Jin Xing Dance Theatre Shanghai makes a very welcome return to the Joyce with SHANGHAI TANGO (photo by Angelo Palombini)
Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at 19th St.
January 31 – February 5, $10-$39
212-645-2904
www.joyce.org
Performing in New York City for the first time since undergoing gender reassignment surgery fifteen years ago, ballerina, choreographer, and People’s Liberation Army colonel Jin Xing leads her company, Jin Xing Dance Theatre Shanghai, in a lyrical, beautiful, stirring show at the Joyce. Jin Xing — who was born to Korean parents in Shanghai in 1967, is married to a German man, and has three adopted children — fills Shanghai Tango with ten exquisite works from throughout her career. The show opens with Liu Minzi spinning around and around on her toes, a light shining on her from above, casting a holy glow as twelve dancers pick up flowing white robes that surround her, the spirit of dance gathering her disciples as Dead Can Dance’s “The Host of Seraphim” plays. It’s a captivating narrative that prepares the audience for an evening of gorgeous set pieces featuring colorful, elegant costumes designed by Jin Xing, an eclectic score with music by Johann Strauss, John Williams, Astor Piazzola, and Rene Aubry, a lovely, unique movement vocabulary that mixes modern dance with ballet, numerous references to the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and a surprising sense of humor. In “Dance 02,” Dai Shaoting and Han Bin deliver a stunning pas de deux, spending much of the time with their backs on the floor, at one point Dai delicately balancing on Han with one leg on his chest and the other on his raised knee. In “Red Wine,” the male members of the company move around Jin Xing, who is seated in a chair, and ultimately give her the world’s biggest lap dance. In “Four Happiness,” Deng Mengna, Li Meilin, Liu Minzi, and Pang Kun dance on their knees all in a row, with Wang Peng’s lighting casting large shadows of the women on the back wall. In “Shanghai Tango,” Sun Zhuzhen, Han Bin, Wang Tao, and Liu Xianyi pose for an old-time family photo, but Sun is more interested in the man over her right shoulder than in her husband, who is sitting beside her. And all of that happens before intermission. The second act includes five more works that feature yet more dazzling costumes, breathtaking lifts, holds, and carries, sexy poses, a dazzling duet between Lu Ge and Liu Xianyi, such props as red fans, bicycles, and lilting sheets, and other inventive creations by Jin Xing and her remarkably talented company. Shanghai Tango, which continues at the Joyce through February 5 (with a postshow Dance Chat on February 1 and a preshow Dance Talk on February 2), marks the very welcome return of Jin Xing to New York; she’s been away far too long.
Following a launch party for her book about how she and two fellow Mossad agents in 1964 captured and killed Max Reiner (Edgar Selge), the notorious “Surgeon of Birkenau,” Rachel Brener (Gila Almagor) immediately learns that there is an old man in a Ukrainian nursing home claiming that he is in fact the doctor who performed horrific experiments on Jewish men, women, and children in the German concentration camp during World War II. Rachel is reunited with Zvi (Alex Peleg) and Ehud (Oded Teomi), who come up with a plan to eliminate the doctor once again to protect a secret that has been haunting them for forty years. But they’re no longer the brash, finely chiseled spies they were when they were young, leading to crises of conscience and other physical and psychological dilemmas. Nominated for four Israeli Academy Awards, The Debt is a tense thriller from director Assaf Bernstein, who cowrote the screenplay with Ido Rosenblum. The story weaves back and forth between the present day, as Rachel meets Ehud in Ukraine and they hash out their plan, neither one having done anything like this in decades, and 1964, when Rachel (Neta Garty), Zvi (Itay Tiran), and Ehud (Yehezkel Lazarov) were younger and more idealistic. The scenes in which the young Rachel visits the doctor, who has become a gynecologist, and pretends she is trying to conceive a child are particularly gripping, setting up a powerful conclusion. The Debt, which was recently remade in English by John Madden with Helen Mirren, Ciarán Hinds, Sam Worthington, Jessica Chastain, and Tom Wilkinson and evokes such films as The Wild Geese, The Boys from Brazil, and QB VII, will open the Brooklyn Israel Film Festival on Thursday night at the Kane Street Synagogue in Cobble Hill, followed on Saturday night by Yossi Madmony’s Restoration, which was named Best Feature at the 2011 Jerusalem Film Festival, and Dolphin Boy on Sunday night, which will be followed by a Q&A with codirector Dani Menkin and producer Judith Manassen-Ramon.