Show Xi Yi`s action choreography revealed
By admin on 2014-12-29

Director Chen Kaige's first open-air show Xi Yi is set to premiere on April 28 in the scenic city of Dali, Yunnan Province, with action choreographer Han Jianzhong revealing last week the action scenes of the show, better helping to form a clearer image of how Chen is going to present the production.

The announcement came as a surprise, as cast and crew had previously remained tight-lipped on what to expect. Compared with Zhang Yimou's Impression, Da Hong Pao, that held its sneak preview in January, the only detail known about Xi Yi was that the show is based on a Bai minority tale, in which a princess turns into a cloud after her lover, a poor hunter, is killed by her disapproving father.

Han, also a professor in martial arts at Chinese People's Public Security University, explained that although Xi Yi is generally based on a love story, it contains many dramatic action scenes where good fights evil, some of which involve hundreds of performers.

He said that the action sequences were crucial to the show, which is much more than a combination of drama, dance, acrobatics and special effects.

Emphasizing combative techniques, Han added that the choreography also caters to audiences' visual enjoyment, which requires performers to exaggerate their moves and actions, making them more suit-able for the stage.

Most of the performers Han has coached for Xi Yi have dance backgrounds and little understanding of martial arts, which he said was a huge challenge when creating the scenes. "My team had to adjust and rearrange the original choreography we designed in Beijing, which was a bit too complicated for starters," Han said, adding that after training hard for six hours a day, the performers' current progress is satisfying and on schedule.