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Thread: Martial Arts in Live Theater

  1. #31
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    3 words

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    Ballet incorporates swing, martial arts in 'Across the Tracks'
    Canyon Concert Ballet presents 'Across the Tracks'
    By Coloradoan staff • April 23, 2009

    Canyon Concert Ballet presents "Across the Tracks," an energetic and eclectic dance production, this weekend at the Lincoln Center.
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    Part of the Finding Home immigration series - sponsored by local arts group Beet Street - "Across the Tracks" is the tragic story of two teenagers with loyalties to warring ethnic gangs who find themselves falling in love.

    Featuring a unique and diverse blend of dance styles, including ballet, jazz, street and social dances, "Across the Tracks" also features fight choreography based on a combination of different martial arts, Artistic Director Jessica V. Freestone said.

    Freestone is collaborating with three local choreographers: Adam Yee, a third-degree black belt karate instructor and former dancer with CCB; and Peggy Lyle and Chris McCullough with Fort Collins swing dance troupe The Rhythm Company.
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
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  2. #32
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    More on LEEgendary

    I just got this press release from Soomi Kim
    LEE/GENDARY
    Dear friends, colleagues and supporters of Lee/gendary,

    I am thrilled to announce that Lee/gendary has been nominated for 6 New York Innovative Theater Awards including Outstanding Production!
    Coincedentally, the official nomination party fell on the anniversary of Bruce Lee's death, July 20th (Lee died on July 20th, 1973).

    Other nominations include:

    Outstanding lighting design- LUCRECIA BRICENO
    Outstanding director- SUZI TAKAHASHI
    Outstanding movement/choreography- AIRON ARMSTRONG AND SOOMI KIM
    Outstanding actress in a featured role- CONSTANCE PARNG
    Outstanding actress in a lead role- SOOMI KIM
    OUTSTANDING PRODUCTION!

    The official ceremony will be held in September 2009.
    The nominations come from the performance run this past October 2008 held at HERE Arts Center.

    Thank you to everyone who has supported and/or stood by this project through its history and journey; you have collectively helped to give Lee/gendary this recognition.

    NYITA (or "IT awards) is an amazing organization that supports and shines a much deserved spotlight on the vibrant and vital community of off off broadway productions.

    This past year there were over 100 off off broadway shows registered for the NYIT Awards.

    http://www.nyitawards.com/anr/2009honorees.asp
    http://www.leegendary.com/

    Have a GREAT August, stay cool, sexy and creative!

    love,

    Soomi Kim
    creator, producer, performer of Lee/gendary
    See LEE/GENDARY - A Review by Douglas Ferguson
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
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  3. #33
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    you beat me to it gene...actually heard about it a week or so ago...but it slept my mind.

  4. #34
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    you are so slipping...

    ...and this was your story.

    Better get on the ball.
    Gene Ching
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  5. #35
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    the awards we tonight

    and lee/gendary picked up two:

    best actress for constance prang

    and best director.

    congrats to soomi and the crew.

    happy to write a review for a award winning play. especially since its their favorite review.

  6. #36
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    correction three

    it also won outstanding production.

  7. #37
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    China National Acrobatic Troupe

    CNAT to perform for local audiences
    Posted on 29 October 2009
    Tags: 2009, Vol 28 No 45 | October 31 - November 6

    Founded in 1950, the China National Acrobatic Troupe (CNAT) is the only national level acrobatic performing troupe established under Premier Zhou Enlai after the founding of new China.

    CNAT combines tradition with innovation by preserving many traditional styles, but also integrating music, dance, drama, and kungfu, forming countless new programs.

    Presently, the CNAT has won 47 gold medals including the Golden Clown award, President Award, and Gold Magic Prize, in a variety of international and domestic competitions.

    The CNAT has visited more than 114 countries and regions in the world.

