The Moon Opera

Based on a novel by the same name by Bi Feiyu which tells a story of Xiao Yanqiu who is playing the lead in the classic Chinese opera Flying to the Moon, The Moon Opera is a dance drama in which Chinese traditions and contemporary endeavors complement each other in the manner of Yin and Yang. It leads to a sense of harmony between the extreme, contrasting emotions of jealousy, love and rejection beautifully expressed within the piece, through high-voltage, fiery, theatrical moments.

Commissioned by the 2015 Shanghai International Arts Festival and world premiered at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, The Moon Opera has won The China Arts Fund and other funds for 3 consecutive years from 2014 to 2017. It is also the 7th performance of Yabin & Her Friends, an annual production of dance performances. Here, Chinese and Western aesthetics meet.

Yabin Wang is an extraordinary leading figure on stage of the contemporary Chinese dance. She is best known for her incredible annual dance performance platform Yabin and Her Friends, which aggregate her own choreography, and works by other leading choreographers in and outside China, along with dancers, musicians to create innovative contemporary works of dance in and outside China. Those works include “Genesis生长“， ”Dreams in Three Episodes” , “The Moon Opera” and “ M-Dao”, a part in “She Said”, a triple bill production commissioned and produced by Tamara Rojo, Artistic Director of  English National Ballet.

The Moon Opera tells a story of a Peking Opera performer constantly struggling living in her spiritual world, being indulged in total enjoyment of aestheticism of it and living in her real life full of jealousy, hatred and harsh realities facing her as a wife to her husband she found in despair rather than in love. It’s about all contradictions a woman would easily find them in in todays’ world. The heroine as much dedicated to arts could only find in her performance a salvation, a cure, and an asylum.

Please read more here about Yabin Wang.

More info in the youtube trailer