For Chinese who were born at 60’s and 70’s of last century, we grew up watching Chinese style acrobatics, ballet, model opera, even Chinese composed symphony and certain carefully selected foreign movies, no much choice but people were entertained in this way which is pretty “focused”, comparing with today’s social media which is just the opposite.
However, I recently went to two shows which are pretty amazing. One is 10/9/2015, I watched a low advertised performance by Chinese national Acrobatics, their surprising performance in Manhattan with extremely young actors/actress are not only technically skillful, but also cheerful and entertaining by both traditional and modern outfits. There is something really new about the Chinese young generations, who were mainly born in the 80’s and 90’s of last century. With openness, expressiveness, humor and even personal style. They really communicated with the audience at all times, they delivered a different culture with rich color and character.
Yesterday I went to my conductor friend Steven Fang’s performance, he picked “Chinese Butterfly”(????????as the middle piece, it was so magic to hear this old piece of music and it linked with my childhood memory of our old entertainment nerve. It is still the old music but with a contemporary feeling when the performance are female and male, different nationalities, although they are all very young with the most beautiful outfit to match this dramatic Chinese “Roemo and Juliet” love story.
Passion is something that won’t go away. It is so good to realize that traditional can be mixed with contemporary at such moment!
