words rachel mok

The ancient tale of the Butterfly Lovers gets an unusual retelling by a modern dance duo

The wings dancer/choreographer Abby Chan Man-Yee and Yeung Wai Mei wear in their dance-theatre performance Boot-leg Butter-fly don’t symbolize a butterfly. They actually represent the wings of a – um – sanitary napkin. The pair has even made a video mimicking a TV commercial of the napkin for display during the show. ‘[A sanitary napkin] is a very woman thing and it is symbolic of a girl’s growth. The story of Boot-leg Butter-fly is about the growth of two girls but we do it in a more absurd way,’ explains Yeung.

That’s the kind of thing Mcmuimui Dansemble do. Their works are sometimes farcical and often witty as they explore issues through socially conscious pieces like Siesta or up-close and personal matters through the likes of Wetlands of a Woman, last year’s collaboration between Abby Chan and playwright/actress Wong Wing Sze. Since founding the dance troupe in 1997, Yeung and Chan have progressed from expressing themselves solely through body movements in the early years to fusing dance with other elements, such as drama and literature – as they have done in Boot-leg Butter-fly – to test the boundaries of local dance. As Abby Chan jokes, every time she is invited to take part in a drama, she plays a ghost, spirit or something similar. Now she’d like to do it the other way round and introduce drama into her dance performance.

Boot-leg Butter-fly is a revisionist look at the traditional Chinese folk legend The Butterfly Lovers, or Liang-Zhu, the tragic love story of Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai. As the story goes, Zhu Yingtai dressed up as a man in disguise to attend school (as only boys were allowed to go to school in the past) where she shared a room and bed with Liang for three years. Of course, he never realised Zhu was a woman – even though she fell in love with him – until she had to return home for an arranged marriage. Liang later died of a broken heart and when Zhu, on the day of her marriage, passed his grave, she leapt in and was buried with him. The spirits of the two, as the legend goes, became butterflies and flew off together, never to be parted again. Under the pen of renowned writer Chan Wai, a new perspective is given to the classic myth – what if Liang and Zhu are both girls, they know and decide to keep their knowledge secret?

‘It is a myth – people will wonder why he [Liang] can sleep in the same bed [with Zhu] for three years – though separated by a bowl of water – but he doesn’t realize she is a girl. So Chan Wai imagines that they are both girls and keep the secret for each other,’ explains Yeung. To Chan Wai, if one needs to look for rationality in everything, the story won’t be as poetic and romantic as it is now. ‘That is a very deep friendship. Yet we would emphasis that it is not a lesbian story – they may get married and have children after they finish school. It is not about having a relationship forever. That is what sisterhood is about: When you need my help, I will be there.’

Throughout the years, the story of Liang-Zhu has appeared in various forms: Legendary director Li Han Hsiang’s 1962 film made in Huangmei Opera and starring, curiously, two female stars – Ling Po and Loh Ti – is one of the most recognized versions of the story. In a more recent example, a Wuxia version of the film used Twins’ Charlene Choi and Kay Tse’s latest hit Zhu Yingtai. The cultural significance of the characters passes on from generation to generation.

‘There are many versions that are popularized and secularized,’ Yeung says. ‘It is a myth and no one know what the truth is – some say the part where they become butterflies was added much later on, to make the story more poetic and romantic. There is a lot of room for imagination for this story so we can reflect it in our world today too.’ And that means anyone who uses the story can fit their own agenda to it: some see Liang-Zhu as a Chinese version of Romeo and Juliet, some are curious about its homosexual undertone, and others use it as an example of historical gender inequality.

Uniquely, Boot-leg Butter-fly converts the legend into dual storylines. One follows a librarian who identifies herself as Zhu Yingtai, the other is about a pair of good friends – partly based on Yeung and Chan, as its writer admits – who study in dance school together, develop their career together and work on The Butterfly Lovers as a project for two decades. As this dance theatre piece is so heavily involved with drama, literature and multi-media – dramatist Mann Chan served as consultant and HK Film Awards and Golden Horse Awards-nominee art director Man Lim-Chung worked on the setting design and costumes – Yeung and Chan have branded their show a ‘fiction in motion’.

‘Dance is a rather abstract form but a novel is more concrete. At the same time it is poetic. When an audience sees it, they will probably have to cut and paste everything and interpret it themselves,’ says Yeung, suggesting that instead of using their intellects, audiences respond with their feelings to the work.

While Mcmuimui Dansemble’s previous works include the exploration of how women see their bodies in Flesh Dance and their desire in Wetlands of a Woman, Boot-leg Butter-fly (the Chinese title literally means “sharing the bed with Shanbo”) can be seen as addressing a combination of the two issues, though to raise gender and sex issues in their show is intimidating for the two women. Their promotional material for Flesh Dance was banned by the LCSD, who classified it as ‘erotic’. That, they say, reflects certain puritanical attitudes in our society, but Abby Chan and Yeung Wai Mei don’t regard females in the SAR as unfortunate.

‘I think the girls in Hong Kong are very independent and blessed – so much so that they are spoiled,’ says Yeung. ‘In the past women had to take care of the family and give birth to babies,’ says Abby Chan. Today for women, society attitudes appear to be more open, yet that may also imply more constraints. ‘Now women need to face both work and family,’ says Chan. But that is also not the root of women’s difficulties: ‘Complete equality between the two sexes may be impossible but what we need to learn is respect for each other,’ is Chan’s conclusion.

Boot-leg Butter-fly will be staged at Hong Kong Arts Centre’s Shouson Theatre on May 15 and 16 at 8pm and on May 17 at 3:45pm. Tickets are $200, $180 and $160 from URBTIX, 2734 9009. In Cantonese.