On Monday night we were invited along to a night of Chinese opera at the West Lake in HangZhou with our friend Aruna, her friend Amie and Aruna’s cousins visiting from Singapore.
The programme is called “Impression Westlake” and is something of a grand spectacle. As you would expect, the entire show was sung in Mandarin, so we were more or less unable to really understand the storyline, however it was somewhat irrelevant as it took nothing away from the visual tour-de-force set above the water on the lake!
As you can see from the photo above, the dancers literally danced on top of the water (above, left). Next,the scene was set (and, literally framed) by a massive structure which rose out of the water in spectacular fashion (above, right).
As you can see from the additional photos, this structure (towering several stories high) played an important role, and to give you some perspective, the photo above, left shows you the scale relative to a single dancer.
Next, a floating pagoda (above, right) was motored out into the lake as a setting for two song numbers and as you will see in the photo below on the left, it provides an interesting subject of scale for the large hydraulic triangle.
Finally, an electric (perhaps LED lit diodes?) crane (above, right) played a big part in the programme, including a flock of such birds “flying” over the lake.
Altogether, the show was quite impressive and the photos really do not do it justice. There were several hundred people in attendance including two VIP sections. The lake setting couldn’t have been better – or more impressive.
