As Cultures Intersect

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Shi Shuai

Shi Shuai is the face of classical music’s most promising new frontier: a young and gifted violinist, born in Shanghai and trained by some of the West’s most prominent musicians who is eager to return to China to perform and teach in a burgeoning symphony scene. And Fuling, the pretty outpost of 1.2-million at the nexus of the Yangtze and Wu Rivers, has the trappings of a new home for Mozart and Bach. Like dozens of smaller Chinese cities, it boasts a gleaming grand theater that just opened this year and has, in its initial season, brought Canada’s National Arts Centre (NAC) orchestra to perform.

The future of classical music, many have grown fond of saying, is in China – and Ms. Shi’s arrival in Fuling with the NAC seems emblematic of the new sound echoing here. Classical music was banned during Mao’s time. It wasn’t until the late 1970s that it was allowed back in, and it has exploded in recent years, winning converts and attracting students. But the real test lies in smaller centers, such as Fuling, and Ms. Shi is keen to put her talent and passion on display.

“I don’t have a good voice to sing,” she says. “Violin is like my voice, to sing out what I’m feeling.”

But if Fuling is the future, it’s one where the quiet concluding bars to the second movement of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony no. 5 in E minor must compete with the loud chirping of a bird ringtone. As numerous others, as Google and Home Depot, have discovered, exporting Western commerce and culture to China is often not as easy as it seems. The potential of a middle class burgeoning among 1.3-billion new customers continues to thrill, but the work of attracting interest is filled with pitfalls.

The orchestra was recently in China as part of a broader Canadian campaign that included visits from Governor-General David Johnston and Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird. While the NAC works to build a potentially lucrative long-term music relationship with China, Ottawa is hoping cultural diplomacy can help smooth relations still frayed from years of neglect and, more recently, the tension over Chinese buying up Canada’s oil sands.

Partway into Mozart’s Violin Concerto no. 3 in G Major, music director Pinchas Zukerman turns to face the noisy burbling of the crowd and vigorously points his finger to his lips; later, Ms. Shi stands up to ask for quiet in Chinese. Nearly all of the theater’s 1,038 seats have been filled, thanks in part to local authorities that bought up numerous tickets and handed them out for free, but not all the patrons are captivated.

In a place where many are hearing this music for the first time, orchestral music occupies no sacred space, no tradition of reverent listening. Classical music has arrived in a cultural market furiously trying out new things. The NAC orchestra sits on the Fuling Grand Theatre schedule somewhere between Mamma Mia! and a Michael Jackson tribute show. The symphony opens not to its own music but to the thundering bass track of a video ad for the theater’s coming shows, with bare chests and thrusting pelvises flashing on the bright screens.

This, then, is orchestra in one tiny part of China outside the major centers, in a place where it must compete for the ears of 19-year-old Ni Sha – Lisa, she calls herself – an English student whose tastes run to blues, country and her current favorite, Taylor Swift.

“I don’t think everybody here can understand this concert, including me,” she says, as a swelling crowd and she gather outside the theater high on the banks of the Yangtze. “But I really want to know.”

When Peace Corps volunteer Peter Hessler, author of River Town, came to Fuling in 1996, it had been a half-century since an American had lived in an isolated place still reached primarily by boat. Today, it’s a quick drive down a four-lane highway. The end to isolation has brought visible change, in shiny new apartment towers and roadside advertisements for a residential complex called, in English, “Hot Springs City.” Less visible is the curiosity it has sparked about a broader world people are now more able to explore.

“Before this theater opened its doors we had almost no contact with Western music,” says Yang Xiao Lin, 43, a realtor who has come to hear the orchestra. High-speed Internet and Youku, a Chinese equivalent to YouTube, have given people a chance to sample orchestral music ahead of its arrival, and Ms. Yang likes what she has heard. Not only is the NAC concert a chance to taste what she calls “high-rank joy” – status music, in other words – but she finds something spiritual in it. “The cello is so deep,” she says.

That appeal – status and sound – has won classical music growing numbers of converts in China, where it had already gained a small foothold pre-Mao, with the Shanghai Symphony opening its doors in 1879. Nine conservatories are now pumping out graduates. Many of their teachers are foreigners or foreign-trained Chinese. Beijing now has at least ten professional symphony orchestras.

