Bootleg Butterfly Mcmuimui Dansemble Shouson Theatre, HK Arts Centre Reviewed: May 15
Based on a novelette by Chan Wai that was inspired by the Chinese folk tale Butterfly Lovers, this piece of contemporary dance directed, choreographed and performed by Abby Chan Man-yee and Yeung Wai-mei sets out to be an 'impressionistic sketch of modern women, reviewing their growth, sexual desire and relationships'.
Combining spoken word, projected visuals, sounds and music, the two dancers retell this doomed romance in which scholar Liang Shan-bo falls in love with classmate Zhu Ying-tai - a girl dressed up as a boy - with a modern-day twist.
The show opens with a slickly choreographed duet in which Chan and Yeung move mostly in silence. The scene is set inside a library where Yeung, as a librarian, converses with female characters from classics such as Butterfly Lovers and Hua Mulan. She muses whether a modern day Mulan, instead of going to battle for her father, would be bailing out her family by paying their debts.
In another surreal but memorable scene, Yeung plays a woman recalling a date at the cinema, watching the 1963 musical version of the gender-bending tale The Love Eterne. She is disappointed her boyfriend, represented by a popcorn machine, fails to share her enthusiasm for the movie.
There is humour throughout the performance and the dancers' effort to interpret Chan Wai's text is mostly successful. But they failed to make any lasting impression.