Trip the light dynastic– Five millennia come alive at the Chinese New Year Spectacular

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG, the Montreal Mirror, Canada, Jan 10, 2008-

“The Year of the Rat symbolizes new beginnings and change,” says Francis Madore, spokesperson for, no, not Barack Obama, but for “not-for-profit, independent, Chinese-language television” company New Tang Dynasty TV, which is presenting the Chinese New Year Spectacular at Place des Arts this week (though the actual Chinese New Year falls on Feb. 7 this year).

(photo by the Montreal Mirror)

“The legend says that at the time of the new year, the Buddha called upon all the animals to meet him, so he could assign them roles. Only 12 showed up, and each was given a year, so people born in that year would get the characteristics of that animal. People born under the year of the rat tend to be leaders, pioneers, conquerors. They’re usually charming, passionate, charismatic, practical and of course hardworking, like you know the rat is.”

The charm quotient of rats could be debated, but the dedication of the Divine Performing Arts Troupe, composed largely of Chinese émigrés and ex-pats, is unquestionable. Among the most successful touring shows in the world, the Spectacular strives to revive five millennia of Chinese art and history without fudging the specifics.

“The movements of the dancers, the costumes they wear, the backdrops—every detail is weighed and studied so that they’re as authentic as possible,” says Madore.

“The Chinese people themselves have been disconnected from this ancient culture, which was governed by dynasties. Each dynasty had a specific culture, depending on the emperor. These are people who had high beliefs in gods and adhered to high standards of morality, and they believe that’s what enabled them to develop these rich, glorious civilizations of ancient China. Now, with the Cultural Revolution and even in historical textbooks, all this information has been altered or removed. So it’s really interesting for both Chinese and Western audiences.”

The show touches on the Tang, Qing and Song dynasties, says Madore, “and on top of that, it goes into depicting some ethnic groups that prevailed in China. For example, there’s the traditional Mongolian cup dance, where the ladies carry cups with actual milk in them on their heads. The Manchurian ethnicity is also depicted, and the Tibetans.”

Madore adds a final but not inconsequential note, an unsurprising one given the Falun Dafa Association’s collaboration on the show. “The 5,000 years of Chinese history that are covered are from the ancient times, but also modern times. Some scenes depict the human-rights issues in China in the last 50 years, so there’s something to learn there too.”

At Place des Arts (Montreal, Canada) Tuesday to Thursday, Jan. 15–17, 2008,
7:30 p.m. (also 2:30 p.m. on Feb. 16), $38–$158, all ages

- Original report from the Montreal Mirror

City Name List for the Divine Performing Arts Chinese Spectacular Worldwide Tour 2008

Click the city name below for more detail information of the biggest Chinese culture event– global tour show 2008 of Divine Performing Arts Chinese Spectacular in your city.

North America

US:
Atlanta, GA
Atlantic City, NJ
Baltimore, MD
Boston, MA
Charlotte, NC
Chicago, IL Fri. Jan 25~Sat. Jan 26, 2008
Dallas, TX
Denver, CO
Detroit, MI Tue. Jan 22, 2008
Fort Lauderdale, FL
Greensboro, NC
Honolulu, HI
Las Vegas, NV Mon. Jan 21, 2008
Los Angeles, CA Fri. Jan 18~ Sun. Jan 20, 2008
Minneapolis, MN Thu. Jan 24, 2008
New York City: NTDTV Chinese New Year Splendor, Wed. Jan 30 ~ Sat. Feb.9, 2008
Philadelphia, PA
Phoenix, AZ
San Diego, CA
San Francisco, CA Wed. Jan 23~ Sat. Jan 26, 2008
Schenectady, NY
Seattle, WA
St. Petersburg, FL

Canada:
Calgary,
Edmonton
Montreal
Ottawa
Toronto, Fri. Jan 18~ Sun. Jan 20, 2008
Vancouver

Asia - Pacific
Japan: Nagoya Osaka Tokyo

Korea:Pusan Seoul

Taiwan:Kaohsiung Taichung Tainan Taipei

Singapore:Singapore

Indonesia:Jakarta

Australia:

Adelaide Brisbane Canberra Melbourne Sydney

New Zealand:
Auckland

Europe
Germany:Berlin Duisburg Frankfurt Hamburg
Holland:Den Haag
United Kingdom:London
Belgium:Antwerpen
France:Paris
Austria:Vienna
Slovakia:Bratislava
Czech:Prague
Sweden:Linkoping Stockholm
Italy:Milan

- Source: http://www.bestchineseshows.com/

Related:
- 2008 Show Coming: Divine Performing Arts Chinese Spectacular in Vancouver (video)

Vancouver Sun: Year of Pig offers performance feast

Lloyd Dykk, Vancouver Sun, Tuesday, January 02, 2007-

CHINESE NEW YEAR SPECTACULAR

Queen Elizabeth Theatre

Wednesday, 2 p.m. and 8 p.m.

$30 - $80

604-628-0303 (Chinese)

604-628-1620 (English) or 604-280-4444 (Ticketmaster)

- - -

According to the Chinese calendar it is the Year of the Pig coming up, which signifies good fortune, kindness, honesty and tolerance. And you may want to feast on the entertainment of the second annual Chinese New Year Spectacular when it comes to the Queen Elizabeth Theatre for two shows Wednesday.

