Double Yellow Lines: Dance and music at their closest

At first, the stage is dark, oppressively so. A dim light brings the piano’s keyboard into the scene, while the spotlight gradually turns to reveal a figure, clad completely in black. This is dance and music, stripped down to their bare essentials: no frills, no fireworks, no fancy moves; yet the dramatic tension in each note, in each and every move, leaves the air almost palpitating. 

As An Tôn Thất’s  impressionistic music drifts ephemerally, another figure—also dressed in black save for a white shirt—enters, pulling the other back from the invisible fourth wall which he is just about to shatter. Huang Yi’s inventiveness is unbelievable: now the music is no longer “music”, but rather the sounds of a pen on paper, the clinking of a glass, the breaking of pencils, yet his movements would lead one to believe he was being led by an entire symphony of sounds. 

An’s music then takes a classical turn, at times baroque even, as Huang Yi and Hu Jian engage in a pas de deux reminiscent of Norman McLaren’s animation, set to Bach, in Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould. As the music then returns to its beginning sparse texture, the two parallel lines of Huang Yi and Hu Jian converge on the piano, and as the two alternate their turns and twists on the keyboard, music and movement merge into a single monochrome. An then returns, building the music up into a sonorous symphony of sound, with six hands on the piano. This then fades out, with the piece ending on a song sung by Hu Jian to sparse chords, echoing the beginning. Lights fade out, drawing out a full circle.

Is this piece music or dance? Saying that it is “both” is an understatement, since all the elements melt together into an organic whole, until one cannot be separated from the other. Narrative is absent, nor is it ever needed: as Huang Yi says in his program notes, “Everyone can have a different interpretation… all that I want to convey is in the work.” Yet as I left the theatre, I still had one question in mind: why yellow?

Carmen at the Komische Oper Berlin is a sexy, sensual affair

For the last night of my stay in Berlin, I went to see Carmen at the Komische Oper Berlin. This was the first time I bought a cheap ticket (€12) to the opera in Europe, and the first time I had to deal with some of the quirks—as it turned out, my seat was so far out in the wings that the view was nonexistent when I was sitting, and so I spent just about the entire three hours standing.

My view of the stage—more of a sliver than a proper view. As it turned out, a substantial part of the action occurred at stage right, so I had to lean precariously over just to get a glimpse.

But what action there was! As purist as I am, I occasionally find these "updated" productions just as entertaining and enjoyable. As befits the Komishe Oper, the production was sung in German, except for two of Carmen's arias: the Habanera ("L'amour est un oiseaux rebelle") and the first number of the second act ("Les tringes des sistres tintaient"), which were sung in French (although the interjections by the choir were in German), and some of the video segments with José, which were in English—more on those later. In this production, Carmen was every bit the femme fatale, all the way down to her costumes, which always emphasized her wonderful figure. Heaven forbid if one day I have to see a Wagnerian soprano—the proverbial "fat lady"—sing this role! In addition, the character playing Manuela (who supplants Lillas Pastia as the innkeeper in this production) also dances extremely lively flamencos in between the acts, to a live guitar accompaniment on-stage, which adds to the highly sensual element. 

Tonight's cast list

The entire opera was cast as sort of a flashback from the perspective of José, who is being interrogated after he has killed Carmen. The interrogation is presented in video segments in between Acts I and II, and Acts III and IV (the intermission was between Acts II and III), and has the tenor playing José speaking in his mother tongue. Regarding the choice of language, an interesting decision was to keep Carmen's aforementioned arias in the original French—the only reason I can think of is that these arias deal with Carmen's highly capricious love ("Si tu ne m'aimes pas, je t'aime"), and of course, French is the language of love!

Helmuth Rilling conducts Bach's St. Matthew Passion

In brief: As a scholar, as a technician, as a chef de l'orchestre, Helmuth Rilling is outstanding. As a musician, he fails miserably.

