Kung Fu shows at Sun Yatsen Memorial from China -- beware

Arts & Sciences Arts & Entertainment
1

We wasted $1600 on tickets to a really crap show tonight, called Inside and Outside Temple, or Into the Temple (Chinese name 2008年北京奧運開幕式表演節目[寺院內外]). I believe it only plays until tomorrow, but we still want to warn you – do not buy tickets!!!

This is supposedly the opening show to the 2008 Olympic but after seeing it I believe we were cheated. No way could this be an Olympic level show. We’ve seen a really good show of Chinese kungfu on stage before, with superb art direction, choreography etc. at the same venue, and this was its diametric opposite. Bad direction, bad concepts, bad art direction, bad choreography — the only thing going for it was that the performers were actually well versed in Shaolin-style gongfu. Tacky set, tacky costumes, time wasted in non-gongu-related crap dance stuff and no idea what to do with the mysteriously required encores – you name it. The show sucked. Big time. Eeew. Sorry if you’ve already got tickets, but if you do, show up and sell them at the door at a 50% discount and go enjoy an Allecat’s pizza and some beer instead. Seriously.

PS – My “y” key no longer works. Expect a lot of tpo’s.

2

Too bad the show was so bad, but I’m not really surprised anymore. The following clip was also supposed to be a warmup for the Olympics. Maybe you can take a look for comparison. Lots of dancing and useless acrobatics – very little real gongfu.

youtube.com/watch?v=ZLdc6OQ7Dno

3

Cheated by communists?
…go figure?

By the way…traditional or classical “gung fu” is very hard to find in the PRC nowadays.
Most of it now is ‘Wu Shu’ that has been filtered and re-invented by the Peoples Cadre to be acceptable to the Party. Its choreographed dance moves and acrobatics.

Thee are still some a**kickers around…some old Shui Chao, Hsing-I and Pa-Kua guys. But frankly, most are either here on Taiwan or have moved to the USA or England.

Bottom line…this stuff was developed to fight with…not dance.

Caveat Emptor.

4

A shame. But the Chinese certainly know how to put on a masterful preformance if they want. They need to hire some traditional opera troupes. Saw the masters of Beijing Opera a few years back and the costumes, performances, acrobatics, etc were breathtaking.