The East-West Quartet

by Ping Chong

  How’s that for a drop-dead ensemble?!

  (Emperor’s dais is brought out. The Emperor’s music ends. Tinkling bells are the only sound we hear. The Emperor very slowly gets on his pedestal.

  Lord George Macartney enters dressed in sixteenth century European clothing. Sound of wind.)

  PROJECTION: Will Macartney do the nine kowtows?

  (Macartney crosses slowly to the Emperor. He bows and hands him a letter. The Emperor slowly reaches for the letter. As he is about to touch it: blackout.)

  PROJECTION: An image of a sky full of stars

  (Sound of multiple cannonball explosions. Under this cacophony, the sound of crickets slowly comes up. When the explosions stop, only the sound of the crickets is heard.)

  PROJECTION: 1995

  PROJECTION: Bill Gates and Warren Buffet go to China

  PROJECTION: When they are there, they see a clock in Tiananmen Square counting the hours and minutes until Hong Kong is returned to China on June 30, 1997.

  (As the projections fade out, Ping crosses to center stage and stands on the carpet. A light comes up on him. He signs: “You believe in the goodness of mankind” in American Sign Language. He signs it a second time. As he does:)

  PROJECTION: You believe in the goodness of mankind

  (Lights fade to black.

  Then the lights rise on all the performers, who take their bows.)

  PROJECTION: 40

  PROJECTION: To be continued into the 21st century.

  THE END

  After Sorrow

  A Work in Four Parts

  For Michael Matthews

  Production History

  After Sorrow premiered at La MaMa E.T.C. in New York City on January 31, 1997. It was conceived and directed by Ping Chong. The choreography was by Muna Tseng, the music was by Josef Fung and the set was designed by Watoku Ueno. The costumes were by Han Feng and Stefani Mar, the projections were by Jan Hartley and Ping Chong and the sound was by David Meschter and Brian Hallas. The dramaturg was Regine Anna Seckinger, the stage manager was Courtney Golden and the managing director was Bruce Allardice. The performer was Muna Tseng, the voice of Lady Borton was Louise Smith, the voice of Mrs. Beautiful was Muna Tseng, with voice-over by Ping Chong. The musician was Wu Man, Pipa.

  The production toured the United States and was presented at the Seoul Open Air Theater Festival in 1997, and Hong Kong’s Festival of Asian Art in 1998.

  After Sorrow was produced by Ping Chong and Company in association with Muna Tseng Dance Projects with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Meet the Composer/International Creative Collaborations Program in partnership with the Ford Foundation, the Asian Cultural Council, the Greenwall Foundation, the Heathcote Art Foundation, the Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.

  “98.6: A Convergence in 15 Minutes” was originally commissioned by Muna Tseng Dance Projects and presented at P.S. 122 as part of The Idea of East in April 1996. “Whisper of the Stone” was choreographed and originally performed by Muna Tseng to a score by Josef Fung, using Chinese opera elements and electronics. It was inspired by the phrase “John Cage Meets Gagaku in Beijing.”

  Introduction

  After Sorrow is a dance-theatre work, which examines the fragile place where personal histories intersect and are transformed into a universal truth. The work features four separate, but thematically related, solo-theatre pieces based on biographical and autobiographical sources. Using dance, spoken and recorded texts, music and image, After Sorrow creates an imagistic picture of East-West relations, culminating in a portrait of Vietnam—after the French, after the Americans, after the war—facing an inconclusive future.

  The first three segments serve as an addendum to Chinoiserie, and a movement forward, exploring the Chinese diaspora from a personal perspective. They reflect what is lost, what is gained and what endures as a consequence of the diaspora.

  “L’Histoire Chinoise” is a meditation on duty, family and longing, and is based on the experiences of a Chinese woman from another century. “Whisper of the Stone” evokes the mysterious interconnection between people and events across time and culture using the ancient Chinese tradition of “scholar rocks” as its central image. “98.6: A Convergence in 15 minutes” takes the form of a duet between two artists, and is based on the personal history of the creators: Ping Chong and choreographer Muna Tseng.

  “After Sorrow: An Epilogue,” from which the performance takes its title, is about Vietnam today and the legacy of war, and was inspired by Lady Borton’s writings (also titled After Sorrow) on what she found when she returned to Vietnam, where she had worked during the war for the Society of Friends. The coda brings this movement toward the personal to completion, blending Ping Chong’s own experiences as a contemporary visitor to Vietnam with his mother’s memories of touring in Vietnam as a young Chinese opera diva in the 1920s. So what began with the epic sweep of Deshima and Chinoiserie is reduced here to a single human interaction. History was revealed with bold strokes and through geopolitical impact in the earlier plays of The East-West Quartet, but in After Sorrow, history is brought down to its essence. After Sorrow is about the individual as the one true repository of human history, and the possibility of reconciling the past through recognizing the humanity in us all.

