Moving into a new orbit

By BERNADETTE RAE

Classical Chinese dance, contemporary dance, ballet - and a touch of tango - go into orbit in Dancemaker Productions' new, full-length work, Dancing on the Milky Way.

The 70-minute dance-theatre piece also combines a traditional Chinese story, featuring a cowherd and a weaving maid, with the experiences of modern day Asian immigrants.

Dancemaker founder and producer Yu-Fen Wang, a 28-year-old from Taiwan and a New Zealand resident since 1991, describes her new work as a love story, like Romeo and Juliet, but with a present day parallel.

The traditional story of Niulang and Zhinu, who can only meet once a year to express their love, has given China its equivalent of Valentine's Day. Yu-Fen Wang likens the old story to the common circumstance of Asian families settled in New Zealand, where the husband spends long periods away from his new home, attending to business.

"We are not spelling out the old story, so much as using the idea of separation to reflect the modern couple's pain."

So the mythical separation of young lovers, personifying two constellations separated by the Milky Way, gets another telling in a dance set in an airport departure lounge. A traditional "goddess dance" expressing yearning contrasts with a contemporary piece dealing with immigration, acclimatisation, adaptation and resettlement.

Other key words in Wang's description of the 10-part work are "multilingual" and "multicultural", and she tackles other issues close to migrant New Zealanders' hearts, like unemployment, or adapting to a very different sort of job, New Zealand's wild beauty, the city scene and satellite families before wrapping up with "resolution" which comes in a celebration of diversity.

As well as mixing a handful of different dance styles, the work uses an eclectic mix of music: from traditional Chinese music to Chinese pop; a Viennese waltz and South American tango; music from Mongolia and Buddhist chanting.

Yu-Fen Wang hopes the work will help "Kiwi friends" to understand the situation of Asian migrants.

"People see us with nice houses and expensive cars," she says. "They don't understand about the pain and difficulty. A lot of us are working really hard, struggling with English, and dealing with separation - from family, friends and familiarity.

"I dance a solo, as a woman apart from my husband, and celebrating my birthday all alone.

"It is like that. Women have to be independent. They know about it beforehand but it is still a shock.

"I remember when I first came here I got lost on the motorway - I took a wrong exit. I didn't have a cellphone and I didn't have anyone to call, anyway. We have those sorts of fears in our hearts. It is insecurity. And it is like that not just for Asian immigrants but for all immigrants, everywhere."

Yu-Fen Wang was in her first year in university, with more than a decade of dance training in classical Chinese dance and ballet, when her family immigrated. She did two years' training with the Performing Arts School in Auckland, then returned to Taiwan to set up her own dance studio.

"The business went well," she says, "but I did not feel comfortable. I am a modern Chinese woman and I like it here because there is more freedom, more rights and more equality."

So she returned to New Zealand and completed a degree course in dance at Unitec, graduating in 1998.

Dancemaker Productions began with a stunning season of New Year's Arrival, again a blend of contemporary and classical Chinese dance, and dealing with issues of family separation.

Since then Yu-Fen Wang has been busy teaching and producing frequent, short works for festivals and other community events around the city.

There are not, she says, many opportunities for performing at a professional level.

She combines her multiple talents with choreographer Su Ka in Dancing on the Milky Way and the two have collected an impressive company of 11 senior dancers around them, including Jing-Qian Yan, from the Beijing Dance Academy, China's top dance school. Four young student dancers will also perform.

Performance

* What: Dancing on the Milky Way

* Where: Centennial Theatre, Auckland Grammar School, Mt Eden

* When: Tonight and tomorrow, 7.30pm

Bookings: 021 252 1166