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SCMP Reporter

Time came to an end on June 30, 1997. Then it restarted again. Last year choreographer Helen Lai ambitiously attempted to convey the confusion and the cacophony of Hong Kong's handover in Revolutionary Pekinese Opera: Millennium Mix.

 The dancers in this seven-part City Contemporary Dance Company (CCDC) show were frenetic and often off-balance, and the jangly music by 'noise terrorist' Otomo Yoshihide alone was enough to drive you crazy.

 Opera was one of the few creative works of the period to directly express the potential malaise of the event.

 Now Lai attacks the millennium.

 To prepare for this new project she delved into myths of many cultures.

 'I've found some similarities in these myths,' says Lai, a compact, diminutive woman with an air of nervous energy.

 'Civilisations burn out but then start all over again. Maybe our world is not the first world, perhaps others came before us.'  Her new work In the Beginning is subtitled The Creation Myth for the Next Millennium and likewise treats the cycles of birth and creation, dissipation and destruction.

 'I'm not just retelling the myths in my dance,' she insists.

 'I use these legends to talk about our contemporary society.'  In one segment, nine dancers are on stage, moving as individuals, unrelated to one another.

 They walk slowly, pivot on their heels, break into spasms like creatures discovering the sensation of their own movements. Then, one by one, they leave the space.

 Finally, one bare-chested young man in a long skirt remains.

 His right hand floats like an asp about his face, then caresses his face and chest.

 Meanwhile, narrator Kwai Wai-lap recounts the discovery of the ego: 'He wasn't happy because people alone aren't happy, so he found that he could split himself and he become two people, male and female.' A familiar tale of how the world came into being.

 The second piece previewed will be placed towards the end of the programme.

 A man and a woman dressed in black face one another in a series of attraction/repulsion, together/apart steps to the accompaniment of the nervous plucking of stringed instruments.

 They want to be together, yet are also pulled apart - - perhaps victims to the alienating forces of modern life.

 They are a kind of post-modern version of Paolo and Francesco, the lovers of Dante's Inferno who yearn desperately for one another but can never consummate their love.

 In the Beginning promises to be another evening of unsettling visions, presented in Lai's high concept style.

 She generally avoids the sweet and the complacent and, instead, insists on presenting intellectual and aesthetic challenges to the audience and dancers.

 In The Rite of Spring (1992), she worked into her choreography the historical public outrage against Stravinsky's revolutionary composition, with dancers playing the audience fainting and angrily leaping about.

 In Quartet for the End of Time (1994), she had dancers suspended in space on mountain-climbing straps.

 Lai studied at the Jean Wong School of Ballet and later at the London School of Contemporary Dance.

 When Willie Tsao formed CCDC formed in 1979, he created the first professional contemporary dance company in the territory and hired Lai as their full-time choreographer.

 Now she creates one to two pieces for them a year, as well as for other regional companies including Taiwan's Cloud Gate.

 The 10 sections of In the Beginning are quite different from each other, Lai says, and the creation is not presented sequentially.

 She drew upon myths from the cultures of China, India, Egypt, Greece, and Judaism, and for something state-of-the-art, there is even a segment told by a computer.

 Lai is often known for her props and technical stagecraft.

 Opera, for example was quite prop heavy, with televisions, tables, chairs, rifles, red ribbons, and even astro-turf.

 However, she is quick to emphasise that she doesn't have many special effects this time.

 Asked what she thinks about the millennium, Lai gives a shrug.

 'I don't think I will feel very differently on that day,' she insists.

 'I am quite excited,' she says, 'that the world has survived up until today! I really do believe that.' In The Beginning, May 22-24, 8pm, May 23, 3pm at the Cultural Centre Studio Theatre. Tickets $90 to $150. Call 2734 9009 



Dancing towards the millennium