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Usually one hates to admit he or she is wrong on a prediction. But I, for
one, am more than glad to say I did not get it right on the Zhang Yimou-directed
extravaganza for last night's Beijing Olympics opening ceremony.
He achieved something I thought he was both incapable of and unwilling to
do.
To start with, he went for the high-brow - if we use the CCTV New Year's
eve gala as a benchmark - a risky move considering the size of the audience. Of
course there was plenty to please the senses, but movable type printing and
ancient paintings seemed too archaic a subject. Hey, it turned out to be some of
the most ingenious moments of the evening.
The concept of an ink painting was exactly what I said Zhang and his team
would never dare choose. The distilled colors of black and white are simply the
opposite of his favorite color scheme of bright red and yellow, China's de
rigueur choice for celebration. I do not know how much pressure he had to
withstand before he could convince people that dancers clad in pitch black
imitating brush strokes or in white doing the tai chi would be a good idea.
It seems that Zhang and company were inspired by the 2004 Athens show,
which did not aim to win over people with no knowledge of the ancient
civilization. While sculpture was the manifestation in Greece, Zhang resorted to
Chinese painting, upon whose abstract lines a colorful world emerged, including
the not surprising Peking Opera and the very well produced "Ritual Music", where
grand and regal styles of the Tang Dynasty literally rose and reached for the
sky.
There was not as much hi-tech as I had expected, especially after watching
the opening ceremony of the 2006 Doha Asian Games. The mythological figures such
as Pangu, Nuwa and Houyi were nowhere in sight. They certainly would have wowed
us - or the child in us. Was this a technological factor is an aesthetic one?
The fast moving and sudden appearance of large props in a vast arena visible
from all four sides no doubt presented a daunting task. On second thought, they
would not have fit into the current theme, which seemed to be from ancient glory
to future glory.
The show did make use of the vertical space, such as the flying dance
girls, the astronauts, the giant globe, and the encircling panel in the ceiling
that forms a clever "crown" where images constantly evolved to compliment the
action on the floor. However, the best action indeed took place on solid ground,
where both old-style shape formations and new surprises coalesced into one.
Now that I have listed my errors, I will run down the list of what I got
right or almost right. Sarah Brightman is close to Celine Dion in terms of power
ballads, and Liu Huan was on the shortlist I mentioned. It was a safe bet, which
deprived us of the shock of seeing a Chinese folk-style warbler or a total
unknown.
Harmony was brought up more than once, and emphasized in the Confucius and
Taoist numbers. The image of thousands of Confucius look-alikes, the word formed
by the human-formed movable type, the cosmic atmosphere of Lang Lang's piano
solo, the doves, the sights and sounds of Mother Nature, the 2,008 smiling faces
from all over the world - all pointed to the omnipresent force of harmony.
Still, I regret the image of phoenix was passed over. A dancer or a group
of dancers in one phoenix costume could have parachuted into the stadium, if
rising up is too cumbersome. But hey, this was more innovative and ideology-free
than I had expected. I have no reason to complain. |
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发表于 2016-7-9 23:51:50