Chinese Ballet

I went to see the Peking Ballet Troupe on Thursday.  Their performance was entitled “The Red Star,” but without a program (which cost 6€), I don’t know to what the title was referring.  Quite frankly, without the program, I didn’t have any clue what any of the acts meant, so I spent most of my spare mental energy making up fun titles for all the numbers.  Without further ado, here is my list of titles.  (The least funny titles correspond to numbers that I was most interested in.)

1.) Green Willow Whirlwind Girls
2.) Tibetan Warriors (music: Tuvan throat singing)
3.) Chopstick Fetish Romeo (either I really don’t know something about the Chinese psyche or they are a LOT more passionate about their eating utensils than Westerners)
4.) Bowl Girls (okay, so I wasn’t actually all that interested in this number, but neither could I think up a funny title for it)
5.) Me Hunt Big Mosquito (music: really annoying hummed, mosquito-sounding)
6.) Bedroom Girl (this beautiful, lyrical, extremely flexible girl, I was amused to note, used what has to have been a borrowed piano stool as one of her props)
7.) Go West, Young Communists (music: oddly classical)

Intermission – spent finding a piece of paper and borrowing a two-cent pen from a snippy woman who insisted that I had to use it right there in front of her (she obviously thought that I would steal it), so that I could write down the acts from the first act for future reference

8.) Fabulous, Phallic Pheasant Feathers (“fabulous” as in “absolutely fahbulous, dahling”; probably my least favorite number of the entire production)
9.) Red and Yellow Wind Girl (my favorite female-centered number)
10.) Amazingly Acrobatic Warriors (this was my favorite male-centered number)
11.) Just Cut Your Hair Already, Okay?
12.) Insane Asylum Inhabitant
13.) Red Fans Go to War

I’m sorry if this description seems a bit flippant.  I really liked the show, in general, but in a very superficial way.  I didn’t understand any of the symbolism that presumably abounded in the show, and without the program I was simply reduced to admiring the dancing just as dancing.  But, since a lot of it was very interpretational-style dancing, it would be extremely difficult to describe it.  So I will just have to let you draw your own conclusions from my titles!  ::grin::