“My intention was to cast actors regardless of their ethnicity because I believe human experience is not exclusive but rather transcendental in nature,” writes Chen. When the Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter’s pre-recorded voice soars as the company takes its bows, their lack of vocal prowess is that much more evident. Clarity won’t bring life to the score, though, which features hefty contributions by Sia. It doesn’t help that Brandon Wolcott’s sound design offers a simultaneously muddy and tinny amplification of spoken dialogue and song. It is in these moments - sometimes ritualistic and meditative and at others fiercely dynamic and athletic - that Dragon Spring Phoenix Rise finds its footing.īut even with the entire company of 20 performers on stage, The McCourt feels ghostly. In addition to its many head-scratching incongruities, Chen’s globally assembled company is a jack-of-all-trades but master of none, except for their execution of Akram Khan’s movement choreography and Zhang Jun martial arts choreography. Set designer Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams has created an environment that looks more like Krypton than Queens, with suspended panels of fabric, a lone metal staircase to nowhere, and a multi-level stage that looks like a topographic map. In the second act (with mother and daughter resurrected) the siblings are now teenagers practicing martial arts under different tutelage, eventually reuniting to do battle against their father and save the world - from what, we never really know. Presented in two acts, Dragon Spring Phoenix Rise follows a marriage gone awry when Doug attempts to murder Lone Peak’s daughter (PeiJu Chien-Pott) and one of their twin babies so he can become master of this mystical world (otherwise known as Flushing, Queens). That mainstream commercial sensibility undermines the core of Chen’s concept by turning the work into theme park fodder.
Courtesy The Shed.)Ĭhen’s work features additional contributions by Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, co-writers and producers of family-friendly films such as TROLLS and the Kung Fu Panda series. PeiJu Chien-Pott with members of the chorus in ‘Dragon Spring Phoenix Rise.’ (Photo: Stephanie Berger. The seemingly baffled audience at a recent performance of the martial arts-driven multidisciplinary piece dashed for the door while the hard-working ensemble was still taking its bows, a spattering of applause echoing through The McCourt, The Shed’s 17,000-square-foot flexible space suited for large-scale performances. Lesson learned.ĭragon Spring Phoenix Rise, presented in a vacuous space that craves (and currently lacks) identity, is one of The Shed’s first commissioned works. Flying dancers, a stage that pools with water and floor traps bursting open into flames can’t fix an artistically disparate approach to a newly penned American fable about an underground sect called the House of Dragon. “Maybe if you had wanted less, you would have gotten more,” says Lone Peak (David Patrick Kelly) to his estranged son-in-law Doug Prince (David Torok) in the final climactic moments of Chen Shi-Sheng’s Dragon Spring Phoenix Rise. (l to r) Jasmine Chiu and PeiJu Chien-Pott in ‘Dragon Spring Phoenix Rise.’
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