Cover ‘A Sigh of Love’ (Photo: courtesy of Chen Lunxun, Shanghai Ballet and Hong Kong Arts Festival)
‘A Sigh of Love’ (Photo: courtesy of Chen Lunxun, Shanghai Ballet and Hong Kong Arts Festival)
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Sharing the same Chinese name as Wong Kar-wai’s iconic ‘In the Mood for Love’, the dance drama showcases Shanghai’s zeitgeist through a story of unrequited love
When Hong Kong film director Wong Kar-wai’s drama series Blossoms Shanghai released last December, it sparked a resurgence of nostalgia for all things “old Shanghai” in the region. And now, in keeping with the spirit of longing for the city’s bygone days, the Shanghai Ballet has announced the re-run of its 2006 dance drama, A Sigh of Love, which tells the story of unrequited love set in 1930s Shanghai. The ballet production, which will be shown at the Hong Kong Arts Festival in March this year, shares the same Chinese name as Wong’s most iconic movie in 2000, In the Mood for Love (花樣年華).
“[Through this production], we want to show Shanghai’s zeitgeist, its people’s way of love and their resilience from both the wartimes and the disappointments in life,” says Xin, the Shanghai Ballet’s director and a National First-class Dancer.
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Above “A Sigh of Love” (Photo: courtesy of Shanghai Ballet and Hong Kong Arts Festival)
“A Sigh of Love” (Photo: courtesy of Shanghai Ballet and Hong Kong Arts Festival)
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Created by the late French choreographer Bertrand d’At and Chinese playwright Cao Lu Sheng, this story is set in the backdrop of the Battle of Shanghai in the 1930s. The story’s protagonists Mr Li, a writer, and Mrs Wang, a bank officer and wife of a businessman, have feelings for each other, but even as they witness their respective spouses’ affairs, they are bound by a sense of ethics and only convey their yearning through passing glances and chance meetings—not unlike the motif in Wong’s In the Mood for Love.
As one of the leading ballet companies of China, the Shanghai Ballet, takes pride in creating works that celebrate the cultural elements and history of China. The company was originally a project-based dance group that created the era-defining The White-haired Girl (1979) before it officially became the Shanghai Ballet. As well as a long repertoire of western classics such as The Phantom of the Opera (produced in 2023), it also stages Chinese stories such as The Butterfly Lovers (2001), based on a folklore widely considered as the Chinese equivalent of Romeo and Juliet, The Bright Red Girl (2018), a fictional tale about political activism; and most recently, A Sigh of Love.
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Above “A Sigh of Love” (Photo: courtesy of Shanghai Ballet and Hong Kong Arts Festival)
“A Sigh of Love” (Photo: courtesy of Shanghai Ballet and Hong Kong Arts Festival)
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To have a production set in its own city offers the company’s dancers a more relatable experience. Wu Husheng, the company’s principal dancer, who plays the role of Mr Wang, is a native Shanghainese. He said that the choreography, set and costumes are all evocative of a bygone Shanghai—think finger snapping and club dance movements, dialogues in Shanghainese dialect, songs by movie star and songstress Chow Hsuan, Shikumen architecture, handpulled rickshaws and scenes depicting people playing mahjong.
“While I haven’t lived through the 1930s and can only imagine what life was like through movies, I feel the people’s sentiments haven’t changed much over the years,” he says.
Wu, who has two decades of experience as a dancer and has worked directly with d’At before he died in 2014, feels he has evolved as a dancer through this production and has his own interpretation of the role. “It’s like Bernard has left this legacy behind and I’m finding traces of treasures every time I practise or perform A Sigh of Love onstage,” he says.
Above “A Sigh of Love” (Photo: courtesy of Shanghai Ballet and Hong Kong Arts Festival)
“A Sigh of Love” (Photo: courtesy of Shanghai Ballet and Hong Kong Arts Festival)
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While the recently promoted principal dancer Qi Bingxue, who plays Mrs Wang, is originally from Hainan and isn’t familiar with Shanghai’s history, she says it’s fun to present through her dance the city she now calls her second home. She’s also pushing her creative boundaries in this production. “Previously, I mostly played the parts of princesses in western productions, such as the queen in Swan Lake,” she says. “A Sigh of Love challenges me to take on a [complexly human] and emotional role. Also, instead of a tutu, I am dancing in unstretchable qipao dresses, which feels strange.”
Both dancers feel the biggest challenge of the production is how a large part of the storytelling hinges on the lovers’ suppressed emotions. “We have to understand the psychological conditions of the characters very well and our dance partners’,” says Wu. “We’ve spent a long time training the expressions of our eyes, and even synchronised breathing. Only then can we bring the characters’ souls [to life].”
March 22 to 23, 2024. Grand Theatre, Hong Kong Cultural Centre.
Zabrina is the Senior Editor, Arts and Culture of Tatler Hong Kong. She specialises in performing arts, visual art and film. Her wanderlust was first fuelled by the Mighty Rovers Antarctica Expedition 2010. Over the years, she has interviewed A-list artists and filmmakers, including Oscar winners Chlóe Zhao and Tim Yip, Golden Horse winner Sylvia Chang, In the Mood for Love cinematographer Christopher Doyle, Pachinko author Min Jin Lee, and Coachella’s first Chinese solo singer Jackson Wang. She won gold at the WAN-IFRA Asian Media Awards for her 2021 feature on the waves of hate crimes targeting Asian Americans.