The numbers of young Chinese people studying piano and violin far exceed the population of Canada. Some of the top luthiers on Earth draw out rich tones from Chinese woods; earlier this month, Shenyang, China-born pianist Lang Lang was named International Artist of the Year. Even The Julliard School is planning a new location not far from Beijing amid hopes that Chinese ears will prove more hungry for symphonic sound than those in North America, which have left orchestras facing bankruptcy and salary cuts.

But it’s far from clear whether symphonies will truly find a home in China. Even in Beijing, “the National Centre for the Performing Arts after five years is doing roughly half as many international well-known orchestras as they were at the beginning,” says Wray Armstrong, a well-connected, Beijing-based impresario.

Classical music is, in some ways, an expression of a culture foreign to China. “I don’t know if China can save Bruckner or Wagner,” says Jindong Cai, the director of orchestra studies at Stanford University and author of Rhapsody in Red – How Western Classical Music Became Chinese.

There may, however, be a future for symphony with an Asian lilt. The Chinese pipa has found its way into symphony performances in major North American and Australian concert halls, while Chinese composers are experimenting with new orchestral sounds. There’s even an argument that it is no more difficult to lure Chinese audiences to Mozart than to Michael Jackson as both are unfamiliar.

That doesn’t make it easy. The raucous concert in Fuling is “proof that we’re a long way from bringing Western culture to the hinterlands” of China, Mr. Zukerman said. “And the hinterlands are what makes a country. It’s not Shanghai, and it’s not Hong Kong.”

Still, even in Fuling some see an innate appeal in symphony. Ms. Yang, the realtor, emerged from the concert bearing a broad smile. It was, she said, “really, shockingly good. Sometimes it sounds like a young girl is telling a love story gently, and sometimes it feels like you’re in a deep forest.” Her husband, however, thought it could use a slight tweak. “It would be better,” he said, “if they could add a few more Chinese characteristics.”

Nathan Vanderklippe – The Globe and Mail

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Flying Bach in Bangkok

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b-boy, B-girl, Bachfest Leipzig, ballet, Bangkok, Benny Kimoto, breakdancers, dance, Eurovision Song Contest, Flying Steps, hip-hop, jam culture, Kadir Memis, Lady Gaga, Madonna, Michael Jackson, popular music, reality dance contest, Red Bull, Rihanna, television, The Well-Tempered Clavier, Vartan Bassil, VHS

Flying Steps

For the past twenty years, the Flying Steps crew has been at the forefront of breakdancing culture. Respected worldwide and even more so in their native Germany, the entire gang of this award-winning B-boy collective was recently in Bangkok to perform as a part of a Red Bull launch. “It’s our first time here. It’s really special. We’ve been working with Red Bull for thirteen years now. We’re here to represent breakdancing,” said Vartan Bassil, one of Flying Steps’ founders.

The crew’s latest major project, Flying Bach, has been touring the world, selling more than 200,000 tickets so far, and shown at the likes of the Eurovision Song Contest and the Bachfest Leipzig. Flying Bach sees the Flying Steps choreographing and performing breakdance and contemporary dance to Johann Sebastian Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier Book I (BWV 846-851). “We want to show how artful breakdancing is, and we chose classical music to get the sense of high culture. It’s one of the biggest things we’ve ever done. People have told us that it’s unbelievable how nicely breakdancing works with classical music,” Bassil said.

Bassil, the team’s choreographer, started the Flying Steps in 1993 with Kadir Memis, after he fell in love with Michael Jackson‘s fluid movements, which had him rewinding his VHS tapes over and over to mimic the late King of Pop’s steps. “He was my big inspiration. Back then, there were no hip hop dance classes, so you had to learn everything from the TV by yourself. Then hip hop style came, and I saw a movie about breakdancing. I started to practice every day. Then I decided to become a professional dancer. I told myself it was what I wanted to do with my life,” he said.

