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Natasha Rogai

In the Beginning

City Contemporary  Dance Company

Cultural Centre Studio Theatre

Reviewed: September 9

First created for the City Contemporary Dance Company in 1998 and subsequently performed by Taiwan's Cloud Gate Theatre, Helen Lai's acclaimed full-length work, In the Beginning, returned with  Tang Shu-wing as the Narrator.

The piece explores creation myths from  many cultures and  opens with a powerful evocation of Chaos,  in which a blindfolded dancer  (Xing Liang) struggles with fumbling, unformed movements in  the unknown, until The Creation of the World brings  light and form. The Creation of Mankind is followed by The Flood, in which the survivors emerge into a new world, and the cycle is completed by Creation Again (the new beings brought forth this time by a computer rather than a creator).

I wasn't convinced that  the piece worked, as  a  whole.  Episodic in structure,  it's over-long  when performed without  an interval. The use of primitive music from tribal cultures  is effective, but  towards the end I was longing for the melodic scale to be invented. Moments when the rhythms of the narration were used to accompany movement  worked  well.

Lai's choreography  creates new configurations of the human body and  makes audiences see things as if for the first time, as  in the  sequence for four couples during  Survivors  and the final duet.  The theme of binding and being unbound formed a strong leitmotif throughout.

Lai also injects humour into  the duet in which Man and Woman discover sex  and a delightfully irreverent scene during The Flood when two swimmers wearing lifebelts  listen to a never-ending weather forecast of rain, rain and more rain. Another highlight was The Tower of Babel, featuring  Tang  speaking - very fast and with supreme expressiveness - in a  non-existent language.

The main narration is translated into English in the programme notes, but the piece isn't  easy for non-Cantonese speakers. The whole cast performed with energy and commitment.



In the Beginning