Firing Up

      ‘The Nutcracker’

   When Marie sets off on her whirlwind journey in ‘the Nutcracker,” she doesn’t have immigration in mind. But in the choreographer Michael Mao’s version the heroine doesn’t go to the Land of Sweets. Her formal destination is a different land of hopes and dreams: America.

    Mr. Mao’s “FireCracker,” which is to have its world premiere this weekend at Purchase College, was conceived as a Chinese answer to “The Nutcracker,” But it can also be seen as a Jewish one, or that of any person who is compelled to leave home and put down roots in a foreign country.

    “Any time there is a journey and a dream, something deep inside is waiting to break out.” Mr. Mao said.

This story is a good metaphor.”

    “FireCracker,” which features sets by Ming Cho Lee and a narration written by Marcelle Clements and delivered by the actor B.D. Wong, is set in 1937 in Shanghai , the Chinese city Mr. Mao left when he was 5. His young protagonists, Tiny and her brother, Junior, are twins of a Chinese mother and a Jewish father.

    At an international party involving a wide variety of dance styles, Tiny’s gift is not a nutcracker but a firecracker, a Chinese symbol of celebration. In her dream the firecracker becomes the Fire Prince, who takes the children to the four corners of the world. On awakening, they and their family and friends go on a real voyage, which ends in New York.

   “It’s really a story about the human quest for freedom and safety.” Mr. Mao said.

    His inspiration came from a trip to Shanghai, when he learned more about its role in the 1930’s as a temporary safe haven for Jews. Using, he says, about 40% of Tchaikovsky’s score, he worked with Jonathan Faiman, who re-orchestrated the work, composed new music and added a Sephardic undercurrent. Other ethnic elements include a lion dance, a Hula and Mongolian singing that turned out to be in the same key as Tchaikovsky’s Arabian dance.

    Mr. Mao and Mr. Faiman even found patriotic music that fit: Dudley Buck’s “Festival Overture,” based on “The Star-Spangled Banner.” “Dudley Buck mandated that the last stanza was to be sung by the audience,” Mr. Mao said, “Of course, this was all planned before Sept. 11, but under the circumstances, it’s quite appropriate.”

Shanghai Daily

‘Nutcracker’

dances to a

local theme

Claudia Sun

T S C H A I K O V S K Y’ S

“Nutcracker” is well-known to many locals, but how about a Shanghai-style version?

     A variation of the ballet classic –– mounted in Shanghai by Michael Mao, a famous American dancer ––

will be staged by his troupe, the Michael Mao Dance, at the Majestic Theater on Tuesday and Wednesday.

    The Shanghai-born dancer left Shanghai as a 5-year old. Mao didn’t return until four years ago. That that three-day trip recalled all his memories and love for the city, giving birth to the “Firecracker.”

    The variation will appear in the first part of the show, while the second part features Maos’ two other contemporary works, “Jealousy & Murder” and “Presto-adagio.”

    Yesterday, Mao talked about the special dance show. Along with some “obvious replacements,”  such as the Christmas party giving way to a birthday party, and the nutcracker being replaced by the “prince firecracker,” the ballet has been embellished with many stories Mao heard from his parents and his Chinese teachers at Harvard University.

    “I used to ask my mother why we came to New York, and she had said, “Well, New York was the closest thing to Shanghai, and Shanghai in the 1930’s was even more sophisticated than New York,” said Mao in Shanghai dialect.

    Fluent in English and Shanghai dialect, Mao often finds Mandarin difficult. “My parents, like many migrants from the city, insist on talking to us in Shanghai dialect.”

    The dancer-choreographer is excited about working in Shanghai, where ‘the development has been beyond my imagination.”

    Talking about “FireCracker,” the dancer said he asked composer Jonathan Faiman to rewrite the music on the basis of Tchaikovsky’s classic, mingling the score with 1930’s Shanghai pop songs, American folk songs and some elements from the music tradition of Jews, who were a witness to the 1930’s Shanghai, then reputed as the Jews’ “port of last resort.”

