Me, Myself & Opera

Last year, before I started learning Yueju, I saw Hang Juan's performance at Jubilee Hall. Before that, I saw her rehearsal and I really like her performance. I think she is a really good actress. She doesn't 敷衍 or 带过 in her roles which many full time actresses does. Some actresses acted too much until they can't put in anymore feelings in their performance. Her singing style is Qi Style, the one that I find very difficult. Qi is not really a main stream singing style. I was tudou-ing Hangjuan's video this afternoon and my mum asked me why this dan sing like that? Like she has got no breath and the melody is so flat... LOL.. Last year when she came to Singapore, she bought some hair pieces from me and I was surprised to find some videos of her using them. She looks so much like a GZX dan with those hair pieces. :D Think she is the first yueju dan to use GZX hair pcs ba.. lol.. Here are some of the videos I found. The first one, you can see quite clearly, the red hair pi...

If I ever learn how to sing Peking opera, there is one singing part that I like very much and I would be very happy to learn it!! 四郎探母之坐宫 Did you hear the 叫小番? Also, I would love to try out this kind of costume with this kind of shoes. Too bad, we never had a chance to perform a show of this era. Reason being we will have to buy a lot of new costumes and head dress just for this show. It's just not worth it. But I really like lor. Hopefully one day got chance to perform something in this period. Just an excerpt maybe, lol, drag Susan... Ask her to learn... The sheng can wear regular costume mah, just like this clip. Only the dan need to buy costume and head dress. I like this singing part of both the sheng and the dan. I used to listen to this very often, like everyday. There is another one which I like and is very similiar to the tune above but the dan is singing in Cheng Style. Cheng style is very difficult lah. So I don't think I will ever learn it. The voice projection is ...

I came across this show last night while surfing online. It is done by a Taiwanese Peking Opera troupe, Guo Guang. The story concept is quite interesting. It is about the relationship of this fox fairy which lasted for 3 lifetimes. In the first lifetime, the fox fairy is a lady and her lover is a hunter. Her lover was killed while fending for her so she vowed not to be a woman anymore. And so the fox fairy transformed into a man. Many years after transforming into a man, the fox fairy bumped into a lady. This lady is the hunter's reincarnation. The lady fell in love with the fox fairy. The fox fairy likes her but eventually decided to leave her fearing that bad things will happen just like before. After many years, the fox fairy picked up a baby girl and decided to keep the baby. He transformed again into a female to take care of the baby. When the baby grows up, the fox fairy realised that she is the reincarnation of the previous 2 lovers he had... And realised that he cannot run ...

Anyone going to china? Can help me get this DVD??? 玉簪记 has got 2 cover designs, which I found online! This is Bai Xian Yong's second production since the success of Mu dan ting some years ago. I have seen some bits and pieces of this show online and I love it! It has been some time since I last watch Kunqu. It gave me goosebumps when I listened to it again! It is just so nice and touching I dunno why! And recent production is getting more and more 'modern' with new costume designs etc. My gosh, I can't wait to see this new 玉簪记 Here is a clip of it I found online and I like it very much. I find Chen Miao Chang to be very cute and funny! MD thinks Chen Miao Chang is flirtatious and 风流. Actually he doesn't know the story lah. Very sweet and cute.

These few days, I have been quite actively practicing this show. I am suppose to perform this in September which is still quite a long time from now. But since I want to learn this from Zhang and he is here now, I might as well learn it now. Or else I will have to wait till June when he comes to watch Wu Feng Hua's show. I am very kiasu so I thought if I learn it now, I can practice it better and also I can learn more shows this way. Thing is, I know nuts about the show. I only saw it twice on Tudou that's all. LOL. The next day, I went to Zhang's place and he saw that we are very unfamiliar with the lines so he made us sing the first half with the vcd a few times. I cannot catch anything. I totally dunno what is going on. I can only hum along. I feel so lost. After humming a few times, Zhang taught us the stage positions. So we just followed. Then after that he taught me the actions for 'crossing the bridge'. My gosh, I need to workout my legs liao. I wanna do it n...

It's not that we don't have other shows to learn in Yueju, it's just that we are still fine tuning our Liang Zhu so we are still rehearsing it. Hang Juan told Zhang that since we have already made such a beautiful music for Liang Zhu, we should master it. Zhang told us that Hangjuan love the liang zhu music so much that she plays it in her car everyday! In case you don't know who is Hang Juan, she is the one that acted as YingTai previously when the music was first made. I have been practicing this whole show randomly for the past dunno.. think more than 6 months yet there are still many things still not fine tuned yet! Today we practiced a few scenes at Bedok because there were only Susan and me there. We did 18相送. Though Zhang said that I have improved in my acting, I must watch out for the words pronunciation. Some words are not clear enough. I am glad he corrected my words! Else I will continue to be wrong for all my upcoming practices. Then we did 楼台会 which I did...