The works of choreographer Xing Bang Fu come in stages. Ink, his newest creation, is being given a studio showing before being performed by the acclaimed Guangzhou Ballet in China this June. Somewhere in the future, Xing will bring back the piece to his own company in Toronto, The current version has a cast of ten. Xing will use somewhere between 24 and 40 dancers in China.
When Ink comes back home, its number of dancers could be different again, as could its length. Thus, when Xing sets his pieces, he has to think along a sliding scale. The small version has to look as complete as the larger one, and Ink certainly has some interesting choreographic ideas based on Xing’s signature fusion of ballet, modern dance and the martial arts.
The work was inspired by the art of Chinese calligraphy — the balance between yin and yang and the harmony between the brushwork and the ink. It is an abstract piece that attempts to find the heart of creativity in the rendering of the Chinese characters. What is skillfully put on a page by a moving hand becomes the wellspring for the moving body. Interestingly, the score Xing has chosen uses the improvisational jazz music of pianists Keith Jarrett and Bill Evans, a case of art mirroring art.
The work is divided into five sections anchored in conventional ballet formations. It begins with a six-member ensemble, undulating at various levels, who in the dim light appear to be moving paintbrushes or unformed thoughts trying to find a sense of order. Costume designer Eric Wong (who works for Armani in Hong Kong) has helped in the abstraction.
The dancers wear layers and layers of white and black diaphanous material that obscure their human form. The turning bodies and the rippling draperies each take their own journeys.
The second section is a solo for the talented Davidson Jaconello (who will be an apprentice with Alberta Ballet next year). It is a virtuoso piece that requires strength, control and agility for its strong ballet vocabulary.
Jaconello is perhaps the calligraphy master setting his thoughts, preparing himself for his task. He is wearing nothing but brief, black shorts, and his near nakedness seems to convey the quintessence of focus.
Designer Wong has clothed the six dancers in Scene 3 in loose-fitting but very smart black and white striped tops and pants. The choreography here is bold, crisp, firm and angular, with the dancers moving in formational lines. They appear to be human semaphores, the brushstrokes, the living embodiment of characters themselves.
Scene 4 is a lyrical pas de deux for Sarah Amaral and Simon Sylvain Lalonde. The amazing Amaral is only 15 years old, but her interpretive and dance skills are immense, and she holds her own with veteran Lalonde. The partnering of lifts is complex, and presumably represents the artful movement of the calligrapher’s hand in motion, ink touching page. They too are clothed in clean-lined tops and pants.
The final scene is a solo for Xing, again a moving shape abstracted beneath layers of white diaphanous drapery over a black skirt. Perhaps he is the meditation, the Zen of the art form, as he executes a slow, Butoh-like, rolling and heaving movement that brings him from the floor to an upright position.
The interesting thing about Ink, as in all of Xing’s work, is that much can be read into his choreography. Sitting in the close quarters of the studio, one is practically part of the dance itself. It will be interesting to see this piece a year or so from now from the more distant perspective of a theatre.
Ink is certainly ambitious, and Xing does stimulate the imagination with his movement.”
