About
Qi Shu Fang is still famous in China as a pioneering woman who broke the gender barrier in traditional Peking (Beijing) Opera. Though it is just one of over 300 operatic styles in China, Peking Opera is likely the best known and most widely practiced theatrical tradition in the world. Dating to at least the 1600s, it started as an exclusively masculine art form. But after 1949 women began to emerge as performers, and Qi was central in that movement. Even as a teenager in the 1950s, she was renowned not only for her powerful soprano but also for her muscular execution of the required acrobatics and martial arts. Such an unusual combination of talents was necessary, for Peking Opera, unlike its European namesake, relies as much on athletic fight scenes and dance numbers as on singing and acting.
“It’s different from European opera, because it originated as more of a folk form, a popular entertainment for all classes,” says Daniel Youd, the company’s English translator when he’s not teaching Chinese at Beloit College. “In the late 18th century, these performing troupes came to Peking to perform for the emperor and his mother, and the royalty liked it so much that they asked the performers to stay in the capital. That’s how it got its name.”
At 18, Qi was chosen by Madame Jiang Qing, Chairman Mao’s wife, as the female lead inTaking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, one of the eight national “model opera” films produced during the violent upheaval of the Cultural Revolution. Overnight she became a nationwide star, eventually awarded the title of “National Treasure of China.”
Qi and her husband (and longtime director) Ding Meikui moved to Queens in 1988 to establish the Qi Shu Fang Peking Opera Company, which mounts new productions, trains young performers, and educates Westerners about Peking Opera. Qi was named a National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellow in 2001.
Videos:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=NndNBCQRW44
www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaWQeP-0fAg&t=43m42s