I saw the Beijing Modern Dance Company on Saturday night. They did a piece called "Rear Light" which was set to the music of Pink Floyd's "The Wall". There were certainly some very powerful moments, and the concept was interesting, but all in all I felt that it sorta lacked continuity. Even though I know the story, it was hard to follow the BMDC's interpretation of it. I basically understood which parts of "The Wall" were relevent to modern Chinese youth -- I got the anger and I got the relentless optimism in the face of the opression of the Communist regime. That all makes sense. I didn't get the opening in which a line of Chinese schoolkids are lining up to get into a show, and one of them can't find her ticket. She gets bounced out, but then finds herself to be the star of the show. Huh? I think it has something to do with watching and being watched, but how does that relate to what they're trying to say about the Chinese identity? There were some similar small things that I found myself glossing over.

Technically, of course the performance was perfect. They didn't use a lot of "tricks" - not much jumping or extreme contortions or the acrobatics that we generally think of when we see Chinese dance performances. But it was the repetition of certain movements or certain sequences throughout the piece that was so powerful. One image I can't strike from my head is a scene where there are six pairs of dancers onstage. In each pair, one dancer is depicting a soldier with a gun, and the other one runs right up under the "gun", embraces the soldier, steps back, and tries again. This was repeated until the soldier fell to the ground, overtaken by love, peace, and the perseverence of the human spirit. That statement, to me, said a lot about the motivation of the dance company as a whole. It's a troupe that exists without any government subsidies. In fact it probably exists in spite of the government. And it's touring the world using a contraversial piece of art to represent what that government probably doesn't want the world to know about its youth culture - that it's passionate, angry, and wants a better future.