Ꮏ ӯ Southern USA
Southern USA Falun Dafa Association p r o u d ly p r e s e n t s
2009 world tour
Eisemann Center, Richardson February 2 - 4, 2009
A look at the magnificent cultural EVENT that's returning to Dallas - Fort Worth!
“Brilliant Choreography” – BroadwayWorld.com
M a s t er f ul music D o z e n s o f d a n c e r s Gorgeous cos t um e s Br e at h ta k i ng back drop s O n e u n f o r g e t t a b l e e x per ience
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A Performance 5,000 Years in the Making “The dances were graceful, delicate, and beautiful! There was something pure and bright and also very dignified about them. This show gave me a real sense of goodness and meaning in life.” – Anna Liceica, soloist, American Ballet Theatre
"Huge scenic projected backdrops are inspired—brilliant, the lighting is perfect … Inspiring… a visit to a magical Shangri-la." – Performing Arts INSIDER
Divine Performing Arts presents traditional Chinese culture as it was meant to be—a study in grace, fluidity, balance, and inner strength. A program of nearly 20 masterful dances and songs brings Asia's celebrated history to life on stage. Audiences thrill to the pounding drums of the Tang dynasty court, delight in the charm of ethnic folk dances, and are moved by powerful dance dramas that reflect a contemporary China. Complementing the performers are state-of-the-art digital backdrops and sumptuous authentically-designed costumes. Divine Performing Arts is a unique group of leading artists who share in a vision of reviving the best of traditional Chinese performing arts. The company is a triumph of collaboration, bringing together over a hundred of the world’s foremost classically trained Chinese dancers, choreographers, musicians, and vocalists. It also boasts the world’s only full orchestra that embraces both Western and Chinese instruments as its permanent members. Based in New York, the company is distinguished by its conscious effort to present Chinese culture free from the influence of China’s communist regime, which has abused and impoverished the arts for decades. The group aspires to create performances that not only entertain, but more deeply educate, enrich, and inspire. The company’s rich repertory is drawn from the pages of history, universal themes, and the world around us. All the choreography and music are original. Copyright © 2008 Divine Performing Arts. All photos included herein are owned by Divine Performing Arts, and provided expressly to New Tang Dynasty Television for use in print media. All rights reserved. No photos may be otherwise reproduced, stored, altered, or distributed without prior and express written permission.
"It was spectacular - with gorgeous multi-colored costumes, athletic dancers, lovely traditional Chinese music and fantastic singers... gorgeous...a joyous celebration." -- DC Theatre Scene
“This show is really out of this world! A great treat! What a thrill, such great beauty, fantastic backdrop, wonderful talent!” Christine Walevska, worldrenowned cellist
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Ꮏ ӯ Southern USA
“The Best! The Best! The Best!” -- Charles Wadsworth, founder of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, New York
“The performances are inspired, the costumes and scenery enchanting, and the show as a whole a delight to experience. And besides its professional excellence, the [show] exudes a wonderfully positive karma. These beautiful, gifted people are expressing something that's both pure and good.” -- Philadelphia Weekly
“I couldn’t help shedding tears. As an overseas Chinese living in Indonesia, I have no chance to get in touch with Chinese culture. It’s a very touching experience to reconnect to my heritage.” – Henny Sandari, visiting NYC from Jakarta, Indonesia
“We were in tears during one of the acts... Each act was like a chapter, like a piece of the whole story. The show was a beautiful story.” – Vincent Forras, NYC firefighter (once buried alive at Ground Zero during a search-and-rescue mission)
"A spectacle from its very first moment. … an array of diverse and delightful dances… eye-pleasing formations, flowing arms, small, scampering steps and serene, seemingly divinely inspired faces… left its audience with the tranquil sensation of having witnessed something both enlightening and resplendent." – ExploreDance
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Rising From the Ashes The unlikely renewal of traditional Chinese culture
By John Augustyn A few years ago, 69-year-old Rutang Chen could hardly have imagined himself bowing before the applause of a 6,000-large capacity crowd—much less at New York’s Radio City Music Hall. Chen, one of China’s most accomplished cellists of the last forty years, had watched the arts he so loved be decimated under communist rule. His wife had been hauled off to jail for having spiritual beliefs. So too had his son. He himself had once been made to do hard labor in the countryside, having been branded a “bourgeoisie artist.” Today Chen lives in New Jersey, reunited with his family, a renewed man. As conductor of Divine Performing Arts’s orchestra, Chen is part of a resurgence of Chinese culture that is happening, of all places, in the West. The Divine Performing Arts orchestra, which combines both eastern and west-
