The Shanghai Ballet Started to Rehearse: A Sigh of Love
Audience will see another Hua Yang Nian Hua
(Chinese name for: A Sigh of Love) this September. This
time, the main characters will use their tiptoes to tell the story.
Yesterday, I saw in the Shanghai Ballet’s studio that the
Sino-France co-produced original ballet A Sigh of Love
started to rehearse. Since there is a movie also called Hua
Yang Nian Hua (Chinese name for: In the Mood for Love),
how would the ballet with the same Chinese name differ from the
movie? The President of Shanghai Ballet, Mr. Ha Muti answered
this question:
Different backgrounds: the ballet is set in Shanghai, not in Hong
Kong
In the synopsis of the ballet A Sigh of Love, the background
has been set in 1930s-1940s, Shi Ku Men, Shanghai. Mr. Ha Muti
explained that this is the largest difference between the ballet
and the movie, “our story happens in the ‘isolated
Shanghai’, not in the 1960s’ Hong Kong as it is in
the movie.” Of course, because they both have the same Chinese
name, it would easily make us think that they are the same story
though actually they are not.”
Although the settings are changed to “isolated
Shanghai” period, the story still have an implicit love
story, ‘Mr. Li went into a small hotel for refuge and wrote
novels. He wrote about his secret love to his neighbor Mrs. Wang
in his novel.’ This describes a similar relationship that
Zhou Muyun by Tony LEUNG Chiu Wai and Su Lizhen by Maggie Cheung
Man Yuk have in the movie. The ballet playwright Cao Lu Sheng
said the reason for this is that the ways of expressing love ‘remain
essentially the same despite all apparent changes’, “It
should be said that although both of them involve the same love
emotions, the backgrounds are totally different. In the ballet,
more than half of the sceneries are about war, which has not even
been shown in the movie.”
Copyright fight:The name ‘Hua Yang Nian Hua’ has no
copyright
Although settings and places are different, the Chinese names
are the same and human relationships are similar, will this ballet
have a ‘fight of copyright’ with the movie of Wong
Kar-Wei? Mr. Ha said that they had already had many preparations
and investigations, and the name of ‘Hua Yang Nian Hua’
has no copyright. “This name is not exclusively used by
the movie; as for the story, the prototype of the movie was from
a Japanese novel. Before we start to rehearse, we have contacted
Wong Kar-Wei who did not show any disagreement after knowing about
this.” Chao Lu Sheng emphasized that the song ‘The
Blossom Youth’ played many times in the movie was actually
about Shanghai during the war, so this time it is used in a right
place (ballet).
In the ballet, music and dance are especially important. Mr. Ha
told us that this ballet has a strong creation team including
the choreographer Mr. Bertrand d’At, Director of Ballet
de L ‘Opera National du Rhin, who once was the assistant
to the famous choreographer Maurice Bejart; the stage designer
is Mr.Jerome Kaplan, who also designed costumes for Ballet: Raise
the Red Latten. The two artists have visited Yu Garden, Duo
Lun Road many times to know about Shanghai culture. They will
use old Shanghai’s popular songs such as The Blossom
Youth,Shanghai At Night, Song of Four Seasons and will restage
the 1930s-1940s Shi Ku Men in the ballet.
The drafts of main ballerina’s cheongsams designed by Jerome
Kaplan were shown at yesterday’s rehearsal. One usually
needs to walk carefully in cheongsam, how could ballerinas wear
it to dance? Jerome Kaplan explained that ‘actually each
of these cheongsams has some tricks: the side vent is placed on
a higher place, and there are also vents in the front and the
back to make it easy to stretch the body, these vents are covered
by overlapping cloths; we can only see cheongsam when dancers
are still, once they move, they can move flexibly with these secret
vents.’ (Morning News)
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