Article From: T-Magazine China
December 6, 2024
“From grinded eyes she retrieves a fragmented self.”
“From disability, She retrieves a dancer on light feet.”
--She Dances in April
Yu Xiuhua never expected that a year and a half after watching the “Peacock”, she would be dancing where the crows had spun and jumped.
In February 2023, Yu attended a performance of Yang Liping’s dance drama “Peacock” at the Suzhou Bay Grand Theatre with her agent, Hu Tao. The character of the crow struck her deeply. To Yu, her loved ones were the radiant peacocks, while she saw herself as the crow. That night, she ordered a bottle of baijiu online, drinking herself into a stupor.
Seven months later, Farooq Chaudhry, a British dancer and producer known for his collaborations with Yang Liping, and his wife Suman Hsu visited Yu’s hometown of Hengdian Village in Zhongxiang, Hubei. Under the sunlit branches heavy with green oranges, Yu, dressed in a pink dress, opened her arms and embraced them warmly. After over a year of invitations to join a dance project, she finally agreed to meet them.
Sixty-three-year-old Chaudhry, with his piercing grey-blue eyes, immediately struck her. "So, he really is British," she thought. Yu led them on a tour of her home, where her balcony was brimming with flowers and succulents. Much of her time at home was spent lying in bed alone, scrolling through videos, reading, or drinking.
Hengdian Village takes pride in Yu Xiuhua; her poetry is scrawled across walls, making the village itself feel like a museum dedicated to her works. However, Chaudhry observed that Yu didn’t seem like a queen in her kingdom. Instead, she resembled a creature feeling safe and relaxed in its environment.
Chaudhry first learned about Yu from a 2017 “New York Times” article titled “From Farmer to Poet”, which detailed her life as a woman with cerebral palsy who wrote poetry at a low wooden table in her rural brick house. Known for her poem “Crossing Half of China to Sleep with You”, she had become one of China’s most-read poets.
Chaudhry delved into her poetry and discovered vivid imagery of villages and nature, intertwined with complex identities—poet, mother, a disabled woman in rural China, and an outsider. In her words, he also saw himself.
As a child, Chaudhry had migrated with his parents from Pakistan to the UK, enduring the alienation of being a marginalized immigrant in a hostile environment. Through Yu’s poetry, he felt her sadness, isolation, and unyielding vitality. "She turns a lack of privilege, beauty, and love into something meaningful," he reflected.
Chaudhry reached out to Yu’s team through the British Council in China, expressing a desire to collaborate. At the time, Yu’s schedule was packed, and her team suggested licensing her poetry instead. Chaudhry rejected this impersonal approach, comparing it to "shopping at a supermarket."
In 2022, when a special grant from the British Council encouraged Sino-British artistic collaborations, Chaudhry tried again. This time, Yu agreed to a video call.
Yu’s agent, Hu Tao, was more cautious about the idea of her dancing than Yu herself. Beyond managing her professional engagements, Hu took meticulous care of her personal well-being, worrying about her drinking habits and excessive time spent on short videos. He feared that dance might be dangerous for her or reduced to a gimmick. However, Chaudhry’s sincerity and his emotional connection to Yu’s poetry began to change Hu’s mind.
After a particularly drunken evening, Yu told Hu, "I want to give it a try."
In the fall of 2023, in the house that had since been converted into the "Yu Xiuhua Museum," she began her first movement training session.
At 47, Yu embarked on an entirely new journey, learning for the first time how to use and free her body. Her movements were tentative and unsteady, but she persisted, quickly memorizing choreography. Xu Suman, an experienced movement coach who had worked with stars like Juliette Binoche, marveled at Yu’s artistic instincts, saying, "She picks up faster than many professionals I’ve worked with."
By late September, Yu joined the team on Hua Niao Island, far off the coast of Zhejiang. There, they rehearsed from morning to evening. Though the training was grueling, she pushed through the physical toll—her cerebral palsy made coordination and balance challenging, and she often wrestled with pain and exhaustion.
Despite the hardships, Yu showed remarkable determination, memorizing movements with mnemonics like "washing my face in the morning" or "catching a bird." Gradually, her rigid body began to loosen. "Her body tilted slightly, her arms extending like a small sailboat wobbling on water," Hu Tao recalled.
Improvised dance felt like writing poetry—wild and untamed. Yu grew captivated by the process, as she danced alongside contrasting styles: one wild and untamed, the other disciplined and technical. Together, they created movements inspired by mutual stories and emotions.
