Yet even though you won't see the elaborate symbolic makeup and masks common to Chinese opera, the most striking aspect of this production is its ravishingly colorful visual design: lavish Eastern-fashioned costumes and headdresses, elegant screens and backdrops sporting calligraphy and splendiferous flower paintings, and an interplay of bright and pastel shades of pink, green, peach, orange, and turquoise that dazzles the eye. I offer a big "Bravo" to the show's fabulous team of designers: Zhou Danlin and Yuan Ye (stage art), Wang Ruiguo (lighting), Mo Xiaomin (costumes), and Lu Ye (props).
Unfortunately, the show's choreography—a lovely amalgam of Chinese folk-dance vocabulary and Western contemporary-dance movements infused with balletic grace—is not kinetically powerful or physically varied enough to adequately convey the characters, emotions, or plot of the play. (You have to rely on the program notes to get any sense of what's going on in the story.) The melodrama of the two young lovers whose devotion to one another allows them to break the boundaries of life and death is evoked largely by the rousing, lushly orchestrated, romantically melodic music that most of the time sounds more like 19th-century Vienna than 16th-century China.
Though the production feels emptily pretty throughout the first act, after the intermission it picks up in pace and excitement as more jumps, acrobatics, and humor are introduced into the rather earthbound, albeit harmoniously flowing, choreography. Unusual use is made of the orchestra pit to create two breathtaking moments (I don't want to give away the surprises!), and huge mask heads with bright green eyes, plus a tinge of hip-hop dancing, animate an entertainingly glitzy Netherworld scene.
Performed by the China Jinling Dance Company, the show is beautifully staged (by a team of directors and choreographers) and extremely well danced by a polished ensemble and strong soloists, especially understudies Xu Xinyu and Han Bo, who, upon late notice of an injury, had to step into the leading roles opening night.
Presented by the China Arts and Entertainment Group at the David H. Koch Theater, 20 Lincoln Center Plaza, NYC. Jan. 5–8. Thu.–Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m. (212) 496-0600 or www.davidhkochtheater.com.
