Shaolin Wheel of Life; Songs of the Wanderers

While we normally don't connect Buddhist monks with kung fu (a martial art that is both popular and fast, as disco scholar Carl Douglas pointed out; recall the sacred text: "everybody was kung fu fighting/those cats were fast as lightning"), this world-renowned Chinese fighting form and long-time staple of Asian and Hollywood cinema is believed to have originated at the tail end of the 5th century with the first Zen Buddhist monks as a means of protecting their Shaolin Temple. Captured before a live audience, the presently touring Shaolin Wheel of Life combines elements of theatre, dance, acrobatics, and kung fu to trace the legend of how the Shaolin monks' loyalty to the Emperor was betrayed, nearly decimating their ranks (only five young monks would survive to continue the "wheel of life"). To be honest, fans of Cirque du Soleil, Merce Cunningham or Eugene O'Neill will not be bowled over by the acrobatic feats, dancing or threadbare narrative of the first two-thirds of the production. However, in the final third, the kung fu kid gloves come off and we watch the production rise to a whole different level as the monks perform a series of mind-boggling feats that include a two-finger handstand and lying suspended on a bed of spears. Colorful, nicely scored, and ultimately transcendent, Shaolin Wheel of Life is sure to be popular and is recommended. [Note: the DVD also includes an interesting "making of" that takes viewers to the Shaolin Temple.] Aud: H, C, P. With the origins of kung fu under my black belt (the one that holds up my pants), I decided to tackle a more abstract Far East stage production, Songs of the Wanderers, thereby foolishly breaking one of my golden rules: never let a fine arts philistine tackle a cultural snob's job. Lured, I freely admit, by what some of my illustrious ancestors might have termed the "purty pitchers" on the box, which depict the Cloud Dance Theatre of Taiwan in various poses on a stage that holds nearly three tons of golden rice, I was mesmerized (at least initially) by the opening, in which a monk-like figure stands with his hands clasped in prayer as rice rains down upon--and cascades off--his bare head. Unfortunately, this goes on for about four minutes longer than your average MTV-weaned teenager would be able to bear, followed by a rather slow-moving community tale told through dance, which features house-raising, sex, and marital strife (all of which must be interpreted from movements and very basic props, since no one actually builds a house, does the wild thing, or screeches about a poor harvest), before ending on a life-is-a-great-inscrutable-spiral note. In all fairness, the imagery is often quite striking (who amongst you will object to a buff dude in a loincloth writhing around on a bed of Rice-a-Roni?), but this is glacially slow, and the music--with the exception of the "Lament for a Lost Soul"--is rather tonally monotonous. Incidentally, if anyone--and by "anyone" I mean, of course, cultural snobs--can enlighten me as to the connection between the final song, "Garekakhuri Sachidao (Wrestling Comic Song)," and the final scene of the guy raking the rice, then I'll be able to put this distraction behind me and get back to my important work on deconstructing Marxist ideology in Teletubbies. Optional. Aud: C, P. (R. Pitman)