Hidden dragon
* Ashleigh Wilson
* From: The Australian
* August 14, 2010 12:00AM
THERE'S a chill in the air. Everyone can feel it. It's always cool at this time of year at CarriageWorks, the contemporary arts space in inner Sydney, and this cavernous room isn't bucking the trend.
The crew is watching Wang Fei, the petite acrobatic rocket in the centre of the room, who slashes her sword and leaps in the air and slashes the sword again. There's movement all around as others kick, spin, cartwheel and slide in a dizzy combination of dance and physical combat.
Considering what's at stake, the long morning warm-ups are important. "If Wang Fei pulls a muscle," says director Rachael Swain, "she can't be replaced."
Wang looks relaxed. These sessions have been intense, but it seems they're nothing she can't handle. At 23 she's already a martial arts veteran, having competed at elite levels of a discipline called wushu for more than a decade and developed an expertise in tai chi, which she practises twice daily. These skills are now being directed towards an acting career in television and film and whatever else comes up, such as this demanding hybrid performance taking shape around her.
Not that you'd know it from looking at her. Certainly pretty, charming and fit, but gentle, small and physically unimposing.
She smiles. "You look at them," she says of martial arts experts, "and they look skinny and small but actually they are very strong."
There was something about Wang, too, that appealed to Swain, the co-artistic director of Stalker Theatre Company, a physical theatre organisation based in Sydney. The casting process for her new production, Shanghai Lady Killer, took two years. Eventually she chose Wang to play the central role in the show, which will have its premiere at the Brisbane Festival in September. The show, commissioned by the Brisbane and Melbourne festivals, will be seen in Melbourne next year and also tour Europe.
For Wang, who has starred in a film produced by Jackie Chan, the show is an opportunity to develop her acting and expose her talents to a wider audience. For Swain, her presence brings an elusive intensity to the show.
"The reason I chose her was that she accesses power in her body in a way that's really different to Western physical performers," Swain says. "She has this amazing fluid power in the way she performs martial arts, but also a real passion."
Written by Australian filmmaker Tony Ayres, Shanghai Lady Killer is the first time the company has used martial arts as a central element in one of its productions. It seems almost inevitable for Swain, a former fencing champion who gave up the sport "cold turkey" before the Barcelona Olympics to apply herself to the performing arts. "I think I always had a bit of an unrequited sword-fighting epic waiting to come out."
Shanghai Lady Killer is a genre piece that draws on film noir and wuxia, a Chinese martial art fiction style as seen in the films Kill Bill and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The setting is Sydney in the near future: China has become the global superpower and an Australian detective is hired to track down a Chinese assassin targeting a Shanghai-born Australian mayor. But he falls in love with the assassin, forcing him to decide whether to bring her to justice. Meanwhile, the mayor's wife emerges as an influential force. "It's very much a piece about female power in multiple forms," Swain says.
Wang is one of two martial arts experts in the 13-member cast, and the only one brought in from China. The others include circus performers, dancers and actors.
Wang came to Swain's attention after she appeared in Wushu, a 2008 film produced by Chan and featuring Hong Kong action star Sammo Hung. The Mandarin-language film follows a group of wushu students who grew up together in a martial arts academy in China.
"The story of Wushu the movie, it's like my experience growing up," Wang says.
Born in Beijing, Wang started wushu training at the age of nine. She quickly developed a talent for it, leaving her family and friends to train full-time at a wushu academy two hours from home. She remained there for seven years, winning gold at a world wushu championship in Henan province, among other accolades.
"If you learn wushu, it's good for your body, your heart," says Wang, speaking through one of the performers, who has been brought aside to act as a translator.
It has also been helpful for her ambitions as an actor. Her first roles were supporting parts in Chinese television before she was cast in a starring role in the action film. She says she was drawn to Shanghai Lady Killer because it gave her a chance to try her hand at contemporary dance.
After the show she will return to Beijing to appear in a Chinese television series. From there, she would like to work on more films. She wants to "to try all different kinds of characters in movies", she says, "not just martial arts".
"I'm here to do this show, and while I'm doing it, I want to learn more English and let more Australian people know about Wang Fei," she says.
"After this one, maybe some director in Australia will want me back for an Australian film. But I will try my best for Australian audiences. Hopefully they'll like the show. Hopefully they'll like me."
Shanghai Lady Killer opens at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre on September 23 as part of the Brisbane Festival, which opens on September 4.