Nutcracker gets some fire

Dance Company brings ‘Firecracker to Beijing

CHINA DAILY

    It’s  like no other production of “The Nutcracker Ballet you’ve seen.

    The Michael Mao Dance Company will breathe new life into the traditional holiday story in their new ballet “Firecracker,” which opens tonight and runs until tomorrow at the Century Theatre.

    “Firecracker” is not the story of young Clara and Fritz and their Christmas gift of a nutcracker followed by an adventure into the sugar plum Kingdom.In FireCracker which premiered in New York last December, it’s a story of two bi-racial children set in 1937 Shanghai, an imaginative journey and later their actual migration to the United States at the onset of war.

    Mao, the founder of the company and choreographer of the ballet, calls it the “immigrant version of “The Nutcracker.”

   Mao himself immigrated from Shanghai with his family when he was five years old. The ballet is inspired by his trip back to Shanghai in 1999.

    Mao was trained in dance at the Martha Graham School, the Joffrey School and the Cunningham studio, and has devoted himself to cross-cultural communication through dance.

    His ESL Dance Project, “Learning English Through Dance,”  is designated by the US National Endowment for the Arts as a Model Programme to be replicated nationally.

    In 1993, he established his dance company in Manhattan and attracted about two dozen dancers from all over the United States, of various races and religions.   Mao says,:”My dancers come in all different sizes, shapes and personalities.”

    With the fabric of this vibrancy and multiplicity Mao stages works that explore a wide range of stories and human emotions

‘Firecracker’    synopsis

Set in glamorous 1937 Shanghai, ‘Firecracker’ tells a poignant story about turbulent times.

Twins Tiny and junior, from a Chinese mother and a Sephardic father, are thrilled to attend their parents’ holiday party without knowing the adventure that awaits them.

Tiny receives a firecracker as a gift from her Godfather and she puts it under her pillow and the twins take a dream journey to Hawaii, Venezuela, Puerto Rico and the Statue of Liberty in the United States.

China is on the brink of war with Japan and the family must emigrate. They embark on a real journey, no less fantastic than the dream and arrive in New York harbour on July 4th, to the accompaniment of bands and fireworks.

The story ends when the twins return to Shanghai many years later.

“This American work is a beautiful Western doll

in a Mandarin gown.”

FireCracker sets the 19th century German classic

‘Nutcracker’ in 1937 Shanghai.

The plot centers around Jewish immigrants.

The heroine does not go to the Kingdom of Sweets,

but the Land of Dreams, America, and unexpectedly,

the nutcracker never appears in the story.

It has been replaced by a Chinese Firecracker.

Turning a classic on its head suits chinese taste.

Familiarity mixed with curiosity accounts for a warm

and strong liking right off. The cognoscenti of allusions

and details and cosmopolites who love international culture

get even more out of it. The strong Shanghai connection

will surely make them salivate.

Though American, the production does not lack

Chinese dramatic elements.

In its first China visit, Michael Mao Dance brought a strong, totally new sense of crossing national and cultural boundaries.”

'Firecracker'

Jews in Shanghai?

That's right,

unknowing public,

especially in the 1930s. No, this ain't no wacky new sitcom, it's a new version of The Nutcracker, conceived and directed by Michael Mao, with narrative by Broadway's B.D. Wong and sets by superstar Ming Cho Lee. Two little Chinese-Jewish twins (triple-threat!) star. Instead of a Wooden Soldier, Mao's young female twin gets a holiday firecracker (!) that transforms into a glorious Fire Prince. Subsequent mind travel, like one big badass drug cartel, extends from Shanghai to Hawaii, Venezuela, and Puerto Rico, and stops off at one of NY's remaining public monuments: the Statue of Liberty. December 8 and 9 at 1, the Pepsi-Co Theatre, SUNY Purchase College, 735 Anderson Hill Road, Purchase, NY, 914-251-6200. (PERETTI)

   . His works have been presented throughout the United states as well as in Paris, Oslo, Hong Kong and Mexico.

