My project “From Beijing to San Francisco” at CP is a newly commissioned musical piece, bringing the guqin, a Chinese scholarly art, into an innovative, multidisciplinary stage performance, and introducing the ancient, living tradition of the guqin into modern life. It uses a guqin player’s own story to illustrate the fate of the guqin, an ancient Chinese art form, reflect on what has happened in China during the last 30 years, and interpret the period of the Cultural Revolution (1960s to 1970s), when art was only allowed if it served the Communist Party, China’s Open Door Policy (1980s), when western culture began to dominate China, China’s period of economic development (1990s), as well as the modernized China of the 21st century.
As a Chinese immigrant who has lived and been educated in both China and the US. I was born during the Cultural Revolution and grew up during China’s reform, and has moved back and forth between China and the US. In that time I have seen some dramatic changes in both countries. Through this piece, my collaborators and I will explore how a cultural heritage survives in a globalized environment and how traditional art challenges the modern audience. We will use our own experience and vision to express the changes in western and eastern art, traditional and modern, through this multidisciplinary musical piece, combining storytelling, guqin music, dance, narrative, video projection, electronic music, and guitar. The Cultural Revolution Loyalty Dance and Praise Chairman Mao song will be introduced onto the western stage.
I am urgently looking for a comtermpoary dancer who are good at narration or a narrator who has dancer background. Famale. Asian prefered but not neccessary.
There are about 120 lines poem need to be recited by this role. The dance style something like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCkaHcnGXf4
I am also looking for your feedback on my poem.
Please email me directly at info@guqin.org
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wang fei,
very provocative to say: “my collaborators and I will explore … how traditional art challenges the modern audience”
i like it!
in fact, like “avant garde” tradition can just as easily challenge and stir an audience.
i was also very taken by your poem; i think that while it’s alright to ask for feedback directly to your email, it would also be wonderful to have folks share in a public dialogue, riffing off of one another.
what comes across is how HUGE the force of history has been upon this small instrument. i feel the isolation of the guqin’s musical voice through both the Maoist revolution & the western tidal wave after it. i feel your loneliness within this world. and your determination to keep the beauty of the sound alive, the legacy continuing.
some of my favorite lines:
“Beautiful but not pandering,
Sorrowful without being wounded,
Cheerful but not licentious.
Not striving for attention,
Nor desiring to please.
Seven strings are my orchestra;
My hands, your conductor.”
there is a dignity to your relationship to this instrument.
woops, that last post wasn’t from Jessica. it’s from me, Roko. i was typing on her computer & forgot to change the ID!
sorry about that!
Roko