Scenes from the dance-theater production Under Siege, staged in New York on Aug. 8. （Photo provided to China Daily）
"For me, it's an experiment," Yang says. "Just to show the traditional Chinese elements onstage would be copying what other people have done. So I have melded them with a more contemporary way of passing the message to the audience.
"At the same time, I don't feel that the Chinese audience is ready for only abstract things," she says. "So there needs to be some traditional elements as well. It is a mixture of traditional and abstract. I'm striving for a Chinese way of developing contemporary art and dance onstage."
"The dance of the concubine and Xiang Yu was the most incredible part, with a very high standard. The story was traditional, but the interpretation is very unique," says theatergoer Michale Kuonov after watching the show.
Tim Yip, the Oscar-winning art director of the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, supervised costume and set designs for the show.
For Yip, Under Siege is a work that lets him return to tradition. He describes it as an integration of elements of Chinese culture and modern stage art－thousands of scissors hanging on the stage that symbolize a life-threatening crisis, and in the last scene, the stage was covered with red feathers symbolizing the "river of blood" on the ancient battlefield.
While the play debuted in China in 2015, Yip says the US version is slightly different from the Chinese version. "The two cultures are very different from each other; the domestic version is more plump, and this version is more refined and simplified," Yip said in a previous interview with China Daily.
Now in its 53rd season, Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival is a summertime tradition and a New York institution. Launched in 1966 as America's first indoor summer music festival, with an exclusive focus on its namesake composer, Mostly Mozart has since broadened its focus to include works by Mozart's predecessors, contemporaries and musical successors.
