Wuxia culture and traditional Chinese opera share the same cultural roots and have formed a mutual spiritual and aesthetic system since the era of baixi, the “Hundred Entertainments.” Drawing on Nie Yinniang, a tale in Pei Xing’s Tang-dynasty collection Chuanqi, this neo-wuxia Peking-and-Kun Opera image theater is set during the fragmentation of regional military rule in the mid-to-late Tang dynasty. It follows Nie Yinniang, an orphan from a military family, as she awakens from a subservient assassin into an independent vigilante. Continuing the inclusive, eclectic character of Shanghai-style martial theater, the production takes “neo-wuxia” as its conceptual framework and the conventions of Peking Opera and Kun Opera as its artistic foundation, cleverly integrating a diverse physical vocabulary of poetic martial movement and dance. On a minimalist freeform stage, digital imagery combines with live performance to move beyond conventional narrative limits and create a montage language across time and space.