ern musical traditions, has together with the company’s ensemble of elite dancers breathednewlifeintoChineseculture.Add to the mix some of China’s leading classical singers, and the chemistry on stage is astonishing. But perhaps most fascinating of all is the tale that lies behind the performances—a tale of tragedy, perseverance, hope, and renewal. Culture, Not Communism If one wants to know what makes a Divine Performing Arts performance so unique, the people who make up the show, such as Rutang Chen, are a good place to start. What sets these artists apart—be they dancers, designers, choreographers—is theprofoundaffinitytheyshareforChina’s classical heritage. They are people who have gone to great lengths to not just study, but also embody and realize the values and ideals that made for premodern
“Spectacular, riveting, really enjoying it, quite wonderful... Really quite intriguing and beautiful to watch... I’ve been to China, but I’ve never been treated to this level of sophisticated entertainment.” – Ottawa Mayor Larry O’Brien
China’s splendor. Many of the artists, for instance, make an active practice of traditional Asian disciplines such as meditation, or “mindful speech” and cultivating benevolence—things celebrated by sages of China past. While most contemporary Chinese artists look forward for inspiration, these artists look back. In China under communist rule, traditional culture has been assaulted and denounced for what are now several long decades. The decade spanning 1966–76 witnessed Mao Zedong’s “Cultural Revolution” unleash Red Guard soldiers on every possible vestige of China’s traditional past—from Confucius’ temple to Buddha statues, calligraphers, and libraries. The motto of the day was “Smash the old world!” China’s rich cultural traditions were seen as an obstacle to the ruling Communist Party’s legitimacy: whereas traditional culture esteemed traits like kindness, harmony, and piety, MarxismLeninism celebrated violence, atheism, “class struggle.” Thus the arts, as with many of their performers, lost their cultural mooring. Many around them simply lost interest. To do otherwise, after all, would be to risk political heresy. But if this weren’t enough, insult was soon added to injury: traditional culture was recycled now, with macabre twists. Traditional operas, plays, and stories were recreated to serve Mao Zedong’s political ends; what remnants of Chinese culture survived were masticated and re-engi-
“I have been to London, New York—halfway around the world—and this has to be the most beautiful show that I’ve seen… It’s so colorful, so intriguing, and you can hardly wait until the next number. I wish everyone could see this.”
– Jimmy Johnson, mayor of Seminole, Florida
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neered by the Party. Even today on Chinese state-run television one might see the bizarre spectacle of soldiers dancing—in full military regalia—a hybrid dance part Chinese, part ballet, part Maoist propaganda. Divine Performing Arts’s shows thus amount to more than just a breath of fresh air. They are a fresh start. The Divine Performing Arts Difference With Divine Performing Arts’ shows,
gone are the red flags of Chinese communism.GonearethepirouettingPeople’sLiberationArmysoldiers.Goneareallthoselyrics crafted to pluck the cords of patriotism. Instead, the upstart company serves up the best of China’s traditional arts in all of their beauty, vigor, and spiritual robustness. You can see it in each carefully synchronized step of the Divine Performing Arts dancers. You can hear it in the deep, soulstirring melodies of the two-stringed Erhu.
“A highly professional, well-thought out and beautifully produced presentation! This is not only entertainment, but a valuable cross-over cultural event." – Donn B. Murphy, Ph.D., President, The National Theatre, Washington, D.C.
And you can feel it in each act—that intangible ingredient that makes the difference between ordinary and magical. This is Chinese culture brought to life by people who live it, but it’s also culture meant to inspire, ennoble, and enrich its audience. The Divine Performing Arts show runs deep—true to the profound, millenia-old heritage from which it draws inspiration. You could say, too, that the show’s artists and creators know equally what they are not. Many of them, like Mr. Chen, went through the pain and humiliation of the Cultural Revolution. He and his wife were separated and sent to the countryside to be “reformed” through hard labor—simply for the crime of being artists who played the cello and flute. When they were allowed to play their
instruments again in the nation’s leading Central Symphony Orchestra of China, all normal music had to be scrapped in favor of “patriotic songs.” Other orchestras were disbanded altogether. Decades later, in 2000, Chen’s son was nearly beaten to death by police for practicing Falun Gong -- a traditional Chinese spiritual discipline. His wife, too was arrested by communist authorities in 2000 also for her Falun Gong practice. For the Chens and others, the Divine Performing Arts shows are a new beginning, one “outside of communist culture” they say. For audiences, the shows are an unprecedented window into another culture, time, and place that is breathtaking in its beauty.
