Music
The best kept secret in music
Press
Thank you very much again for bringing such a fabulous cultural event to the University of Missouri campus on April 9, 2007. Hope we will have another opportunity to have your team to return to Missouri in the future. Please kindly pass on my best wishes to the troupe. Thank you very much.
- Sang Kim
The performance was spectacular! Attendance was great. I wish you could have seen the reaction from the school groups that were there on Friday morning. When the show began, they were so quiet-you could have heard a pin drop. They were amazed at the sword fighting and the acrobatics. The students' attention was held for the entire program. It was simply wonderful.
I'm so glad we were able to have this program at Concord. The audience members were very complimentary as they left the theatre. Several of them thanked me.
- Nancy Ellison, Director of Multicultural Affairs
You have brought us an afternoon of fun, entertainment and education. We liked the interwoven use of Chinese and English. The introduction before each piece helped the audience understand the story.
The choreography for "Fighting in the Dark" was so wonderful and the actors were amazing. They execute the moves with such an ease and grace and their comic effect was beyond everyone's expectation. The audience couldn't stop laughing. The young kids behind me were giggling the whole time! My girls were impressed with them not having eye contact but someone were able to execute the exact actions...
I didn't stay for the Autumn River, because I had to take care of business. But people were impressed with Merrianne's use of eye, hand and body expression. She did learn quite a lot at the Beijing Opera School.
Thank you for sticking around for Q/A and photo ops at the Reception. People enjoyed talking to you. It was such a phenomenal success. People appreciated the opportunity to see what Beijing Opera is all about. Now I don't know what to do to top this next year for the Chinese New Year Festival!
Thank you so much for giving us such a great time. We all learned a lot! - Cristina Yu
Discography
Still working on that hot first release.
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Bio
As an American traveling through Asia, I saw Beijing Opera for the first time in Taiwan. It was loud. I didn't understand the language. It was strange, but also sweet...like candy. Culture encounters can be like this. This was my first experience with Chinese theatre. I hope to recreate that sense of wonder for American audiences with our shows.
StrangeCandy is interested in creating theatre using Beijing Opera and other Chinese forms as a starting point for artistic exploration. All of our actors have trained since childhood in the art of Beijing Opera performance, but are currently based in the US.
The history of Beijing Opera is uniquely intertwined with the history of China's cultural, political and military experiences with the West. For this reason, Beijing Opera is more international than many realize. StrangeCandy is committed to bringing the charm, humor and passion of traditional stories to the American stage and to writing and producing our own stories using Beijing Opera performance techniques. It's emphasis on movement, acrobatics and mime, make Beijing Opera accessible to all audiences.
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