  L’Histoire Chinoise

  This first segment of After Sorrow is performed in an open dance space. The floor is black. The back wall is a projection screen. It is lit bright blue. The rest of the stage is dark. The sound of a stream is heard.

  Four Chinese drum stools are placed in an arc stage right.

  A musician with a pipa (a traditional Chinese stringed instrument) sits on a stool. On another stool rests a framed photograph of a young Chinese man.

  A Chinese Woman dressed in black, in the fashion of a moderately well-to-do lady of one hundred years ago, enters from downstage right and crosses slowly to center. As she reaches the drum stools, a light comes up on her. She sits down, her back to us. The sound of the stream fades out. Through a voice-over, we hear the Woman speak:

  CHINESE WOMAN (Voice-over): The day my father sold me, my mother rose even before the roosters in our village. When I opened my eyes, I saw her gazing at me in the half light, gently stroking my hair. She had a curious, sad smile on her face but I didn’t notice at the time. My mother said in a very quiet voice that I must get up, that I was going to my beloved grandmother’s house. Only in retrospect, in the marrow of a child’s worst nightmare, in the endless, deadening days and nights of my adulthood to come, did I replay this moment over and over again: the memory of my mother hovering over me, stroking my thick, black hair, sadly smiling in the indigo half light of a spring dawn.

  (The Woman slowly spins around on her stool, and now speaks to the audience. As she continues, seven circles of light slowly come up, one on each stool and three on the floor, which continue the curved pattern of the stools. The circle of light stage left forms a lattice-work pattern.)

  The day my father sold me, my mother washed my hair with unusual care. This was Servant 3’s business, but on this day Mother did it herself. I didn’t notice at the time. Then she braided my hair with the warm, familiar crisscrossing rhythms I had learned to take for granted over and over again. Before my reflection in the mirror she added a hibiscus blossom in my hair, and a garment of embroidered satin embraced my person. Then she looked at me for a long, long time. A mother with a child in a mirror. A mother with a child in a mirror for the last time. I was her only child. I was a girl. This made my mother the least favored wife in the household. She was constantly reminded by my father’s other wives that a wife should be producing sons not daughters. (Opens a fan sharply and begins fanning herself) That day when my worthless father sold me, my mother brought me a bowl of hot rice porridge, which I had every day, but on this day something special came with it: two flaky melon cakes studded with cubes
of pork fat, which I loved to eat. It was Servant 3’s business to bring me breakfast, but on this day Mother did it herself. I didn’t notice at the time. Then my father came into the room. He said we were going to my beloved grandmother’s house; that we had to hurry to catch the ferry. My mother began to sob uncontrollably. Then without looking at me she handed me a sack of dragon eye fruit and more melon cakes. I said, “Don’t cry, Mother, I’m just going to see Grandmother. I’ll be back very soon.”

  On the day my gambler father sold me, my mother was standing at the open gate to our home with Servant 3. Neither Father’s other wives nor any of my brothers or sisters, nor the other servants came to see me off. It was the last time I was to see my mother. It was the last time I was to hear her voice. When we arrived at the ferry landing, a man with rotten teeth met us onboard and looked me over. He nodded approvingly. My father locked me in a cabin of the ferry and then negotiated a price for my sale. I was sold for ninety dollars—ten dollars for every year of my life. I kicked and screamed for my father to open the door. I banged the cabin door until my fists were bloody pulp. I cried and cried and cried but to no avail. Then I felt the ferry glide out into the river’s thrust. The inlaid mother-of-pearl and mahogany furniture, the translucent Ming dynasty porcelain, the ivory tusk with an entire village meticulously carved along its curve, the blue-and-white delftware from the Netherlands, the gilded German clock, the scholar rock in my father’s studio—even the rock was worth more than a daughter’s life. When I was finally let out of the cabin, I ran round and round the ferry screaming for my father but both my father and the man who negotiated for me were gone. At the water’s edge silhouetted against the shimmering light of noon, a young man stood all alone. I remember it very well, he stood silent and still staring at me while the overpowering stench of fermented shrimps attacked me and flies strafed the air. He would become my beloved. He would become my other heart.

  (The pipa player plays. The sound of the stream is heard as the pipa music ends. The Woman gets up from the stool and dances. She pulls a red silk scarf from her sleeve and dances with it. As the dance ends, the Woman tucks the scarf back into her sleeve. The lights come down, until just one tight circle remains on the framed photo: it is the Woman’s husband. The Woman picks up the photo, then faces the audience, displaying her husband’s portrait. At the same time, a full body image of her husband is projected. His image slowly comes into focus as she continues.)