The first few bars of the first chorus summed the entire three hours up. Although the Taipei Philharmonic is a modern ensemble, Rilling paid immaculate attention to technical details for baroque performance: no vibrato, non-legato, even the choirs' German pronunciation was excellent – better, even, than the alto soloist's. But at what a musical cost! Anyone who knows about period performance will appreciate the fact that baroque musicians didn't have our modern concept of legato, but that does not mean the music should sit flat without any shaping of lines; besides, isn't Bach's mastery of counterpoint supposed to be found in his multi-linear structures? In the end, I felt I could truly appreciate just how impressive Bach's music is, simply because it was still very moving even under such an unmusical baton.

In addition, with all the attention paid to accuracy, Rilling nevertheless fails to notice flaws in the very basics of music. Throughout the entire performance, the orchestra's tuning was off, sometimes resulting in truly cringeworthy clashes between the cello and organ. As a general rule, sharps were all too high, and flats were all too low. Also obvious was the fact that the orchestra's strings had a hurried crash course in baroque playing. It is easy to tell the strings to play senza vibrato, but it's almost impossible to teach them to use only the bow for producing all the different shades and tone colors in one or two weeks, much less so if the conductor in question is not a string player. In the end, the strings sounded flat, dull, and thin throughout, with only superficial details adhering to baroque performance. Add bad intonation to the non-vibrato mix, and we have a disaster waiting to happen.

But, in any case, the audience's reception was fantastic. This was supposed the first Taiwanese performance of the St. Matthew Passion, and judging from the thunderous applause and countless curtain calls, future performances of such masterpieces could just as easy find such an enthusiastic audience. Let's just hope that our ears can be blessed with a performance worthy enough to be called "music".

YogeeTi: Breathtaking, exhilarating, uneven

As part of the 2012 Taiwan International Festival of Arts, YogeeTi has certainly benefited from funding and marketing most artists could only dream of. Much like the earlier production of The Tempest (the subject of a future entry), I was drawn to the show after seeing quite a number of reviews lauding this piece. While it was certainly great fun to watch, as I left the theatre I couldn't help but feel somewhat ambivalent toward what I had just experienced.

Much of the hype of this piece has been centered on the fashion design element, and clearly it shows: aside from the exquisite stage design and impressive use of props, the evocative lighting and excellent music all serve to create a terrific ambiance. Yet the actual dancing, however consistently brilliant it was, at times nevertheless seemed to fall flat. After a truly dazzling section where the “weaving” theme is brought into full relief through strings drawn in from the wings, accompanied by the aptly minimalistic score and the interwoven choreography, there follows a longish “showcase” with every dancer doing solos or duos, seemingly just for the sake of it. The pre-show lecture mentioned that Johan Ku caught the attention of Mourad Merzouki with a cocoon-themed exhibition, but the interaction with with cocoon costumes today, looking as if covered with moss or algae, would not have seen out of place if it were used as a filler for a stage production of Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. Also, I failed to detect a coherent flow throughout the piece; sometimes it seemed as if the performance could just about close at the end of any section, without sacrificing anything at all.

Perhaps what I couldn't reconcile the most, though, was the sense of emptiness inside even before the first sound of applause had struck. Impressive, yes; breathtaking, yes; but a sense of connection? After sitting in my seat for more than an hour, I didn't feel I could take away anything from the experience. I was reminded of what Pak Sal said of Jérôme Bel in his interview before returning to Indonesia: his works inevitably invoke controversy, and probably justifiably so; yet this is not done for just shock value, just "for the sake of it", but because he has a strong central concept or message which cannot be conveyed anyway else. Just as I was leaving the theatre, I happened to meet a friend sitting in the row behind me; she said that she fell asleep during the middle, and frankly I don't blame her (especially since this was, after all, a matinee performance).

But in any case, the audience clearly loved today's performance; the entire hall was roaring and cheering like mad throughout the countless curtain calls, and the dancers clearly enjoyed the reception as well. And in the end, that's what matters in performance art, isn't it: never mind there is a profound message to take away, we're here to enjoy ourselves, to have a good time!