Raising the Red Lanterns
27th September 2005
As much as I love the theater, I have not gone much to the theater over the last few years, but the past year, I have been able to go to both school productions as well as public ones. Last year, we went to my daughter’s high school production of Beauty and the Beast and a few months ago we were able to get tickets to David Henry Hwang’s revived Flower Drum Song at the Fullerton Civic Light Opera. So, when I found out that the National Ballet of China was performing Raise the Red Lantern at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, I grabbed the opportunity to take my family to watch it last weekend.
Oh, my! What a performance. The entire production was presented with vivid and symbolic colors, masterful dance sequences, and the unique blending of classical ballet with traditional
Chinese music, art, decoration and even the intermingling of a play-within-the-play of the Peking Opera gives the entire production just that much more unique flavor. The story itself was somewhat different from the movie of the same name of director Zhang Yimou, who was also the director of the ballet. Yet, the whole gamut of the emotional ride of oppression, love, jealousy, household discord, intrique, deceit and forgiveness was captured that kept the story moving forward in a production that is presented entirely by dance. It was a little hard for my wife and children to follow, but I loved everything about the production. It brought me to tears in the first scene and brought a lump to my throat in the last. It was simply superb.
The production opened in the US in Northern California, and just finished its Southern Californian leg. It will move on to Washington D.C. at the Kennedy Center and will finish its US tour at the Brooklyn Academy of Music mid-October. I highly recommend it!
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