2018 Peking Opera Festival

It’s another weekend my friends, this week instead of reporting back to you via my smartphone while sweating inside a tent camping in the wilderness worrying about bears, I am back to more familiar terrestrial territory being a spectator and reporting on new live international cultural events.

Today we were invited to the 2018 Peking Opera Festival at the NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts in Greenwich Village, downtown’s premiere cultural center for the arts.

Our good friend magician, author, film-maker, and actress Grace Chang who was the emcee of the event was super-cool enough to invite us as her special guests by giving us 2 V.I.P complimentary reserved tickets for the Sunday afternoon performance.

What an incredibly colorful spectacle of song, dance, romance, and combat this opera was!

It was a very hot day in NYC, and the performance was located directly across the street from historic Washington Square Park, where we relaxed and killed some time before going into the opera house.

Dance, Acrobatics, and Combat

Peking opera is a form of Chinese opera which combines music, vocal performance, mime, dance and acrobatics. It arose in the late 18th century and became fully developed and recognized by the mid-19th century. It remains highly popular in Chinese culture today, and has also spread to other countries such as the United States and Japan.

The form was extremely popular in the Qing Dynasty court and has since come to be regarded as one of the cultural treasures of China. Major performance troupes are based in Beijing and Tianjin in the north and Shanghai in the south. The art form is also preserved in Taiwan (Republic of China), where it is also known as Guójù.

Peking opera features four main types of performers. Performing troupes often have several of each variety, as well as numerous secondary and tertiary performers.

With their elaborate and colorful costumes, performers are the only focal points on Peking opera's characteristically sparse stage. They use the skills of speech, song, dance and combat in movements that are symbolic and suggestive, rather than realistic.

Above all else, the skill of performers is evaluated according to the beauty of their movements.

Performers also adhere to a variety of stylistic conventions that help audiences navigate the plot of the production. The layers of meaning within each movement must be expressed in time with music.

Melodies include arias, fixed-tune melodies, and percussion patterns. The repertoire of Peking opera includes over 1,400 works, which are based on Chinese history, folklore, and, increasingly, contemporary life.

A wonderful day to experience the sunshine, eastern culture, dance, and art.

Such cultural experiences in all art forms opens the mind to new possibilities.

Now its time for my meditation!

Hope you are having a most colorful weekend!

Cheers,

Kaju