One evening, a wandering musician from a nearby island sang outside the rehearsal hall. Yu joined the gathering, requesting her favorite song, “The Flower Demon”. As the haunting melody flowed, she improvised a dance—a four-minute performance that stunned Chaudhry. "Where did that come from?" he asked.
For this poetry dance drama, Yu Xiuhua wrote three new poems. One line from “Determination”—“My ten thousand tons of moonlight have already sunk to the seabed”—deeply moved the playwright Amy. She suggested naming the production “Ten Thousand Tons of Moonlight.” Chaudhry immediately agreed. Although he didn’t understand Chinese, he could feel the vast imagery conveyed through the English translation.
In April this year, he invited Yu Xiuhua and the dance troupe to the UK, traveling to London and Newcastle for the second phase of rehearsals, stage synthesis rehearsals, and sharing sessions. They also completed their first public performance for an audience.
Before coming to the UK, Yu Xiuhua felt uneasy, worried she wouldn’t adapt to life in a foreign country. Once there, she followed the group into the city, watching squirrels on the lawn, strolling through Gordon Square, and visiting the National Gallery. She was amazed by the beauty of the medieval oil paintings. When they moved to Newcastle, the rehearsals became intense, with only an hour to rest at noon. However, the busy schedule seemed to help her sleep better at night than usual.
After the final sharing session in London, Yu Xiuhua suddenly plopped down on the floor amidst the enthusiastic applause, pouting and refusing to get up for a long time. It took her companions two strong tugs to pull her up so she could join everyone in raising their hands for the curtain call.
During the hour-long celebration dinner that evening, she sat silently in a corner, her eyes red and brimming with tears. Chaudhry came over to embrace her, and her tears began to fall.
"I didn’t dance very well tonight."
"You did great."
"I could have done better."
Li Kehua comforted her, saying that all dancers go through moments of breakdown on stage. It shows that you care about your performance and are reflecting on yourself. This might just be the beginning of becoming a true dancer.
Hu Tao observed that Yu’s deepening connection with the team sparked a sense of responsibility within her. On the surface, Yu Xiuhua often complained to him or claimed she wanted to give up. She frequently messaged Chaudhry, saying she wouldn’t attend rehearsal the next day or that she had completely forgotten the choreography. She would even say this wasn’t her project and that she didn’t care about the outcome. Yet in reality, Ten Thousand Tons of Moonlight was unlike anything she had ever experienced before. Her previous collaborations lasted no more than five or six days, but this project spanned nearly a year from the initial engagement. What amazed Hu Tao the most was Yu Xiuhua’s unprecedented tolerance toward this endeavor. Chaudhry’s ideas were constantly changing, and Yu jokingly called him an “old liar.” But no matter how tough things got, she still showed up at the rehearsal hall on time.
In the performance, the roles played by Li Kehua and Dong Jilan—a peacock and a crow—represent Yu Xiuhua’s inner conflict, symbolizing forces that are both divided and intertwined. Meanwhile, Tian portrays the younger, beautiful, and intact version of Yu Xiuhua in her mind—the ideal and perfect image from a worldly perspective. At 26 years old, Tian Chaudhry is a stage actress, and like Yu Xiuhua, this is her first experience with dance theater.
On stage, Tian and Yu Xiuhua share an intimate bond. Tian often bends her body forward, with Yu Xiuhua leaning against her back. Despite the language barrier, they often communicate through their eyes. Tian Lan feels that Yu Xiuhua is always quietly taking care of her, embracing and comforting her, and smiling at her with her eyes. Yu Xiuhua, on the other hand, reflects on how different their eyes are—Tian’s gaze is clear and youthful, while hers, at nearly 50 years old, is clouded.
Sometimes, after Hu Tao took pictures of Yu Xiuhua, she would say, "Why do I have so many wrinkles?"
"She loves beauty and fears aging. She accepts herself, but she also wishes for something better. That’s why she wants to seize love and beautiful things at all costs."
In her poetry, Chaudhry sensed that Yu Xiuhua was always searching for love. The pursuit of love is a human instinct, but Chaudhry believes that people don’t have to seek love solely through romantic relationships; it can also be found through art, work, friendship, or self-love.
Curiously, Chaudhry found himself inspired by Yu Xiuhua. "She practices so diligently, striving for perfection, and she never makes excuses for herself." What Chaudhry appreciated most was that Yu Xiuhua never told him what he should do. Instead, they established a connection—a pure exchange between one human being and another.
