Yang Liping’s own choreographic
practice is firmly anchored in
traditions that rarely see expression
in mainstream theatre.
Paper-cutting is an artform in itself in China, and
to attain the status of a professional paper-cutting
artist there are strict criteria that must be met at
a national level, with recognition bestowed by the
Paper Cutting Association in China.
More than a mere instrument, the scissors used
in paper-cutting are themselves imbued with
multiple symbolic meanings. Chinese calligraphy
has been refined over more than 4,000 years, and
the precise formation of characters allows them
to suggest various meanings at once. The Chinese
characters for scissors are that of a knife and the
symbol for going forward. “So if you’ve want to go
forward there’s a knife in front of you,” says Yang.
The implications of this formation give rise to many
metaphorical uses. “A lot of things in today’s world
are supposed to be reasonable but are not, and
with scissors cutting everything, cutting all these
threads and all these lines and connections in life,
things can never be completely right.”
Then there’s the volcanic flurries of blood that play
out in Under Siege’s epic climactic sequence—what
might seem mere artistic flourishes connoting the
chaos of war make important use of red feathers,
themselves rich with metaphorical potential. “In
Under Siege the red feathers are not to show the
terrible sense of blood but to give a sense of beauty
to the show,” says Yang.
“In this case the feathers used are rooster or
chicken feathers, and in Chinese culture these
feathers mean a lot of things. If you say there’s
feathers all around, it’s like it’s raining cats
and dogs. In Chinese there’s proverbs saying if
something’s really bad there’s a whole ground
of feathers everywhere. Somebody’s step can be
as heavy as a mountain or it can be as light as a
feather. It means a lot of different things.”
The music of Under Siege is hundreds of years old—
“it’s very traditional music and it’s rarely played
on stage in a modern show”—but as with so much
of the work, its deployment is a way of connecting
historical cultural references with a form of theatre
that is utterly contemporary.
The dance, conversely, might seem light years
from traditional Chinese opera, but Yang’s own
choreographic practice is firmly anchored in
traditions that rarely see expression in mainstream
theatre. Raised in the Bai ethnic minority in rural
China, Yang’s early explorations of the important
Bai symbol of the Peacock eventually saw the
choreographer and dancer achieving fame across
the country as its ‘Peacock Princess’. Yang has
since created an extensive body of work that
explores similarly fertile dances and musical
traditions drawn from ethnic minorities in China,
and has assembled these into lush spectacles that
give them new life on the national stage.
Yip’s designs in collaboration with Yang usually
incorporate costumes as well as set. Indeed, Yip
says that “costumes are not clothing, they are
moving scenery.” While in the West it’s customary
to separate these aspects of a production, Yip
doesn’t believe such divisions make for better
art. “When the show is finished, all elements have
to be united. If we separate, the thing will not be
whole. This happens all the time in the theatre and
in movies. I find that when we design both set and
costume, we are covering all the visual aspects of
the project. It gives the artwork a language.”
All of this is what gives Under Siege the sense of a
living, breathing expression of a historical moment
that might otherwise seem mired in a far-off time.
It is history that speaks to the emotions, not just
the mind, and forges connections both timely
and universal.
—JOHN BAILEY
Western audiences,” says Yang. “A large number
of Western audiences may not have had access to
Chinese opera, which is actually Peking opera, and
things like paper cutting, so it may be the first time
they’ve seen it on stage.”