MAY 23 | 30 DAYS BEFORE PREVIEWS BEGIN
Making Artists into Martial Artists
The ensemble members, each carrying a seven-foot bamboo staff to practice the show’s climactic fight scene, stood single file in a rehearsal space on 42nd Street. Cued by the score, a thunderous refrain composed by Bobby Krlic, who records as the Haxan Cloak, they snaked across the floor in a skewed figure eight before coming to rest in a semicircle that spanned the room.
The musical, which takes place in Chinatown in Flushing, Queens, in the near future, tells the story of an exiled sect of kung fu warriors that guards an underground spring infused with the power of eternal life. The fugitive daughter of the sect’s grand master, who eloped with a mysterious outsider, gives birth to twins who are separated at birth, only to reunite 18 years later to save the sect, and the world, from a powerful enemy.
Mr. Chen, 56, with boyish black hair and a gentle manner, looked on during the rehearsal from a chair on the sidelines, his chin buried deep in his palm.
The ensemble pounded the floor in unison with their staffs, creating a resounding pulse. The grand master, played by David Patrick Kelly (“Twin Peaks” on TV, “Once” on Broadway), entered the center of the semicircle with PeiJu Chien-Pott, a principal in the Martha Graham Dance Company who portrays his daughter, and two of the show’s villains. Then the fighting began — a brutal ballet complete with swords and a bullwhip.
After a few run-throughs of the scene, Mr. Chen halted the action and approached Ms. Chien-Pott. Her kicks hadn’t been landing as they should.
“It doesn’t read,” he said, showing the actress how to properly position herself. “You’re hitting his shoulder, but you want to hit his face.”
Mr. Chen was born in Changsha, China, and trained as a youth in baguazhang, an early form of kung fu that intoxicated him. “I’ve always found martial arts to be one of the most beautiful kinds of movements — the precision and the energy and the line of the body,” he said. “I’m always shocked that it’s not used more on the stage.”
He came to New York in 1987 to pursue an M.F.A. in experimental drama at New York University. In 1999, he earned international acclaim for his three-day, 20-hour production of “The Peony Pavilion” at the Lincoln Center Festival, and went on to direct other idiosyncratic work, including “Monkey” (which had mixed reviews but toured the world) and a Chinese adaptation of “High School Musical.”
Though wrapped in pop packaging, the core themes of “Dragon Spring Phoenix Rise” — geographical and spiritual dislocation, hybridized identity and the weight of heritage — are deeply personal.
“I wanted to create a modern myth about immigrants in America and how they survive,” Mr. Chen said. “When I came to this country in the late ’80s, it was cool to be different. But lately I’ve been feeling so much hostility, and that kind of subconsciously went into the plot.”
He spent more than a year on casting, searching for performers who could match the show’s multidisciplinary ambitions. But the musical theater actors he saw didn’t make believable fighters, and the martial artists couldn’t pull off the requisite acting and dancing.
He decided to narrow his focus to the dance world — largely hip-hop, modern, and classical — figuring he would get an actor’s stage presence and a martial artist’s core strength and agility in the bargain.
But mastering the fight choreography, even for a cast with extraordinary physical discipline, took longer than expected. That meant less time to practice other aspects of their performances. And more to worry about.
“We were trying to find people who could do the martial arts and the acting and the singing, but we failed, in a way,” Mr. Chen acknowledged. “I’m hoping the physicality and the energy will carry us through.”
Learning to fly in the harnesses was the last — and riskiest — piece of the puzzle.
Learning to fly in the harnesses was the last — and riskiest — piece of the puzzle.CreditDevin Yalkin for The New York Times
JUNE 12 | 10 DAYS BEFORE PREVIEWS BEGIN
Taking Flight
On the plateau in the Shed’s McCourt Theater, just over a week before “Dragon Spring” was scheduled to open, a technician gave Xavier final instructions.
“X marks the spot — stand right … here.”
It was the first, and only, week of full rehearsals for the show’s three aerial sequences, which, for logistical reasons, hadn’t been possible outside of the Shed. For Xavier and the rest of the ensemble, learning to fly in the harnesses was the last — and riskiest — piece of the puzzle.
Directly above him was a ring-shaped platform suspended 80 feet in the air, from which he and six other performers were to dive in a dramatic rescue scene. Below him were live fire pits capable of shooting flames, and water spouts that could flood and drain the plateau on demand.
Mr. Poots estimated that the stage had cost around $650,000 to construct, money that, along with the rest of a budget that he said was in the low millions, had been offset by fund-raising, and which he hoped to recoup with ticket sales and rentals to other theaters and presenting organizations. (Unlike “Spider-Man,” the show is being presented by a nonprofit.)
“We thought very carefully about designing the show so that it could have a life after the Shed,” he said, adding that producers from London, Paris, Beijing and Berlin were among those expected to attend its four-week run.
On the plateau, the technician, who wore a controller around his neck the size of a 12-pack, flipped a switch and hoisted Xavier aloft: 15 feet, 30 feet, 50 feet.
“Whaat!” Xavier shouted, weightless and grinning with delight, as the rope pulled him high above the stage, above his castmates, above everything.
Whether the show would ultimately live up to its lofty ambitions remained to be seen. But, for this moment at least, none of that mattered — he could fly.
“Yeah, Xavier!” shouted the coordinator from below, craning her neck and smiling. “You look beautiful!”
Reggie Ugwu is a pop culture reporter covering a range of subjects, including film, television, music and internet culture. Before joining The Times in 2017, he was a reporter for BuzzFeed News and Billboard magazine. @uugwuu