He thought to himself that he must honor her efforts and couldn’t let her down.
On November 15th, “Ten Thousand Tons of Moonlight” officially premiered globally in Shanghai. Before that, the team performed two preview shows at Suzhou Bay Grand Theater.
Even at that point, many details were still changing.
During a rehearsal before the first preview, Yu Xiuhua wobbled onto the stage from behind the curtain and bent down to pick up roses. Chaudhry stopped her with a microphone, saying she had taken too long to gather the flowers and suggesting there should be fewer scattered on the floor.
Without saying a word, Yu Xiuhua sat on a chair, holding the roses in her hands. She wore a white dress, its folds clinging to her figure, casting shadows of varying depth. Her long ponytail, tied up at the back of her head, swayed with her movements. She had straightened her hair just a few days earlier. After applying the treatment, the hairdresser warned that she shouldn’t tie her hair the next day during rehearsals. Hu Tao, her manager, had thought, “Great, now she’s going to look like Mei Chaofeng.” But Yu Xiuhua was firm, saying it looked better this way.
One day, before a show, in the dressing room, Yu Xiuhua urged everyone to stay and chat with her a little longer. She was excited about the upcoming official performance but also felt a preemptive sadness—when the performances ended, this shared life would come to a close, and these people would leave her.
Her companion Hu Tao would still stay by her side. To distract Yu Xiuhua from her short-video addiction, he had brought her many movies to watch. On Hua Niao Island, Yu Xiuhua fell asleep while watching “Decision to Leave.“ She preferred horror films, finding ghosts not scary, but rather the suppression and fear that emerge from within humans. “The world has many dimensions,” she said. “Humans and ghosts might not even exist in the same one.”
During many nights of her pregnancy, Yu Xiuhua would see a red glow on the wall. Others told her it was a sign of good fortune. "But how could I possibly be someone blessed with good fortune?" she said quickly, half a question, half a conclusion. She often felt both weary of her life and worried she was wasting it. “And those who have come into my life, forming so many connections with me—why do they care for me so much?”
Hu Tao told her, “Your life has brought about so many beautiful encounters, yet you haven’t realized their meaning.”
During those days, the “Peacock” production team was also at the Suzhou Bay Grand Theatre. Yang Liping came to watch a preview. Reflecting on the imagery of the peacock and the crow, Yu Xiuhua now felt differently: “If there isn’t a spring in your heart, flowers won’t bloom. Like Yang Zhipeng.” Yang Zhipeng was the name she gave to the roses on her balcony—and also the name of her friend.
On November 9th, after the final preview, everyone gathered in the rehearsal hall for a photoshoot: Hu Tao, Chaudhry, Dong Jilan, Li Kehua, Tian, and others who had been by her side for over a year. Yu Xiuhua’s emotions were still immersed in the performance. She was brimming with excitement, her bangs damp with sweat. She asked several people for their opinions: Should she wear her hair down or tie it up?
In the spacious rehearsal hall, Yu Xiuhua stretched her arms casually, then began to spin—wobbling, spinning, spinning, spinning. Following the photographer’s instructions, she leaned against the wall to rest, grinning before shyly covering her face with both hands, peeking through her fingers with laughter in her eyes.
She said she wanted to hear “Flower Demon.” As the music echoed through the high-ceilinged room, she began to dance. Her clothes billowed as she moved, arms crossing and then spreading wide like wings. As the erhu’s melody swelled from piercing to gentle, her movements shifted accordingly.
The dance was identical to her impromptu performance on Hua Niao Island, even replicating the bowing gestures of men and women. Back then, she had jokingly called herself a “spinning monkey,” claiming she only danced because she was drunk and wouldn’t dance again since she had stopped drinking. But on this day, Yu Xiuhua hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol.
For over two minutes of music, she danced continuously. Occasionally, the sound of her sharp breaths and unsteady steps hinted at the strain she might be feeling. But she kept dancing, never stopping.
She seemed to be crying, reaching a hand behind her back to wipe her face with her sleeve, letting out a choked sob. Covering her face with both hands, she lowered them again, revealing a bright, cheerful smile—using laughter to replace the tears she couldn’t control. She always seemed to be like this. The soul of a poet surged with intense emotions, but she was accustomed to hiding them, eventually turning them into a joke or a poem.
Everyone present understood her, and together, they watched her quietly.
Comentarios