“The show is wonderful, very warm and enjoyable… A show like this could only be created in a free country. People involved in cultural and artistic creations in Mainland China are hedged in with rules and regulations, and there is not an environment there that fosters real creativity. When you are bound like that, you lack the ability to create. What impressed me the most is that you have shown Americans and Westerners what real Chinese culture is like, what real Chinese culture is about and how our nation’s arts really look. These qualities have enriched this show. My heart was warmed the moment the curtain was opened. Thank you.” -- A university professor visiting from Mainland China
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Bringing Timeless Culture to Life
One of several Divine Performing Arts dances that deal with social issues, Candlelight Vigil commemorates those in China who have lost their lives for following their conscience. The young girl has lost her parents to the state-wrought persecution of Falun Gong. By M. Manyu Though it may now be in its third year, Divine Performing Arts continues to be a tale of firsts. The group—an unprecedented gathering of world-class dancers, choreographers, vocalists, and musicians—continues still to blaze new cultural trails. The firsts begin with the company’s vision. Divine Performing Arts (or “DPA”) coalesced mid-year in 2006 around a vision of cultural renewal. The hope: to rekindle the best of China’s classical dance heritage and share it with a broader audience.
DPA performers take to heart an ancient Chinese belief—that to create true art, there must first be inner beauty.
“We want to provide our audiences with an experience of consummate beauty and goodness,” says Timothy Wu, one of DPA’s principal dancers. “We want to bring out what is timeless and most precious from the culture.” In that spirit, DPA seeks to reach with its shows beyond merely entertaining, to exploring some of the deeper facets of our shared humanity. The performances not only thrill, but at once educate, enlighten, and inspire. Dance and music, with their capacity to vividly tell a story, have proved the perfect medium. The New York-based group, which performed to audiences
A robust costume design team labors painstakingly for months each year to create the visual feast of hues, both vibrant and subtle, that define DPA’s adornment. totaling around 600,000 last year, has been getting the highest of affirmations. “During last year’s shows,” says Regina Dong, “when the music would quiet down you could actually here people sniffling, people in tears.” They were moved by the performances. “That’s unusual in the performing arts these days.” Indeed, what might be called “the DPA difference” is a larger belief that the performing arts can not only harness the cultural depth of the classical arts, finding in them a wellspring of meaning, but invigorate anew such legacies with the means of our day, including high-tech. For one, a DPA performance is an entrée into a timeless past. Many of its dances provide viewers with a portal to a rich panoply of traditional Chinese values, ideals, and hopes. Audiences can step into the last days of China’s imperial past, the Qing Dynasty, with the elegant ladies of the Manchurian court; save the country with General Yue Fei, the paragon of courage; or simply pause to savor spring’s fresh forsythia blossoms. Many of the company’s dances are populated with the stories of character that have proven to be enduring lore. Evoking their power and drama on the stage, and in terms understandable to the average American, however, has demanded feats of innovation. One facet of this is the designing of highly-original cinematic backdrops, digitally designed specifically for DPA’s shows and meant to fully mine the artistic potential of emerging theatre technology. The backdrops range from placid pastoral scenes to stunningly animated Buddhist caves of Western China. Each serves to heighten that additional notch the drama of the dance or song at hand. The shows also have meant summoning new degrees of creative ferment on the costume front. A robust costume design team labors painstakingly for months each year to create the visual feast of hues, both vibrant and subtle, that define DPA’s adornment. All are original conceptions meant to match perfectly the tone and expression of each piece. At any given show you can expect everything from majestic imperial robes to spritely folk garb. “There’s hardly anyone who doesn’t say, ‘Wow—that was truly beautiful’ after the show,” says Ying Chen, a conductor with the company. “We understand beauty to be both inner and outer, you have to have both, and that’s something unique about our arts. People can sense it.” Another first for DPA has been the challenge of bringing to the stage several traditions of Asian dance—namely,
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those of Chinese classical dance as well as Chinese folk and various forms of ethnic dance. The difficulty has been mitigated in part by dint of several of the DPA artists’ unusual backgrounds. Many have mastered multiple traditions and are at the top of their field. Indeed, three of the world’s four top-ranked classical Chinese dancers belong to DPA. The same diversity holds true for DPA’s choreographers, who happily capitalize upon the multifaceted backgrounds of many of the company’s members. Another innovation is the creation of the world’s only orchestra whose permanent members consist of players of both Chinese and Western instruments. DPA’s orchestra, much like its dance, explores new artistic horizons in its fertile fusion of Chinese and European musical traditions. The two-stringed erhu complements the oboe as nowhere else for effects at times merry, haunting, and playful. “The orchestra means that the ear is treated to the same kind of feast as the eye,” says Emily Kutolowski, a principal oboist. Just what form exactly that feast takes is always something of a surprise, however. “Each year we have something new in store, and we like to keep it a surprise right up until opening night,” says Ms. Chen. “We enjoy the suspense that builds. It’s part of the sense of discovery the show creates.” This year there will again be surprises aplenty. DPA’s shows will feature nearly a dozen new and original dances, accompanied by an equal number of original musical scores. While DPA’s shows are an enlightening window into China’s past, they also break ground by exploring some of the important contemporary issues that face China, if not the world more broadly, today. Past years have given artistic treatment to themes of justice, ethnic identity, and spiritual belief under communist rule. Indeed, many of DPA’s artists have had to grapple with the steely realities of life under authoritarian rule in China. Before coming to the West, some were themselves the victims of state deprivations of the arts, which have even, at several points, reached the extreme of official suppression. “These are topics a lot of Chinese artists simply will not touch,” says pianist Peijong Hsieh. “That’s a shame, though, as the arts can do so much to explore and raise awareness of such issues.” Indeed, most Chinese artists fear repercussions from China’s communist Party-state should they probe the verities of contemporary Chinese social life. Often such inquiries reveal an unflattering picture of inequity and abuse. “The Party is afraid of the arts, of their power,” says Chen. “That’s why they try to control them. We’re doing just the opposite: we set them free. We let them be a force for good.” “It’s the best of so many things—past and present, real and ideal, light and heavy, East and West,” adds Kutolowski. “It’s hard not to be moved and inspired by the shows. We really see this as a new tradition. It speaks to people across cultures and continents.” This year Divine Performing Arts will bring its cultural vision to some 20-plus countries around the world for an estimated 100 shows.