  PROJECTION: Full image of the man in the photo in America

  I see you and you see me. I see you and you see me across the chasm of time. My eyes mirror your face. Your eyes reflect my sorrow. Reflections in mirrors across time. I may be different from you. I may have ways you could never hope to understand. And yet, beneath the necessary evils of our respective social norms, our feelings are the same. I too feel pain when pierced. I too feel the ecstasy of a lover’s embrace. I too am warm to the touch. Never doubt for a minute that I am capable of feeling these selfsame things even from the distance of a hundred years which set us apart. Never doubt for a minute that you and I are bound by the ticking of time across time over and over again. And now, if I may, let me ask you one question. One question alone while time permits. Has anyone seen this man, my beloved husband, my lover, my other heart, in the vast reaches of the Western land, these many, many years?

  (The light on the Woman fades while she holds the image of her husband for all the world to see, until only the image of her husband in her hand is lit. Then it too fades along with the projected image of him and the sound of the stream.)

  Whisper of the Stone

  “Whisper of the Stone” is a sixteen-minute, abstract, solo dance piece.

  At first, there is only recorded abstract sound and a projected slide montage on the back wall.

  As the piece begins, two drum stools are placed onstage, one down right and one down left. A pipa player sits on the drum stool down left, with her back to the audience.

  A Dancer enters to the sound of bells. She crosses to the stool down right and sits. She drinks from a Thermos. She puts down the Thermos, wipes her face with a towel, then gets up and begins to move. Sometimes she dances with the towel, sometimes not. The movement vocabulary for the piece is based on t’ai chi, Chinese martial arts and restrained contemporary dance movement.

  A projection montage plays throughout the entire piece. Images of traditional Chinese objects fuse into images from the contemporary world.

  PROJECTION: Details of granite

  Pieces of shattered discs

  Chinese scholar’s rock

  Clouds and sky

  Details of Chinese porcelain

  Chinese letters

  Details of Chinese maps

  Lattice frames

  Photos of Chinese people

  Photos of Ping Chong’s mother and family

  (The score, heard on tape, is an original composition consisting of music and abstract sounds. It starts with water dripping and progresses to sand shifting, crunches, violins squeaking, etc., along with bells, chimes, etc. It reaches a crescendo with a Chinese percussion sequence.

  A few minutes before the end of the piece, the Dancer exits. The pipa player slowly spins her stool to face the audience. The lights come down so that only she is lit. She plays a solo on the pipa, which is accompanied by a projected image of a Chinese scholar’s rock.)

  PROJECTION: Chinese scholar’s rock

  (The first image is an extreme close-up of the scholar’s rock. Subsequent slides show increasingly broader views, with the camera pulling back until the entire image is shown, and then eventually until the rock gets smaller and smaller and fades out entirely.)

  98.6: A Convergence in 15 Minutes

  Total darkness. The only light is that created by opening projections, which reveal a bare stage except for two drum stools placed stage right and stage left.

  Throughout “98.6,” variations on the phrases: “The things they share” and “The full mystery of an Other” are projected on the back wall. The letters are in white, red and occasionally black. At first, the whole phrase is seen quite straightforwardly, but as the piece progresses, the words are manipulated into images: sometimes the words appear average-sized, then get smaller and smaller until they disappear; at other times, the letters get bigger and bigger until they abstract; at other times they move sideways across the screen so that they can’t be read until they reach center; sometimes the phrases are seen in Chinese characters instead of English; sometimes the letters change colors, etc. The projections are always timed to change with sound, for instance, “The things they share” appears when Ping’s voice-over says the same phrase.

  PING (Voice-over):The things they share

  the full mystery of an Other eyes, ears, nose, mouth,

  the ability to breathe, breath.

  You know, the givens:

  billions of cells working in unison

  to create a walking, prancing, dancing

  likely to function

  likely to not,

  full-fledged, miraculous being:

  (Lights up. Muna enters clad in a simple white top and pants. She dances down right for most of the piece. Her movement is abstract modern dance, and continues, except where noted.)

  him, her, us, them, you, me.

  The full mystery of an Other

  the things they share.

  She’s 5’½” tall, dark eyes, short hair—

  what one would describe as petite,

  seeming to need protection,

  seeming to not,

  seeming to be assured

  and seeming to not,

  hesitating and seeming to not,

  not to be that is.

  One thing’s for sure: she moves with a buttery grace.

  The things they share.

  He’s 5’ 9” tall, dark eyes, very short hair,

  blind as a bat,

  leaning toward aging like the rest of the world,

  150 pounds at th
e last encounter with a scale

  which he passes every day on the way

  to confronting himself in the mirror mornings.

  The things they share. She is Chinese: (In Cantonese) Jun Kwok Yen.

  He is Chinese: (In Cantonese) Jun Kwok Yen.

  People of the central kingdom

  in another age or in another language