    The CNAT consists of an acrobatic training center with a total of 200 performers, a circus, and also the Li Ning Magic Workshop, which is dedicated to the training of magicians. ♦

    The CNAT will be performing in Seattle on Oct. 30, Oct. 31, and Nov. 1 at Meany Hall on the University of Washington campus. For more information, visit www.dareacrobats.com. To buy tickets, visit www.aapat.org or call 206-287-9998.
    This pic looks very Cirque and very sexually ambiguous
    Gene Ching
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  8. #38
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    Krunk fu

    The Return of Pippin?
    EWP Musical Merges Hip Hop, Martial Arts
    Wednesday, November 18 2009

    Spend your time this weekend with a musical that has it all: anime, hip hop, and a good dose of martial arts.

    Still a work in progress, the East West Players will present a 25-minute presentation of the musical on November 20 at the National Center for the Preservation of Democracy in Los Angeles. Following the presentation, the audience is invited to a question-and-answer session with the creative team behind the musical.

    The working title of the musical is Krunk-Fu Battle Battle, and it tells the story of a teenager who must adjust to a new high school life in Brooklyn after his mother loses her cushy six-figure job on the Upper West Side. After being bullied and seeing his mother working as a fry cook to make ends meet, the teen asks for the guidance of Sir Master Cert to compete for respect and honor in his new home.

    "When East West Players produced Pippin in 2008, which utilized anime, hip hop and martial arts, it was a huge success," said producing artistic director Tim Dang. "It showed to us at EWP that there is an interest by audiences to see pop culture aesthetics incorporated and presented with a more traditional theatrical form.”

    Krunk-Fu Battle Battle reunites Dang with Jason Tyler Chong and Marc Macalintal, all driving forces behind Pippin’s success.

    Established in 1965, East West Players is known by many as the nation’s pre-eminent Asian American theater troupe. Over the years, it has premiered over 100 plays and musicals, and has held over 1,000 readings and workshops. Successful alumni include B.D. Wong, John Lone, Freda Foh Shen, and Roberta Uno.

    For more information, you can call the East West Players at (213) 625-7000 or visit the Web site.
    Gene Ching
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  9. #39
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    Kung fu tofu?

    Which reminds me, this is completely OT, but I just saw footage of a tofu break. This is where someone breaks a solid object resting on tofu but doesn't splatter the tofu. I always thought that was a myth.

    Hong Kong: Ong Yong Lock to dance with "Kung Fu and Tofu"
    Submitted by editor on December 11, 2009 - 11:00

    Local choreographer and dancer Ong Yong Lock will perform in his latest work, Dance Moves, Kung Fu and Tofu, in January.

    The production reviews Ongs two decades in dancing and choreography, which he says have given him more bruises than fame. It will also bring this years Solo Show Series to an end.

    Dance Moves, Kung Fu and Tofu is a multi-media production jointly directed by Ong and Chan Chi-wah, with set and costume by Yuen Hon-wai, lighting by Lee Chi-wai, sound by Edmund Leung and visuals by Chris Chan. Ong will also perform some works inspired by classics from choreographers Willy Tsao, Helen Lai, Yuri Ng and Pun Shiu-fai.

    Tofu represents Ongs philosophy of life - simple and down-to-earth and with hints of kung fu, the work reflects his enthusiasm and passion for dance. As time passes, my body cannot be replaced nor can it be cloned. Through sweat and ideas, however, I hope the audience can feel every flowing part of me, Ong said.

    Ong was a full-time dancer with the Hong Kong Dance Company and the City Contemporary Dance Company. In 2002, he was awarded the Hong Kong Dance Award for his choreography of 4 In. In the same year, he founded Unlock Dancing Plaza and has been its artistic director since then.

    Dance Moves, Kung Fu and Tofu is presented by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department. It will be held at 8pm, January 8 and 9, 2010 (Friday and Saturday), and 3pm on January 10 (Sunday) at the Black Box Theatre, Kwai Tsing Theatre. A meet-the-artist session will be held after the performance on January 9.

    Tickets priced at $180 are now available at URBTIX outlets. Senior citizens aged 60 or above, people with disabilities, full-time students and Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA) recipients may have 50% off (limited quotas for CSSA recipients on a first-come, first-served basis). A maximum discount of 20% is offered for group booking. Please refer to the programme leaflet for details.

