I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: May 12, 2017] GuGu Drums from Shanghai

This was supposed to be our last family theater even of the season (and probably our final Chinese Acrobat-type thing for quite some time, as we have seen a bunch lately).  But then something came up and only Clark and I could attend.  So it turned into a fun night for just the two of us to eat sushi at Inspiration Roll and witness the spectacle of many drums.

It’s not easy for us to get to MayoPAC for a 7:30 show, especially if we want to get sushi first.  We wound up missing some of the introductory piece, but that’s okay.

I wasn’t even entirely sure what to expect from this show–it just sounded cool.  And so it was.  Here’s a blurb that kind of summarizes the event:

Director Yang Xiaodong takes a contemporary approach to his authentic ancient drums, representing a powerful lineage of drum movements dating back to the times of the Emperors of Chinese Dynasties. GuGu Drum Group uses traditional Chinese drums and the percussive vocabulary of these ancient instruments with modern percussion techniques, most famous just outside of Shanghai. Featuring drum vignettes based on timeless Chinese proverbs, fables and fairy tales.

As we walked in, the stage was filled with a bunch of drummers in costume and one huge drum in the back of the stage.

And yes, for about 5 minutes the drummers played.  The entire night was sort of like an 80 minute drum solo (with intermission).

After the first piece was over, a narrator came on and told us what the next piece was going to be and what the story was behind it.  So each of the songs told a story (well, I didn’t always follow it, but I assume it was there).

There was a story about a tiger and a bull who meet and then fight.

There was a story about women (they had gigantic feathers in their hats which were mesmerizing).

There was a story about walnuts falling on to the roofs of buildings and how the girls in the town would run after them.  I loved the one of mice frolicking until a cat comes along–the drummers actually acted a bit with this one, playing quietly and then hiding and then playing loudly until they were frightened again.

I really liked the one of two birds prancing around (mostly because it used different percussion).  The drummers took on the personalities of the birds and stalked around each other.

I think there were six pieces in the first half and four in the second half.

The big red kettle type drums were used in most of the pieces.  And while the sound was kind of samey, it was fun watching the drummers do their patterns and sorta-dances while they were drumming.

It was also a pretty serious workout, clearly.  For many of the pieces at least one person did some full body drumming for at least a minute.

One of the pieces was about the Yellow River.  The drums were lined up kind of like they were rowing a ship with an appropriate chant to accompany the rhythm.  What was particularly cool about this was that they moved the gigantic drum (it was on legs, but the standing drummer’s head came up to the middle of it, so it was easily 5 or 6 feet in diameter) to the front side of the stage.  And every time he struck it, it wasn’t loud exactly, but it was so deep and resonant that it shook parts of the stage.

The final piece was meant to be a tribute to four cultures: Japan, China, Korea and the U.S.  So the drummers came out with giant plastic tubs and did some fun drumming and audience participation with that.  Then came out a traditional Japanese drum and they had a small “contest.”  Then came a Korean drum and finally the women in the troupe brought chairs out and did all kinds of percussion with the chairs.  By the end they were all working in harmony and it was pretty great–wonderful visually as well as sonically.

The lights came up and we all started filing out but I believe they came out and did another encore.  We had already gotten out the lobby (with about half the audience) when were heard people applauding.  And the there was more drumming.  I have no idea what happened and I feel kind of bad that we were all leaving as they were playing, but honestly, if there’s an encore, you can’t put the houselights on!

I had the program which gave all the titles of the pieces, but I recycled it without writing anything down.  That’s a shame.

Clark really enjoyed it, as did I, and we bought cool/scary wooden masks to bring home.  There were definitely elements of the that were a little too similar and even at 90 minutes it was a lot of drumming, but overall it was good fun and I’m glad we went.

You can watch some of their drumming here.