Revolutionary Peking Opera (Millennium Mix) City Contemporary Dance Company City Hall Theatre May 30 Empty vessels make the most noise, so they say, and Helen Lai, Hong Kong's self-proclaimed queen of modern dance, has the decibels cranked up in her latest offering.
Set to a discordant score by Japan's 'noise terrorist' Otomo Yoshihide, the Revolutionary Peking Opera (Millennium Mix) offers the odd chunk of eye candy but ultimately little of substance, leaving you annoyed, bored, dazed and confused.
The only clue offered in the programme notes is that the piece was inspired by Yoshihide's musical collage of the same name and is 'a violent juxtaposition of images depicting Mephistophelean phenomenon that manifests itself as the new millennium draws near'. Go figure.
It is the spare but vivid sets and lighting of Leo Cheung and Taurus Wah's costumes that steal the show from Lai's lacklustre choreography. Time and again one of her charges will simply flop down into the splits, or indulge in yet another (yawn) impassioned bout of writhing on the floor. Which is not to say it is all bad. When it is good, it is very, very good, such as the striking opening tableau where two white-clad figures weave in and out of shuffling Peking opera-esque performers. Another stunning scene sees four boys clad in bondage shorts suspended from wires, writhing and wriggling like trapped insects, while their partners strike pseudo-Spanish poses, indifferent to their suffering.
Unfortunately the choreography is not good enough, nor the dancers technically strong enough, for it to work as a complete abstract; neither is there enough of a narrative structure for it to add up to something meaningful.
It is difficult to say whether Lai intended this to be an oblique commentary on the twisted history of modern China, a subversive parody of Jiang Ching's farcical 'revolutionary operas', a mordant snipe at a pervasive and pernicious media, or perhaps all of the above. She seems to have a lot to say, but is still struggling to find the way to say it.