To see if the shows are coming to your city, or to see about booking DPA, you can learn more online at www.divineperformingarts.org
An Orchestra Like No Other By Maria Chow, Ph.D The Divine Performing Arts Orchestra is a tour de force that combines Western and Chinese musical instruments to create a unique whole. Currently it is the world’s only orchestra that embraces both Western and Chinese instruments as permanent members. The practice of deploying Western and Chinese instrumental timbre simultaneously in musical compositions is about seventy years old. Since the 1920s, the Chinese have trod many paths in exploring compositional styles and orchestration techniques to capture China’s rich traditions, both old and new, with musical sounds. A hybrid fruit of the effort is the modern Chinese orchestra, modeled after the Western orchestra. It is composed of different families of Chinese instruments—pluckedstring, bowed-string, wind, and percussion; each family is structured into soprano, alto, tenor, and bass. Most of the instruments have been modified multiple times in order to achieve better intonation, brighter tone quality, and wider range in pitch and dynamics. Yet the kind of instrumental combination offered by the Divine Performing Arts Orchestra, another fruit of the experiment, has never ceased to be in vogue. At the foundation of the Divine Performing Arts Orchestra are the four families of Western orchestral instruments—strings, woodwind, brass, and percussion. This keeps the orchestra free from the intonation problems that incessantly haunt the modern Chinese orchestra in the performance of works
created with Western harmonization principles. Although based on the Western foundation, the Divine Performing Arts Orchestra also incorporates Chinese instruments such as the bamboo flute, the two-string erhu, and the plucked-string pipa. Each of these Chinese instruments is capable of invoking a wide range of imageries through different instrumental techniques and timbres. The flute, for instance, can summon to mind the scene of celestial maidens flying in the air with their flutes, or the view of a young boy shepherding his sheep in the field. Likewise, while the erhu can be extremely soulful with heart-touching melodies, its abil-
ity to glide from one register to another enables it to imitate sounds ranging from birds chirping to horses neighing. Moreover, the orchestra takes advantage of the large pull of percussion instruments used in China’s regional music, seasoning its performance with unique instrumental flavor. The audience should look forward to hearing its recently expanded percussion section with ethnic instruments acquired from Xinjiang and other areas in China. The orchestra includes current and former members of major orchestras in the United States, China, and Europe. Some members were previously persecuted in China’s simply for being classical musicians or for following traditional spiritual practices such as Falun Gong. But in spite of their diverse backgrounds, the members of the orchestra are brought together by their love of traditional Chinese arts and culture, which can be seen through the theatrical dances the orchestra accompanies. These focus on the values traditionally treasured by the Chinese people— such as honesty, humanity, loyalty, and a broad spirituality. Creatively combining Western and Chinese instruments and being dedicated to rekindling traditional arts and culture has become the hallmark of the Divine Performing Arts Orchestra. With its artistically ambitious performances each year, the orchestra is pioneering a new direction in the performing arts. Maria Chow is a music historian specializing in the music of twentiethcentury China.
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February 2 - February 4, 2009 “Flawless musical performances ...simply astounding to watch ...fascinating.” --OperaOnline
“Gorgeous, beautiful!” – WABC News
“Inspired!” – Philadelphia Weekly
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Date & Time February 2 - 4, 7:30pm
Presented by: Ꮏ ӯ Southern USA
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Eisemann Center 2351 Performance Dr. Richardson, TX 75082 (972) 744-4650 Online booking EisemannCenter.com
Prices $30, $40, $60, $80, $100 Location Eisemann Center 2351 Performance Dr. Richardson, TX 75082 (972) 744-4650 EisemannCenter.com