The Stage

Raise the Red Lantern

Published Monday 4 August 2008 at 10:05 by Gavin Roebuck

Adapted from Zhang Yimou’s film and set in the thirties, Raise the Red Lantern in three acts tells of a powerful mandarin and his wife, played by Lu Na, a young student forced into being his second concubine while in love with an actor from the Peking Opera (Sun Jie) and the first concubine, whose jealousy brings about their downfall. This feudal dramatic narrative story has a clever stage design by Zeng Li and lovely costume design by Jerome Kaplan.

While the dancers are excellent, some of the choreography at times seems almost trite, except for the rape scene and when the red lanterns, symbols of the Master’s oppressive domination, are destroyed. Zhu Yan as the student and Meng Ningning as the first concubine have a strong technique and artistic gifts and Huang Zhen showed a powerful presence as the Master.

With an infusion of some Peking Opera dance movements, fighting elements and acrobatics, this was a mixture of styles indeed - some of the choreography seemed influenced by German contemporary dance techniques.

The company has a strong male corps de ballet and the women have an exquisite sense of line and delicate grace.

This is a more genuine representation than their attempts to copy the Russian style of ballet and it will be interesting to see this company develop their work, perhaps using a combination of Chinese and Western balletic traditions to create their own stylistic form rather than a copy of others.