A Preview of Spring in the City of Saint Francis

“And I like the humor; a lot of these stories are really very amusing,”said poet.
A Preview of Spring in the City of Saint Francis
1/12/2009
Updated:
10/1/2015
<a><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/09/0901112340161892_3--ss.jpg" alt="This was Dr. Chrisman's first exposure to traditional Chinese performing arts. (Mark Zou/The Epoch Times)" title="This was Dr. Chrisman's first exposure to traditional Chinese performing arts. (Mark Zou/The Epoch Times)" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-1831419"/></a>
This was Dr. Chrisman's first exposure to traditional Chinese performing arts. (Mark Zou/The Epoch Times)

SAN FRANCISCO—“Sunlight flashes on snow. Purple, in the swirl of blazing... silk” is a line of poetry made in a twinkling of an eye by Dr. Robert Chrisman, as a show of appreciation for the Divine Performing Arts (DPA) New Year Spectacular held on January 11 at the War Memorial Opera House.

With the promise of spring like the first plum blossoms, the cold snap in San Francisco was broken for the final matinee performance of the show. The weather was a balmy 70 degrees with clear blue skies, the typical winter fog nowhere to be found.

From the very first stately opening scene, the performers riveted the attention of an audience from all walks of life. Aside from spontaneous moments of warm applause, the house was hushed and focused, as if one body, throughout the entire performance.

Dr. Chrisman is a poet, essayist, editor, and professor of English and Afro-American literature who has taught at major universities throughout the United States. He also founded the internationally acclaimed The Black Scholar 40 years ago—a journal devoted to Afro-American thinkers.

He shared some of his initial impressions about the performance: “It’s wonderful; really delightful. “Yes, I write poetry, and one of the things I find interesting is the songs and the immediate imagery, which is a different way of composing from the western narrative style of poetry, so that’s very rich. And of course the movement is gorgeous. And the colours, the colours of the costumes. So, I’m really enjoying it.

“And I like the humor; a lot of these stories are really very amusing, the drunken poet, the Monk JiGong—it’s very cute. And the temptress is–fantastic!”

The Poet’s Vision portrays a Tang Dynasty poet, the great Li Bai, having a drunken vision of beauty under a full moon, while Monk Ji Gong Abducts the Bride, is a dance sequence that highlights one of the most adored figures in Chinese history, a deity, renowned for his unorthodox manner of doing good deeds.

Dr. Chrisman said all of the different performances were memorable, “because each was a different kind of story.”

He described classical Chinese dance as “very athletic. The thing that I like is the lightness and clarity of everything. I was thinking about it in contrast to western opera or western ballet, where a lot of slowness comes in; it’s a narrative, you know, where you have to tell every element of the story. But here, its [right] THERE, you get it.”

Classical Chinese dance has its own complete set of training methods in foundational skills, a strict regimen for perfecting bearing and form, and means of training for skill sets such as jumps, turns, and spins, as well as extremely demanding aerial techniques, culminating in an enormous dance system. The aerial movements of classical Chinese dance contain a wealth of high-flying dives, dexterous leaps, and diverse spins.

This was his first exposure to traditional Chinese performing arts, for which DPA fills a unique niche, and he expressed how the show made him feel “very good.”

Dr. Chrisman grew up in San Francisco, near Chinatown, and he spoke of how most of the Asian culture around there during the 1950’s and 60’s came from Japan.

In the midst of a winter thaw, theater-goers were treated to a heart-warming and spirited production, one that will surely continue to warm hearts in the coming year.

The DPA International Company will continue with two evening performances in Silicon Valley, at the Flint Center in Cupertino, CA. Then, joining with the DPA Touring Company and the DPA NEW York Company, the three groups will join together for a Chinese New Year’s extravaganza, The Splendor, at NYC’s famed Radio City Music Hall, on January 24 and 25, which promises to be an unforgettable experience.

  Please see DivinePerformingArts.org for more information.

 

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