East Meets West

"Dance in China, especially modern dance, is really at its zenith," says Adams, and she has assembled a showcase of the nation's most electrifying troupes, classical and contemporary. Many are both in one: In fact, one of the festival's most sought-after tickets has to be the National Ballet of China 's performance of "Raise the Red Lantern" (See story, Page 26) a full-length ballet created by Zhang Yimou, director of the critically acclaimed film of the same title (and also of "Hero" and "House of Flying Daggers"), which folds the pas de deux convention in with elements of folk dance, classical Chinese opera and acrobatics. The score, by Tan Dun's old classmate, Chen Qigang, and the dancers' technique have been widely admired.

The National Ballet's repertory nights offer a blend of traditional, modern and capital-R Romantic pieces: "The Yellow River," set to Ying Chengzong's "Yellow River Concerto"; a duet set to a Richard Strauss song; Fei Bo's "Remembrance," a new work that won the choreography prize at the 2005 Helsinki International Ballet Competition; and Act 2 of "Giselle."

Here again is a mini-motif: The "Yellow River Concerto" is often called China's national anthem: It was based on a 1930s cantata and rewritten as a concerto during the Cultural Revolution. It is also being performed as a concert piece by the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra , along with a piece celebrating the different characteristics of women composed also by Chen Qigang.

Here is another: Both the Shen Wei Dance Arts, a New York-based troupe known for an almost brazen tendency to combine traditional Chinese dance with formalized opera, theater, even the visual arts, and the Beijing Modern Dance Company have choreographed works to Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring." The New York Times has called Shen Wei's choreography "something to write home about in the dance world," praising his "painterly, mathematical and idiosyncratic" vision. (The other piece in the program is a stately, meditative one called "Folding," inspired by the drapery of costumes set to the sounds of Tibetan Buddhist flutes and Tavener's "Last Sleep of the Virgin.")

The Bejing Modern Dance Company's production, an avant-garde work called "All River Red," by husband-and-wife choreographers Li Hanzhong and Ma Bo, portrays the violent clash of conformity and radicalism. It's part of a three-company program titled "Trilogy of Modern Dance," also showcasing the Guangdong Modern Dance Company and the City Contemporary Dance Company of Hong Kong.

XI'AN -- Wu Zetian is the only woman emperor in Chinese history, a beautiful and shrewd lower-level concubine who slept with one emperor and then his son when he ascended to the throne, eventually marrying him and replacing the former empress. After her husband suffered a stroke, she took effective control, forming a secret police squad and eliminating her enemies. When her husband died, she put two of her more malleable children on the throne as puppet rulers but seven years later claimed it in her own right and duly acquired, as one temple guide put it, "hundreds of male concubines and boy toys."

Some historians point to Wu's reign (from 690 to 705) as a time when women were given unprecedented freedom and respect, the military was downsized and the scholarly class encouraged. She raised Buddhism to a favored place and presided over the building of many beautiful temples and shrines. Finally -- at age 80 --she retired in favor of her third son.

Strong women, especially in noble and often martial situations, are a common subject in Chinese theater. One of the most popular scenes is that of the warrior maiden who faces down many times her number of soldiers, using fantastical acrobatics and elaborate choreography to turn aside their spears and swords -- a theme familiar from Zhang Yimou's magical-realism movies. The China National Peking Opera Company , returning to the Kennedy Center after 25 years, presents "Female Generals of the Yang Family," inspired by the history of the Northern Song Dynasty in the 10th century. According to the play, She Taijun, the centenarian dowager head of a family reduced to widows, leads her female army to avenge the death of her son. Their military maneuvering explodes into an acrobatic display straight out of Yimou.

A more up-to-date group of female warriors, in a musical sense, is Red Poppy , an all-women percussion band that plays eclectic arrangements of Chinese music on more than 40 Western and traditional Chinese instruments. Since 1999, Red Poppy has played across Asia, in Canada and South Africa and inspired a host of out-of-the-conservatory women's groups that pop up in trendy nightclubs from Beijing to Chiang Mai.

GUILIN -- Along the Lijiang, that is, the Li River, the scenery is truly fabulous, lined with those huge and weirdly abrupt limestone mountains, some humpy, some sharp as molars, that jut up into the sky only a single scanty field's distance from water's edge. Early on, the tallest peaks are wreathed with scraps of fog like torn clouds. Men poling bamboo rafts are dappled with the shadows of hawks soaring overhead. Water buffalo, ducks and geese, skinny yellow dogs and occasionally horses gaze without interest as boats go by; and every once in a while herds of mountain goats appear on the sheerest of slopes.

Not only is the pen an instrument of representational art in China, as with the great watercolor scrolls of mountains and natural marvels; it also turned writing into an art -- or rather several, as there were quite distinct styles, some pared down and almost palpably curt, some ornate and mannered, that were used for official correspondence or meditation in different eras.

Wang Xizhi, considered the greatest calligrapher in history, created a flowing, cursive style used for poetry that itself became a discipline. His preface to a 4th-century collection of poetry was considered so beautiful by the Tang Emperor Tai Zong that he ordered the original buried with him. Professor Sun Jinbgo of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing has created a lacquer mural inspired by the Lan Ting Xu, as the preface is called. It, and a second mural of musicians, are being presented to the Kennedy Center as a permanent gift from the Chinese government in recognition of the festival. They are on display in the new China Lounge on the box tier of the Eisenhower Theater.

Eve Zibart's mother, a professional dancer, was born in Shanghai to American parents.