The National Ballet of China’s performance was the Aspirin to the headache produced by the previous avant-garde act. As soon as tonal music started playing again, I could feel my body relaxing back into my seat.
I probably should have read the program before the performance. I went headfirst into The Peony Pavilion thinking like Sherlock Holmes trying to deduce the plot of the story. But the Chinese dancers expressed their art so skillfully I could follow along with the emotions of the tale (if not the specifics of the storyline). I was able to see and feel the mysticality (and creepiness), passion, and pain of the characters and setting.
The dance performance felt like a mini opera without singing (I guess like a classic ballet, then). The costumes were lavish and the staging was minimalistic. The costumes specialized and grouped characters as they were meant to be- peasants (I’m assuming they were) moved as a group and wore a plain uniform of black bottom, green top. The supernatural yin-and-yang characters complemented each other’s with their black and white outfits. The lovers and parents (in the beginning and ending) donned lush and extravagant embroidered silks and flowing materials.
The music, after thinking to look in the program for a description of it (after Elijah and I puzzled over the resemblance different parts of the music made to different pieces and composers), was really masterfully arranged. I could not tell at all during the performance that the music, seeming like one coherent piece, was actually composed of different movements from different musical pieces. This included music by Ravel, Debussy, Holst, Prokofiev, and finished with the Pines of Rome by Respighi. Again, the pieces move so seamlessly into each other and matched the ongoing plot so well.
In addition to contrasting terrifically with Trisha Brown’s act, Son of Gone Fishin’, it provided a spectacle that the audience went wild for. It fitted as a closing act, with its fantastical explosion of flower petals at the end of the performance.