Flying Steps was born out of love for breaking and a strong sense of community. The absence of technology might have derailed the growth, but a tight-knit bond was forged since its formation, something that the Flying Steps still strongly retains even with the ongoing success. ”Back in the day, there was no internet. You just had your TV and VHS tapes. So it was important for us to travel in order to see things that kids now can see on YouTube. For us, it was traveling around Europe to be a part of big jams and dance parties, learning new moves. Then you got inspired when you got back home, you started to be more creative with your dancing. Now it’s more than easy, as young people can see everything on the internet, and they can start copying,” said Bassil. ”Sadly, the jam culture is over now. But there are more competitions now.”

”Today, everybody can learn new things very fast, but you need to develop your individual character in your dancing also. There are many good dancers now, but not enough characters,” added Benny Kimoto, a core member of Flying Steps.

To say that the Flying Steps have come a long way would be an understatement. They’re not just your regular breakdancing crew who perform when needed. They run a company which handles a dance academy, show production, talent scouts, workshops and mentorship programs in addition to their repeated wins in the world’s best breaking battles.

Bassil said he’s witnessed how breaking had grown over the span of twenty years, and appreciates how the public is more familiar with breakdancing, which started on the streets, but has now moved into the mainstream dance domain. “It’s now certainly more accepted than it once was. Breakdancing is featured everywhere. Now people understand that what we do is also an art form as well as a sport. It takes a lot of practice, a lot of work and a lot of heart. Breakdancing is definitely here to stay,” said Bassil.

The seasoned dancer’s words ring true especially in the popular music world. Stars of the biggest wattage such as Madonna, Lady Gaga and Rihanna have been using B-boys and B-girls prominently in their shows, a practice that Bassil and Kimoto take in their stride. ”Two of Flying Steps’ dancers were on tour with Madonna. People understand what we do is high level. The big stars will always be interested in working with all kinds of the best dancers, and also as dancers, you’re interested to see the world and how the big stars operate. But in the end, you come back home after the world tour, and you have to find new challenges for yourself. You can’t just stop,” said Bassil.

Besides being part of the lucrative kingdoms of various pop stars, breakdancers have become more visible in reality dance contests where they are always thrown in the mix. ”I don’t feel that it’s really real. They are not really concentrating on the dancing, but more on life stories. There are always background stories in this kind of show,” he said. ”Yeah, it’s more about selling dramas to get more viewers, and most of the time the judges don’t know much about dancing, but they are famous,” said Kimoto. ”In the end, the quality of the dancing is not as high as it should be. People who go on TV shows, sometimes they do it to get fame, they don’t do it from the heart. For me, the best thing for an artist is to get to the high level by your ability, and then people will want to have you on TV. On the other hand, reality dancing contests are a good thing because they make the dance scene bigger and more commercial. But I’d like to see real judges who know about dancing on the shows, and the dancers should be judged on their skills not their stories or how good looking they are. It should always be about dancing.”

As old hands on the breakdancing scene, Bassil and Kimoto have done plenty of judging themselves, and they both agree that they don’t often look for one particularly strong criterion. In their opinion, Asian B-boys are the most technical and have the most discipline, the Americans are more creative and fun, while their European counterparts mix both aspects together. ”There are so many things we look at when we judge competitions. For me, I look for complete, well-rounded dancers, and for musicality, foundations, techniques and creativity among other aspects. You can’t just do the acrobatic stuff,” said Kimoto. ”It’s not so easy to judge, but we’re lucky that we’ve been around for a long time so we have an eye for it,” Bassil said.

Still, for the Flying Steps, breakdancing is not just about competitiveness. As a cardinal rule, Bassil will never encourage anyone under his mentorship to give up dancing, even with limited skills. ”The first thing is that if they have fun dancing, then there’s no need to change them, or tell them to stop. We try to help and support them as much as we can. I think everybody knows his/her limit. We always tell our kids that it’s important to concentrate on school first, and when they finish school, then they can start thinking about becoming professional dancers. It’s a long, long way. You know, there are some talented people, and they don’t want to be professional dancers. You can’t force them to become one,” he said. Bassil and Kimoto insist that the Flying Steps crew is still pushing the boundaries of breakdancing in the hope that their art is perceived with the same prestige as, say, ballet. It’s their life-long mission.

”A lot of people used to ask why I wanted to dance for a living. All I can say to the aspiring dancers out there is believe in yourself and your dreams. Focus on your goal,” said Bassil. ”And work harder than anyone else,” said Kimoto. ”Ten times harder.”

– Bangkok Post