Hagyományok Háza

Shape of Things to Come at the HK Arts Festival

Business World, April 30, 2008. Manila, Philippines

Nick LaBute's The Shape of Things to Come and the Hungarian State Folk Ensemble's production of Hungarian Concerto: Hommage a Bela Bartok were two shows that I attended aside from Verdi's Rigoletto in March during the last week of the Hong Kong Arts Festival.

Since I still was coughing badly and did not have strength to climb stairs, I again asked Alexia Chow to help me relocate to the last row for both performances. I am very grateful to her for all the work she did to accommodate my request.

The Shape of Things to Come was translated to Cantonese by Chong Mui-ngam and directed by Gabriel Lee Chung-choen. The Studio Theatre of the HK Cultural Center was perfect for this production. English surtitles were used.

This play is a contemporary story of love and art that follows the steadily intensifying relationship between Evelyn and Adam, very well played by Louisa So and Guthrie Yip. As Evelyn strengthens her hold on Adam, his emotional and physical evolution becomes disconcerting to his friends, Jenny and Philip played by Ruby Chu and Zoc Koo, and has unexpected consequences for them all. It charts the massive impact that one forceful personality has on three old friends. Adam, an introverted English Lit student works in an art gallery as part-time. Here he is befriended by the vivacious Evelyn, an art student whose radical beliefs are played out by her mission at the gallery. This is to deface a sculpture with a spray can for "not being true."

The plot plays around with ideas about the artificiality, pretension and authenticity of art, image-making and truth, motivation and desire and, most disturbingly, the frauds to which we turn a nonchalant eye and allow into our lives. In this play LaBute charts Adam's metamorphosis and his peculiar attachment to the increasingly neurotic Evelyn who is bent, like a scalpel-waving artist cum surgeon, on making him into something he's not which later we realize was for the benefit of her own project. Adam has fallen in love with her but is humiliated when he hears Evelyn catalogue all his words and actions with the use of tape recorders and video. He leaves her. (Near the end of the play while Evelyn was delivering her lengthy exposing speech I had a coughing fit that I had to suppress as best as I could.)

I enjoyed the performance and was found the production very compact, with very good performances from all the four actors and thought the video projections were very cleverly done.

The Hungarian State folk Ensemble's presentation of Hungarian Concerto: Hommage a Bela Bartok showed the well-preserved dance traditions of Hungary. The show was a complex blend of dance and theater comprising traditional folk dance, folk music, contemporary music and up-to-date dramaturgy. All of these aspects made this performance a unique experience.

While conceiving the Hungarian Concerto, the originators were guided by the oeuvre of the composer, ethno-musicologist and pianist Bela Bartok. His spirituality and life-work convincingly prove that traditional modernities are complementary forces. In knowing their native culture, folk dances and folk music, they were able to find their own special, modern and topical form of artistic expression: their new language of dance. As such, the Hungarian Concerto reflects the unity of tradition and modernity. This is expressed through variations in Hungarian folk music and folk dance; the acrobatic skill of men's dances; the lyricism of women's dances; and the most beautiful classical pieces of Hungarian folk music, played as either fine instrumental solos or tremendous orchestral arrangements.

The show was entertaining and educational for all of us present. We all enjoyed that evening.

Juan Antonio Lanuza

http://www.bworldonline.com/BW043008/content.php?id=202

A Magyar Állami Népi Együttes előadása Hungarian Concerto: Hódolat Bartók Bélának a mai napig élő, magyar tánchagyományokat mutatta be. Az előadás a tánc- és a színházelemek ötvözetére épült, elegyítve a hagyományos néptánc, népzene, kortárszene és kortárs dramaturgia elemeit. Ezen elemek összessége tette az előadást felejthetetlen élménnyé.

A Hungarian Concerto alkotása közben a szerzőket a zeneszerző, népzenekutató és zongoraművész Bartók Béla világa inspirálta. Szellemisége és életműve meggyőzően bizonyítja, hogy a hagyomány és a modernitás egymást kiegészítő princípiumok. A hagyományos kultúra, a néptánc és a népzene ismeretében az alkotók megtalálták saját különleges, modern és időszerű kifejezési formájukat: egy új, rájuk jellemző táncnyelvezetet. Így a Hungarian Concerto a hagyomány és modernitás egységét tükrözi. Mindez a magyar népzene és néptánc különleges darabjaiban, a férfiak táncának akrobatikus elemeiben, a női táncok líraiságában, és a magyar népzene legszebb klasszikusaiban jutott kifejezésre, melyeket briliáns szólókban vagy remek zenekari előadásmódban csodálhatott meg a közönség.

Az előadás nagyszerű módon ötvözte a szórakoztató és ismeretterjesztő szempontokat. Akik jelen voltunk, mindannyian nagyon élveztük az estét.