It sounds like the sort of extravaganza you’d normally see just a few blocks away at the Centre for Performing Arts in Vancouver: A celebration of what’s known as China’s golden age, the Tang Dynasty, a remarkable time in China’s 5,000-year history.

The three-century-long Tang, with present-day Xi’an as its then most populous city in the world, reached a high point of cosmopolitan culture and prosperity, largely the result of military exploits. From this show, purportedly based on the Tang, you can expect epic tales, dragons, drummers and beautiful dances from about 100 young performers in all, most of them overseas Chinese who live in New York. But it might be a good idea to try to see the Tang through a 21st-century filter.

In its four years of existence the show seems to have been a success, growing from appearances in five cities at its beginning to this year’s 28 cities across four continents, a run that will total 67 performances. (In Canada it goes to Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto after the Vancouver appearance.)

It’s put together in New York in a production by New Tang Dynasty Television, based in New York. It was ranked No. 7 in Billboard magazine’s top 10 shows in 2006, based on shows that ran last year at New York’s Radio City Music Hall. (… read more from Vancouver sun’s report )

Chinese Culture: Arts, Poem, Painting and Color

The Meaning of Colors in Ancient China, NTDTV-

Chinese culture created a close and binding relationship between color and ceramics, murals, paintings, and poetry…even city planning. After the Ming Dynasty, only the Emperor’s relatives could have homes with red walls and yellow roof tiles. His subjects lived in houses with blue bricks and roof tiles. However, carved beams and columns used rich hues. Many buildings used black tiles and white walls.

In the Dun Huang Caves, dating back 1500 years, there are more than 10,000 mural fragments of various dynasties. Each dynasty used different color combinations. Murals of the Northern Wei Dynasty incorporated red and brown, supplemented by blue and black. Tang Dynasty murals featured yellow. Song Dynasty murals were dominated by blue and green.

Highly-skilled Chinese paintings express the artist’s idea through the ink’s thickness and thinness. The practice is described as “ink holds five colors” and “shinning brilliantly without the usage of bright colors.” “Ink holds five colors” refers to five ink shades—charred, thick, ash, thin and clear. In a painter’s eye, the color of water is clearly different in each season. In “Lin Quan Gao Zhi” (A Book about Paintings), Guo Xi wrote, “The color of water is green in spring, bluish green in summer, aqua in autumn, and black in winter.”

As recorded in “Selections of Famous Paintings of the Tang Dynasty”, Emperor Xuan Zong praised Li Si Xun’s landscape paintings with their strong green and blue hues as “the best landscape paintings in the nation.” The ancient Chinese people were good at extracting colors from minerals and plants. This type of painting is often outlined with brilliant paints extracted from various minerals such as Shi Qing (azurite), Shi Lu (mineral green), Shi Huang (mineral yellow), Zhu Sha (cinnabar), Yan Zhi (cochineal), Qian Fen (lead powder), and Ni Jin (golden paint). With these advances in painting, the result became bright and rich.

Chinese poems and paintings share the same origin. The relationship is described as “a painting recites a poem and a poem draws a painting.” Poets could expertly describe color and poems often alluded to vibrant colors. Poet Cui Hu created wonderfully colorful scenes as shown in two lines from his poem, “Ti Du Cheng Nan Zhuang (“For the Southern Village in the Capital”). These lines express the beauty of colors for people to ponder for thousands of years:
Last year inside this court,
peach flowers reflect each other in red.

Poet Bai Juyi wrote in “Verse on River Mu,”

Paving in water is a streak of the setting sun,
turning red is the rustling river

A“silk radical” character attached to another Chinese character can describe different shades of the color of silk. According to “Shuo Wen Jie Zi” (Explaining Characters and Expressions), 24 characters describe colors of silk fabrics including red, green, purple, deep red (crimson), bright red, dark red (dark purple), light blue, orange red, white, and so on. From this, we can surmise the variety and richness of silk fabrics from the silk manufacturing industry in ancient China. During the Warring States Period, lacquerware decoration reached a highly skilled level. The state of Qi was especially well-known for its brightly colored silk products. Many of the silk goods unearthed from ancient tombs have maintained their original colors of brown, red, black, purple, and yellow.

Chinese pottery and lacquerware uses rich color even more extensively. The formulation of richly colored glazes infuses these pieces with a brilliant and lustrous appearance. From the renowned tri-colored glazed pottery of the Tang Dynasty (Tang San Cai) to five-colored glazed pottery, from the celadonware to white glazedware, from white and blue porcelain to ceramics with lustrous glazes, color plays a key role in the creation of pottery. Ancient Chinese pottery-making reached its zenith in colored and black pieces. Chinese lacquerware had exquisite patterns and dazzling color.

Ancient Chinese people understood that color feeds the spirit and expresses the depth of human experience. The 2007 Chinese New Year Spectacular celebrates color in all it intensity and richness through lighting, costumes and scenery and harkens back to the traditional meanings of color.

Celebrate color! Celebrate a spectacular Chinese New Year!

- For the Celebration in Vancouver, Canada, please check out this post:

Video: Chinese New Year Spectacular coming back to Vancouver