Sunday, February 05, 2006

Well I did the Hua Yi thing over the weekend.

Friday night. The biggest event on the calendar, opening night of Cursive, by Taiwan's Cloud Gate Dance Theatre. Most shows are meant to be watched, some shows are meant to be experienced. Shows by Cloud Gate belong to the later. Unfortunately I didn't have a good experience. The whole event was not as impactful as previous Cloud Gate performances that came. Oh well. Watched it with Sebastian and Jeanette. Good that Sebastian was watching a non-film with me. It was his first time inside the theatre. Poor fella actually went home to change out of his jeans ... one look at me ... well at least we were not late for the performance ... Once again, a great opportunity to bump into dance and theatre friends. I saw KC, SHi Yi, Richard, Hui Zhen, Ren Yu, Fei Shen, Jia Qiang, Sarah, Ridwyan, Wendy, etc. Hope everybody else liked the show.

Saturday night. Wedding of the Mice. Less expectation. Well it is a children show, hence we were surrounded by the little ones, of all races some more. It was good to see cloth / hand puppets with the bigger stick(?) puppets in the same show. One highlight of the show was to see western instruments, like the violin, cello, and, get this, the harp, playing along with the Chinese drum, and Chinese songs. I enjoyed the ending part, with the mini lion dance and dragon dance, and the little sprinkles and poppies, and everybody in the performance had to wear party hats. The cast gave out sweets at the end of the show, which was a nice touch as well. Well, if only I was bringing my own kids to watch the show ...

This was followed by a little performance outside at the waterfront canopy. A puppet master came out with three acts. First was two liondance lions, which was then upped by the famous Chinese monk beggar, Ji Gong. The highlight of the presentation, which was the reason why we were there, was when the master manipulated a puppet, a replica of himself, to write calligraphy, for real! The first one, a credible one, was Jin Xiu Qian Cheng, and eager audience actually wanted to keep the calligraphy. We were very impressed by this puppet master, as well.

♥ 8:16 pm