22 Performance by Francesca Fearon


One Sunday afternoon during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this year a packed auditorium was transported back to ancient China by a mesmerising performance of the Scarlet Infusion by Te Tea Spell Dance Teatre from Beijing. Te award-winning Chinese dancer, now choreographer,


Zhao Liang


based his idea for the production on an old Chinese fable about a traditional Chinese tea ceremony and the encounters that a nobleman, a woodcutter and a monk have with the enigmatic Tea Fairy. Tere is no plot: the Rashomon-style choreography expresses the individual encounters of each of the three tea drinkers, conveying their different feelings and reactions to the Tea Fairy. At the heart of the performance is the seductive, exquisitely-robed Tea Fairy. Her beguiling scarlet robe, decorated with nine cranes, is the creation of Rui Xu who designed all the costumes for Scarlet Infusion. Xu is a pioneer in the field of contemporary fashion art, merging Eastern aesthetics and


Taoist


philosophy in her designs – so there was a natural synergy in the collaboration between these two artists. Scarlet Infusion premiered in Germany in 2012 and has since been performed in Israel and in Beijing’s historic Zhengyici Peking Opera Teatre – a wooden structure built in 1688.


At the time Zhao Liang was


choreographing the story Rui Xi was director of the fashion department at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts. ‘Zhao Liang had been looking for someone to design his costumes for a long time and he hoped that I could make the costumes like haute couture with delicate details and fine craftsmanship,’ explains Rui Xu after the successful performance in Edinburgh, its first in the UK. ‘I had a strong vision: my early


designs were more abstract and pure; the colours and shapes were simple but the silhouette very Chinese. However, Zhao Liang wanted each character’s outfit to express their strong social identity and to be very stereotyped so that they could be recognised.’


Inevitably there were


compromises. ‘Tere was a lot of debate during the collaboration, but Zhao is a specialist in body language and knew what he wanted for the show.’


Te project was constrained by a


three-month production period and tight budgets with most of the costs invested in the Tea Fairy’s robe. Te costume that inspired this glamorous outfit is a shenyi, which is typical of the Han dynasty – shen means under-


Te Tea Fairy from Te Scarlet Infusion. Photo: Zhang Dan


Rui Xu and Scarlet Infusion


layer and yi meaning costume.


‘Traditionally this under-layer (white in this production) would be wrapped two or three times around the body, but as this was for a dancer it was wrapped once. It is difficult to move in a shenyi: you are really meant to stand there looking like a vase,’ Rui Xu quips.


Te sculptural scarlet Tussah silk


robe is a chang (cloak) and would be worn outdoors or on formal situations, a shenyi would similarly be worn on formal occasions, and in ancient China the living room of one’s home was considered a formal place. Te Hanfu style of dress has long been an influence on Xu’s work and the kimono-style chang was later adopted by the Japanese during the Tang dynasty and interpreted as the traditional hanbok in Korea. Cascading down the beautiful robe


are nine (an auspicious number) red- crested cranes,


suggesting Taoist immortality and nobility, according


to Xu. Each of these elegant birds is illustrated in various poses:


their


wings flared, in flight, elongated necks, beaks fishing, legs crooked. Te fabrics were coloured, padded and meticulously hand-stitched by two tailors and three embroiderers, taking two-and-a-half months to produce. Te hem is decorated with quilted wave patterns, which Xu says


are


mistakenly considered a Japanese influence because of the work of Hokusai. In fact, waves were originally used by the Chinese and were an important symbol of Chinese hierarchy and officialdom. ‘In the Qing dynasty (17th century) all officials wore different styles of waves to signify their social status.’ Another symbol of officialdom is the headdress of the nobleman, a wusha hat made in a light black material. Meanwhile, the tea boys wear labourers’ trousers originating from the Jin dynasty (317-420) and have a floating pocket hanging


centre-front, which Xu says was called a ‘horse face’. All men wore these loose pockets but they were increasingly more decorated depending on the wearer’s social hierarchy. Te voluminous layers of Hanfu are a major influence on Rui Xu’s work. In Scarlet Infusion, they give an impression of timelessness, but the simple,


often layered wrapped


garments are a feature of her other work, both as a fashion designer (she creates a bespoke range of unique fashion art pieces for collectors in China and Europe) and as a creator of concept performance art.


Her


inspiration is built on the huge cultural heritage of the Chinese literati, and Taoism moulds her ideas. In 2015, she partnered with


Madaleine Trigg, choreographer from Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, presenting Chant of Breath, a performance art project at Saatchi Gallery, London,


where dancers


wearing Rui Xu’s conceptual costumes, moved as if they were the brush and ink to script Chinese calligraphic characters in rhythmic yet breathless movement. Unusually, the costumes (produced in toughened white paper, normally used in postal packing, called Tyvek) were created before the choreography – graceful, loose chalk white garments, some padded and some light and airy, expressing a poetic avant-garde aesthetic. Madaleine Trigg, who had to learn some of the Chinese language and calligraphy to choreograph the performance, explains how in this unique collaboration each dancer created a calligraphic body language based around each of their Chinese names.


‘Te performance was


improvised, there was not too much set choreography, so the dancers could be free in the moment, and so there was a beauty in exploring the space that came out from the garments.’ Rui Xu, 40, trained in fine art and is an accomplished artist and calligrapher as well as associate professor of fashion at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts where she has been developing a new course on fashion behaviour and Smart wearables. She collaborates with artists from other fields apart from dance such as music and film, and created costumes for the China Pavilion at Shanghai Expo in 2010 as well as being culture director of the


‘Rhyme of Chu Culture’ event at the Beijing Olympics. Te V&A and China Silk Museum collect her work. Working with Liang and Trigg,


Te Nobleman from Te Scarlet Infusion ASIAN ART OCTOBER 2017 Te performers during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this summer


says Rui Xu, was an inspiration ‘I learned a lot and hope that in future I will present my best work (on stage), as I want to design more abstract costumes for more abstract performances’.


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