    For enquiries about the programme, call 2268 7323 or visit www.lcsd.gov.hk/cp. Ticketing enquiries and reservations can be made on 2734 9009 and credit card telephone bookings on 2111 5999. Tickets can also be booked online at www.urbtix.hk.
    Gene Ching
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  10. #40
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    Quote Originally Posted by GeneChing View Post
    West
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    Story

    Gene, when I first saw this thread, Romeo and Juliette first popped into my mind too. Did you get a chance to see the production in Colorado?
    Guangzhou Pak Mei Kung Fu School, Sydney Australia,
    Sifu Leung, Yuk Seng
    Established 1989, Glebe Australia

  11. #41
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    Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan

    Follow the link for a photo gallery.
    Dance Review: Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan at the Kennedy Center
    By Sarah Kaufman
    Monday, February 1, 2010

    If you've ever watched tai chi, the relaxed, slow-motion martial art, you know why those languid movements could inspire a dance. Tai chi's inner calm and outer poise, its unhurried elegance and pliable movement can be beautiful and even uplifting to watch.

    Set tai chi to Bach, perform it on a stage sopped with water and lit with moonlight, and you have the singularly transporting experience of "Moon Water," performed by Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan over the weekend at the Kennedy Center's Eisenhower Theater.

    Cloud Gate, which calls itself the oldest contemporary dance company in any Chinese-speaking community, got its start in 1972 with an aha moment that makes for a great story: Its founder, Lin Hwai-min, at the time a novelist in his mid-20s, wandered into a dance class one day while enrolled in the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. An epiphany struck: Silent physical expression trumped the written word. Inflamed with his new passion for movement, Lin returned home to Taipei and within a year he had launched a dance troupe.

    "Don't ask me why," the diminutive Lin said with a laugh in his dressing room after Friday's performance. "I was crazy."

    Now he's an institution. Cloud Gate, named for a 5,000-year-old ritual considered to be China's first dance, has gone on to international renown. That it has not appeared at the Kennedy Center since 1995 is a head-scratcher; that it will return soon ought to be inevitable.

    "Moon Water" offers an answer to Western notions of forcefully athletic virtuosity in dance. Here is an aesthetic that strikes universal chords of supreme human achievement and refinement, that represents the ennobling ideals of balance, harmony, spiritual elevation and inner goodness that you find, say, in classical ballet. It does this by drawing on deep wells of Chinese philosophy and cultural history. Watching Cloud Gate, you are gently seduced into rethinking your ideas about dance. On the expressive landscape of the human body, "Moon Water" tells us, there is ever so much more to be discovered.

    The piece starts with a long solo that sweeps other examples of the genre firmly to the side: Dancer Tsai Ming-yuan drifts across the stage in a series of tai-chi postures, sinking deep into his hips. Does he have any bones? Or are his insides girded in steel rebar? His joints seem to melt away as he lunges and folds, then, as he is still crouching, a leg will lift, spiral, slice the air around him like a blade and slowly, slowly descend with the weightlessness of tissue. It brought to mind that staple of the ballet gala "The Dying Swan," a solo of great pathos and no small degree of virtuosic flexibility in the arms and upper body.
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    Tsai's gradual journey across the vast Eisenhower stage, with its own thrilling measure of rippling energy and quiet intensity, told us something about the absorptive and transformational powers of meditation. And about the mysteries underlying the ancient practice of tai chi, where movement and consciousness entwine, and where serenity is a unique form of power.

    We spent 10 or 15 minutes with Tsai as he plunged into those bottomless joints, his effortless focus drawing us deeper and deeper into his realm -- was it heaven? I could be convinced. He was joined by a woman, Huang Pei-hua, his equal in pliant strength but lighter, with an eagle's wingspan. A group of dancers formed around them, as many as 15, and eventually the stage was covered in a film of water, which the dancers sloshed in and sent flying in arcs of silvery droplets. The black backdrop slipped away to reveal angled mirrors, reflecting the wet activity onstage with a slight distortion, as if it were all happening underwater -- an especially poetic stage picture.

    And the Bach? I can't say I loved this element of "Moon Water" as much as I did its concept, dancers and set design. Lin chose excerpts from a recording of "Six Suites for Solo Cello" performed by Mischa Maisky, sarabandes, preludes and allemandes. The problem wasn't with the baroque style -- an interesting counterpoint to the Eastern movement-- or the instrument, but the selections: They were overwhelmingly dark and serious, and the whole work had to fight against the accumulated heaviness of sound.

