Review by Yanmei Bowie
I went to see the sensational Legend of the White Snake four times at C ARTS in Edinburgh, performed by Northern Kunqu Opera Theatre from Beijing, China.
With a history of over six hundred years, kunqu evolved from a music and vocal style local to Kunshan (near Suzhou and Shanghai in China), and later dominated Chinese theatre from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. In 2001, UNESCO listed kunqu as one of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.
As an art form, kunqu combines song, dance, martial art, acrobatics, fine art and poetry into an integral whole. The music is mild, exquisite, sentimental and melodious, and it is commonly known as shuimodiao (‘water-polished melody’). The singing requires a lot of control and changes in rhythm. There are specific character roles, and each role type possesses its own vocal style and movement vocabulary.
The performers in this show are obviously trained by the top of the top masters and experts. Their singing, acting, eye and facial expressions, dance movements and costume are all extremely striking and precise. The quality of choreography is outstanding, especially in the lengthy, energetic and very stylised fight scenes, which include sword dance and fights, repeated illusion turns, barrel turns, backhands springs and aerials. The plot line is easy to follow, and the opera is highly comical.
The one let down for this piece was the venue and technical facilities. There were moments where I thought the singing would be better heard and better appreciated if the performers were provided with clip-on mini microphones, as without, the musical ensemble drowns out the performers’ singing. There is also the complete absence of a set to lighten the total blackness of the performance space. According to Ms Yang Fengyi, head of Northern Kunqu Opera Theatre, this was ‘restricted by the venue’.
Overall, it’s a five-star experience, and I cannot wait to see them again. And as a Chinese performing artist living in the diaspora, I am proud and glad that precious and valuable traditional art forms like this have been preserved so well and are being passed on.
*
This review is published by Traditional Dance Forum of Scotland as part of our Traditional Dance Criticism Course, led by dance writer and editor Róisín O’Brien and supported by dance scholar and editor Dr Wendy Timmons.
Yanmei Bowie is one of the six applicants, alongside Yuxi Jiang, Catherine Coutts, Alena Shmakova, Inesa Vėlavičiūtė and Vassia Bouchagiar-Walker who were selected to participate in this pilot edition of the course in 2024.
Legend of the White Snake was performed at C ARTS, Edinburgh 12-15 August 2024 as part of International Festival Fringe. It was one of the shows with trad dance roots across the Edinburgh’s summer festivals we hand-picked to review. Images courtesy of the featured artists and contributors.
