Another great review Meaghan!
24 November 2012