    Still, the cello was an evocative choice. I happened to have had a tai chi master at my elbow for Friday's performance (my multitalented older brother, who has studied the form since I was a wee lass roped into practicing "push hands" with him in our back yard). He was struck by the instrument's rich, deep vibration, which to him echoed the internal feeling of "chi," the metaphysical energy that one cultivates in tai chi. Lin, when asked about this later, agreed and added that the cello had a "weight and substance" he liked, as well as a pure and meditative quality of sound.

    What is undeniable is that Lin has lit the way to a new vocabulary in dance, one that reaches back to ancient wisdom and ahead to future fruitfulness, with a cool, unforced yet insistent power. Like water. "Moon Water," indeed.
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
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  12. #42
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    Poem of Kung Fu: Nine Scrolls

    Here's an interesting new show in Oz. Too bad the author had such a negative audience experience.
    Kung fooey
    LISSA CHRISTOPHER
    November 7, 2008

    MISS Elizabeth and I roll out of the high-rollers room at Star City Casino as high as kites. It's nearly 8pm and we've been on the lemon, lime and bitters since noon.

    We've also been playing roulette and at the last minute decided to put everything we had between us on red 23. Now I'm going to have to sell the cat and the 1986 Mitsubishi Colt and Miss Elizabeth will have to relinquish her first born to the casino licensee first thing in the morning.

    But we'll worry about that later. Poem Of Kung Fu: Nine Scrolls is about to start and we don't want to be locked out of the theatre. As it turns out, we needn't have concerned ourselves. We are far from the last to be seated, or indeed unseated and reseated, at this evening's performance.

    Hundreds seem to truck in and out of the Star Theatre throughout the show. I've never seen such a perambulatory audience. The ushers, with their torches, are run off their feet keeping up with the wandering masses.

    Right up to the closing milliseconds of scroll nine - paradise - a woman is shoving her way along the wrong aisle, apologising sotto voce, shoving her way back out again and into the correct one. It's the same woman who was gazing around the theatre while undertaking an exhaustive excavation of one of her nostrils as the house lights went down.

    Unfortunately, Miss Elizabeth and I are in the last two seats on our aisle and if we don't stand up when people try to get past we're at risk of having our toes crushed and our faces trapped between strangers' buttocks. Thus we stand up and sit down every time someone wants to get past. Which is often. Lactic acid and irritation build up in the equal?measure.

    Poem Of Kung Fu - which is on its inaugural visit to Australia from its home in Beijing is an unusual production: part martial art, part dance, part poetry. Each scroll involves a short poem read by Australian actor Tony Barry and a dance/kung fu performance. In between, Cherlie Valaray warbles a mercifully short ditty, first in Chinese then in English.

    The performers mix flexibility, grace, speed and strength to remarkable effect. Sometimes they move through a sequence so quickly it takes a few moments to absorb the incredible things they've just done with their bodies. Even so, I doubt any of them could perform as many squats into and out of a theatre seat as Miss Elizabeth and I have this evening.

    The cast also includes Miao Shuaifeng, a tiny and alarmingly flexible 10-year-old boy. I suspect he's meant to be an endearing element but something about the precocious character he's playing makes me want to put him over my knee and then send him to the naughty corner . . . until he's 30.

    I put this uncharitable thinking down to the recent loss of my personal fortune, such as it was, on red 23.
    Gene Ching
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  13. #43
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    Too bad I didn't hear of this earlier - I might have gone

    However, I have already date tonight - kung fu practice!
    THE LEGENDARY LIONS VS. THE FISTS OF FURY BY MIKE LAI
    February 26, 2010 8:00 PM - 12:00 AM
    A SPECIAL ONE NIGHT PERFORMANCE

    Friday, February 26, 2010
    Doors Open: 7:30 pm
    Event Starts: 8:00 pm

    FREE
    *Limited seating available

    Join Southern Exposure and Mike Lai for The Legendary Lions vs. the Fists of Fury, a dance-off competition between traditional Chinese lion dancers and Bruce Lee's larger than life sized fists. A contest between the physical performance of traditional, authentic Kung Fu and the showmanship and special effects of contemporary, filmic Kung Fu, the event will feature five sets of battles. M.C. Julian Mocine-McQueen and local judges from the fields of art, Kung Fu and dance along with the audience will determine the winners.

