The Edinburgh International Festival’s turn towards the arts of Asia has borne gorgeous fruit with this opening performance of the dance programme. Boldly mythical, the National Ballet of China’s The Peony Pavilion (which is adapted as a ballet from the play by Tang Xianzu) tells the story of the beautiful young woman Du Liniang, who falls asleep in the titular garden and dreams of a love so powerful that when she awakes to find her imagined lover, the handsome and passionate Liu Mengmei, is not there she dies. However, death is not the end of her love, as she turns to the Infernal Judge of the Underworld to unite her with her young man.
It is a story full of decorative and metaphysical possibilities, as we are transported from the floral glories of the pavilion to hell and its strange justice. Director Li Liuyi expresses these possibilities by way of a superb series of contrasts.
The very modern sets (designed by Michael Simon) are stridently minimal. The heart of the pavilion, for example, is a mere grey platform, suspended on four metal chains. This plays splendidly against costumes of exquisite detail and startling colour and choreography (by Fei Bo) of classical restraint, exceptional skill and subtle eroticism.
Composer Guo Wenjing’s score – which blends Chinese traditional music and song with the likes of Debussy and Ravel – offers a similarly rich hybrid.
From the delightful interplays between Du Liniang and Liu Mengmei, to the extraordinary moment when the white-clad young women of the corps de ballet surround the Flower Goddess (the young woman’s alter-ego, who is resplendent in red) and on to the spectacular bleakness of the wonderfully masked Judge in his lair, this is a work which imprints stunning images upon the mind time after time.
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