Arguably the Asian ballet company with the most global outlook, Hong Kong Ballet has flown in The Butterfly Lovers, a tale often described as China’s Romeo & Juliet. The work of resident choreographer Hu Song Wei Ricky is buttressed by a towering score by composer Tian Mi, who built on motifs from the famous Butterfly Lovers’ Violin Concerto, and by austere yet glorious designs by Oscar-winning artist Tim Yip, of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fame.
The choreography flaunts the classical technique and dramatic instincts of this handsome and diverse company, making eloquent use of classical Chinese dance elements spliced by choreographer Mai Jingwen, who also streamlined the narrative to powerful effect.
The classic story features a villain from an aristocratic family who is promised in marriage to a young woman of similar lineage. Our heroine has bigger ambitions, however, dressing up as a boy in order to go to school and get the proper education only afforded to boys. While at school she falls for a scholar from a poor family, who at first has no idea that his new friend is a she. The bad guy bullies then kills the poor scholar. Rather than consent to a forced marriage, our heroine chooses death – upon which she and her true love are reincarnated as butterflies.
When Shanghai Ballet brought their production to the US, the villain was given the most exciting choreography. For Hong Kong Ballet, Hu and Mai dispense with this character: it is implied that our heroine Zhu Yingtai, danced by the effervescent Xuan Cheng, will be forced to marry someone suitable to her station in life, whom she despises. Her mother – Wang Qingxin, in a chilling performance – commands an army of enforcers to assassinate Zhu’s lover, Liang Shanbo (the dashing and impetuous Ma Renjie.) This brilliant edit shifts the focus from one villain to an entire society that will use violence if needed to preserve the patriarchy. Zhu’s father (the commanding Garry Corpuz) is equally complicit: he indulges his daughter’s ambition but betrays her in the end.
A confection of duets, trios and spellbinding ensemble scenes build tension, punctuated by comedy in Act 1. Zhu rejects the etiquette of the ladies of the Zhu household, who drape themselves across classic yoke-back chairs, wielding their hand mirrors and pointes with militaristic discipline. She prefers the horseplay of schoolboys who shove tables around the classroom and brandish bamboo scrolls and folding fans, marks of the literati.
A scene in which Zhu and Liang are assigned to share a bed – with the bed tilted vertically to highlight the deftly executed comic encounter – precedes some stirring pas de deux. Both are attired in flowing robes that give intrepid, spiraling lifts the effect of swirling eddies. Once transformed into butterflies, Zhu and Liang sport identical golden tunics. Costuming alone won’t democratize the art form, but Hu and Mai temper the paradigm of men in control by making the point that it is Zhu who initiates romance with Liang.
Terror mounts as her mother’s hitmen, in warrior-like tunics and topknots, stalk Liang. The assassination scene is highly stylized, to the thrum of chanting, traditional Chinese percussion, scraping strings and sinister brass. In the first of a pair of devastating death scenes, Ma performs a magnificent set of Graham falls, barrel turns and ground rolls en manège before alighting on the apron, gazing at us as if pleading with a higher power, a rueful violin bearing witness to his exhaustion, grief and dread. Come Zhu’s turn, she is dressed by servants for her wedding, flanked by menacing figures in white gowns with bloodstained hems, their heads veiled and faces obscured by macabre, height-doubling masks. Layers of jeweled robes, also bloodstained, and lavish headgear make Zhu virtually disappear under her costume.
The music with its rich sonorities burnished by wind and water and played live by the New York City Ballet Orchestra, with Lio Kuokman at the helm, is a triumph, conjuring ancient times as well as a bracing modernity. As do Yip’s oppressive hanging structures and lofty paneled screens, magnificently lit by Yeung Tsz Yan, that glide in and out to create spaces intimate or vast, sometimes dangerous, never entirely private, as spies lurk in the shadows.
A quarter-century after the handover of the British crown colony to China, at a time when Hong Kong has weathered pandemic and geopolitical whiplash,The Butterfly Lovers obliquely addresses cultural identity and the post-colonial fate of Western art forms. Through a symbolic language – musical, visual and movement – that defies easy cultural classifications, the ballet depicts authoritarianism and the redemptive capacity of love that does not seek power. As ballet in some countries lurches toward museum status, Hong Kong Ballet, boxing far above its weight, has found a way to tell a time-honored story with modern-day convictions.