    The event features Leung's White Crane Dragon and Lion Dance Association, Ben's Shaolin Kung Fu Lion Dance Team, the Fist of Fury Dance Crew, Scratch DJ and drummer Skins and Needles and MC Julian Mocine-McQueen.

    Come celebrate the Chinese New Year with this epic battle!

    __________________________________________________ ___________________________
    essay by Weston Teruya

    Chinese lion dancers bounce across the floor with staccato movements to the beat of drums and cymbal crashes. After sizing up the performance, dancers draped in oversized, disembodied replicas of Bruce Lee’s fists of fury face off against the lion. The sharp response of a turntable needle at a DJ’s fingers accent their array of dynamic moves. The showdown, Mike Lai’s performance piece titled The Legendary Lions Versus the Fists of Fury, matches the acrobatic athleticism of a traditional lion dance against the analog approximations of martial arts movie special effects used by the Bruce Lee dance crew. This kinetic scene, orchestrated by Lai for his solo show at Southern Exposure, seems equal parts America’s Best Dance Crew spectacle, climactic battle between martial arts masters, and nod to the celebratory blessing typically signified by a lion dance. But these points in his referential constellation are only some of the cultural markers he has been drawing down for years as part of his artistic practice. His recombinant performances, centering on the artist (often in the guise of Lee), use Lee’s pop culture versatility to playfully suggest the flexible possibilities of remixed identities.

    Lai has a particular affinity for Lee in his Game of Death mode: tightly sheathed in a yellow tracksuit with black stripes running up the sides. In The Legendary Lions Versus the Fists of Fury, the hallmark contrasting stripes immediately identify the disembodied dancing fists as Lee’s. This is Lee from his showdown against basketball legend Kareem Abdul Jabbar, a cinematic scene highlighting Lee’s own cross-cultural resonance. This is also Lee after his tragic death mid–film shoot, in a performance completed by a motley mix of stand-ins, recut stock footage, and his face crudely pasted over some poor wannabe’s unseen mug; his own film emphasizing that fissure between Lee the person and Lee the immortal persona, a character to be assumed by others.

    Over time, Lee’s has become an outsized, fantastical identity. His tracksuit, as Lai has suggested, is a superhero cape—hypercolor drag that combines assumed identity and masculine desire. Fans from Ultimate Fighting Championship combatants to the Asiaphiles of the Wu-Tang Clan have paid their respects to Lee. Yet as desire is often intertwined with repulsion, the label “bruce lee” also can be a racial invective. For East Asian American men with similarly lithe body types, the name can be a playground dismissal—a suggestion of chop-socky cartoonishness and broken English. For Lai, being called “bruce lee” by classmates on arrival at high school in the United States stirred mixed feelings: on one hand, the name flattened him, reducing his identity to a celluloid ghost; on the other, it seemed heroic to be viewed as akin to the original Asian stud.

    Lai finds ways to both embrace and combat this conflation. With each new cultural iteration of Lee that he imagines, he flips any singular reading of the legendary figure. In a small 2005 performance, Lai took on the image of “The Bride” as performed by Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, vamping in a men’s bathroom mirror in a Lee-inspired tracksuit. Using a cross-racial, gender-bending, temporal collapse, he complicated the fixed premises on which the original icon was built.

