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IMAGE: Mr. Wang Shengsheng
Talk about cultural highs and lows. The same week locals can go cheer on Jack Burton as he battles Lo Pan in the '80s flick Big Trouble in Little China (see page 51), they can also watch 34 movers from the Beijing Dance Academy Resident Dance Company translate 1,000-year-old stories into modern ballet marvels. "China has 1.3 billion people, so these are the crème de la crème," gushes show organizer Hong Mautz of the dancers, many of whom had never set foot on U.S. soil before The Butterfly Lovers' L.A. premiere last week. The touring show's main piece, created by House of Flying Daggers choreographer Zhang Jianmin, puts a modern spin on The Butterfly Lovers, China's answer to Romeo and Juliet. Unlike R&J Butterfly includes cross-dressing, thunderbolts and dancers performing incredible jumps while dressed in costumes with giant butterfly sleeves.)The show also boasts old-world/new-world dance mashups that take cues from Peking opera and Buddhism. "This is a new creativity coming out of China. When I go to China now I encounter young people [who are] brave in their sense of creativity. They do not fear censorship. Not like my generation," Beijing native Mautz says. "They have found their own identity."
Headout Picks
WEDNESDAY FEB. 17
[WORDS]
Ralph Ellison may be gone, but his second novel has just presented itself.
[MUSIC] YACHT
You thought YACHT's "Psychic City (Voodoo City)" was rad when the band was just a duo? Wait till you see what it sounds like now that Bobby Birdman and Jeffrey Jerusalem are part of the live show. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., 239-7639. 8:30 pm. $5. 21+.
THURSDAY FEB. 18
[VIS ARTS]
Mollomoconfronts and exorcises the demons that haunt post-feminist women.
FRIDAY FEB. 19
[SCREEN]
movie critic Aaron Mesh's own Beer and Movie Fest hits its perverse climax with a 1977 Japanese schoolgirl horror-comedy AP Kryza calls "one of the weirdest films ever crafted."
SATURDAY FEB. 20
[MUSIC]
One of PDX's first major indie-rock groups plays a reunion show for all ages.
[MUSIC] SWOLLEN MEMBERS
Canada's best rap export hits town just in time for the Olympics. Hawthorne Theatre, 3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 233-7100. 9 pm. $13 advance, $15 day of show. All ages.
SUNDAY FEB. 21
[CLASSICAL]
Classical vocal quartet FourScore stages a morality play by 12th-century nun/visionary Hildegard of Bingen with help from a 100-plus-singer pickup choir.
TUESDAY FEB. 23
[DANCE]
Stellar movers Hubbard Street perform a wild array of works, including a wall-slapping, body-slamming take on "Boléro" called
from Johan Inger.
WWeek 2015