    Mao created “Firecracker “ out of his memory of Shanghai, his birthplace, as well as other immigrants’ stories.

    Laurel Graeber of the New York Times calls Mao’s “Firecracker” a story for any person who is compelled to leave home and put down roots in a foreign country.”    Mao said he has played with the idea of the production many times in his head.

    “For many years I fantasized about re-setting Tchaikovsky’s holiday classic. Four years ago I decided to act on the idea,” Mao said.

    But he also wondered how he would be able to re-set it in a way that is relevant to him and the dancers who are diverse, multicultural, multiracial and multinational and make it relevant to the audience.

    A 1999 visit to his childhood hometown in Shanghai gave him ample fodder for his idea.

    He didn’t remember much but what he did recall had a profound effect on him, he said.

    His babysitter was named Qijin, which means 7 jin or 3.5 kilograms, because that was how much she weighed at birth.

    He also remembers a French candy store, a restaurant on the bank of a river and the hoarse call of the cleaver-man in a Shanghai dialect on a humid, lazy afternoon.

    “I remember the moment when the train pulled out of the station and I realized that Qijin was not coming with us,” Mao recalled. “I was not prepared for it, and was inconsolable.

    I used to ask my mother why we eventually came to New York. She had said: ‘Well, New york was the closest thing to Shanghai.” But it was not until I finally arrived in the city that I really understand what she meant.”

    In his return visit to Shanghai, an 80-year old ex-neighbour asked him if he was Mrs Mao’s naughty son. “My face was, as she said, a ‘carbon copy’ of my mother,” he said.

    Mao stayed at the Peace Hotel, formerly the Sassoon House, located on the bank of the Huangpu River. As he read the history of the house, he learned that the Sassoons were one of the many Sephardic families in Shanghai.

    There was a thriving Jewish community there which even had its own nightclub, synagogue and mansions.

    In the early 20th century the Sassoons were a well-known, rich family in Shanghai.

    He also heard the story of another wealthy family, the Hardoons, from his mother. One Hardoon had married a Chinese woman and the couple adopted many interracial children, one of whom a long-time friendly neighbour of the Maos in New York City.

   All these memories and experiences have inspired “Firecracker,” Mao said. The performance involves a universal journey –– leaving home and returning, which Mao conceives as a Chinese answer to Tchaikovsky’s family classic.

    For the ballet, Mao assembled an extremely prestigious creative team, with artists from both the theatrical and the dance worlds.

    Legendary Broadway designer Ming Cho Lee designed the sets, which include authentic drawings of Shanghai in the 1930’s Some high-tech tools are also used to translate the magical qualities of the production.

    “It is representative of Shanghai, a combination of Western and Eastern influences,” Lee said.

    Also a Shanghai-born Chinese-American designer, Lee said he felt personally nostalgic while working on the production.”

    “When Michael first approached me about ‘Firecracker,” I sound myself immediately intrigued by the premise of a Chinese ‘Nutcracker.’ It seemed to be a version of the original that I was ideally suited for because of my intimate knowledge of the culture and time period.” Lee said.

    Jonathan Faiman rearranged Tchaikovsky’s original score for the production. Each musical number selected from the original ballet has been altered in some way. All numbers have been re-orchestrated for at most 36 musicians rather than the full orchestra of 70-80- that Tchaikovsky specified.

    In addition, certain pieces have been restructured others have been harmonized. International folk music additions also add a a visceral sense of the specific geographical locations in the work.

“In all cases,m the alterations both preserve the spirit of the original and help bring a new and unique musical focus to the action on stage, Other musical selections, including Dudley Buck, Henry Cowell, Edward MacDowell, Charles Ives and myself have been added to reflect the narrative at specific points,” Faiman said.

FAMILY FARE

December 7, 2001, Friday

By LAUREL GRAEBER

Saturday Sunday 21-22 December , 2002

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2002