    For his performance at Southern Exposure, Lai turns to an intracultural dialogue, arranging a battle between living tradition and filmic showmanship. The conflict between older and newer guards arises as a familiar trope in the films Lai references. In Legendary Lions, the competitive pairing leaves open the possibility for triumph and failure for either group. By raising the question of tradition in his larger grouping of referents, Lai undercuts the bedrock of cultural essentialisms, suggesting that their existence is as potentially momentary as any other point of connection. No matter how fierce the dance-off, Lai reminds us of the generative possibilities of a cultural representation like Lee and that they can also be a source of connection, wonder, and play.
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
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  14. #44
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    More from Soomi Kim & Taimak

    See our latest e-zine review: New Life in LAST LIFE by our own Douglas Ferguson.
    Gene Ching
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  15. #45
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    Laughing in the Wind: A Cautionary Tale in Martial Arts

    Just got this press release:
    Yangtze Repertory Theatre of America to present the American premiere of "Laughing in the Wind: A Cautionary Tale in Martial Arts," based on a novel by Jin Yong, adapted and directed by Joanna Chan.

    WHERE AND WHEN:
    April 30 to May 23
    Theater for the New City, 155 First Avenue (at E. 10th Street)
    Presented by Yangtze Repertory Theatre of America
    Th - Sat at 7:30 PM, Sun at 3:00 PM, additional performance Wed., May 19 at 7:30 pm
    $25.00; $20.00 Seniors/Students; TDF accepted. 20% discount for groups of 10 and above.
    Box Office 347-574-4369; purchase tickets online at www.theaterforthenewcity.net or reserve by email: office@yangtze-rep-theatre.org
    Running time 2 hours plus a 15 minute intermission.
    List: THEATER/OFF-OFF BROADWAY
    CRITICS ARE INVITED on or after Sunday, May 2.

    The play is a martial arts epic with a fighting/kicking ensemble of 18 actors playing 26 speaking parts. It is based on a story about friendship and love, deception and betrayal, ambition and lust for power which was originally titled "Xiao Ao Jiang Hu" when it was published in 1967, and has been variously translated as "The Smiling, Proud Wanderer" and "State of Divinity."

    In the story, various parties are vying to recover a scroll that contains a powerful martial arts technique that can propel the owner to premiere leadership, but are eventually outdone by a young lad, Little Fox, who is devoid of all ambitions. The story deals with Little Fox's journey: his development as a swordsman and his witnessing the various intrigues which take place. Many warlords and fighters from six clans lust after the manuscript, among them the leader of a so-called Five Mountains Alliance. Despite the popularity of Jin Yong's novel, the symbolism of the six clans has never been coherently interpreted. The Five Mountains Clan might be taken to be an indirect reference to the five sacred mountains in China. The various clans have also been interpreted as a parody of one people with multiple political systems. Jin wrote, in a 1983 epilogue to his book, that the rival clans in his book personify "political prototypes" he observed in China during the Cultural Revolution, without being specific allegories to any particular persons or groups. He asserted, "Only what is rooted in our common humility can withstand the test of time and have lasting value." The book has been adapted into three major movies ("The Swordsman," 1991; "The Swordsman II," 1992; and "The East is Red," 1993) and a 40-episode TV series ("Laughing in the Wind"). The title "Laughing in the Wind" refers to a piece of music jointly created in friendship by two elderly swordsmen of opposing clans, which eventually leads to their tragic deaths.

    Jin's "Xiao Ao Jiang Hu" was originally serialized in his newspaper, the Ming Pao Daily of Hong Kong, as well as in 21 other newspapers in various languages. Its leading characters have sometimes surfaced in political dialogues around the world, with one politician accusing another of acting like Master Yue (hypocritically) or Master Zho (harboring secret ambitions to become dictator).

    The Martial Arts genre is a relatively recent literary development in the context of thousands of years of literary tradition in China. Joanna Chan suspects that its unsurpassed popularity, with the recurring them of revenge, may have an impact on the Chinese psyche – an acceptance without question the vengeful spirit of an-eye-for-an-eye, however justified the cause, and a cynicism towards the rule of law.

    Joanna Chan originally received permission to adapt Jin Yong's book in 1989 for the International Arts Festival in Hong Kong, while she was Artistic Director of Hong Kong Repertory Theatre. The premiere, performed in Cantonese, was attended by Jin himself.

    Now, Yangtze has requested and received permission from Jin Yong to restage the production in New York with different designers, a multi-ethnic cast (Asian, African-American and Caucasian, all martial artists and dancers) and an original score, with bilingual subtitles. The production will be in English, Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese, with Chinese and English subtitles.
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

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