Phoenix landed in China for a collaboration with Dan Miethke from the Australian-based fire performance company "Pyroptix". We were the final highlight show for the opening of the new "Dragon Gate" Mall in the heart of Shanghai. Other acts included a traditional "Han Dynasty" drum and dance group with very long sleeves, Chinese musicians playing beautiful and complicated instruments incredibly well and Russians dancing really hot flamenco, rhumba and tango, as well as speeches by VIP's, a fireworks display and our stilt-walking characters as an after-show roving act for the general public.
With about two and a half days and nights in total there wasn't much time to take in the city. The show was an hour's drive through Shanghai but we still managed two separate trips to the location, two nights out at good restaurants and great clubs, checking out a couple of local markets and getting to a really good clothing market that had loads of nice cashmere coats and silk material. It felt like we had half the entire sleep from our trip on the plane there and back. Thanks to the organisers (you know who you are) for really great treatment and a wonderful experience.
Shanghai seems like a pretty cool city, simultaneously avant garde and young yet grounded in a kind of concrete conservatism that is propagating towers and sky-scrapers while local structures and slums, indeed entire city blocks of them, sigh and fade hopelessly into obscurity. It is clear that the voice of the poor and small goes unheard in the face of China's open market economy dictatorship. I saw city areas that appeared to be awaiting doom with aesthetic beauty, their walls crumbling and rooftops caving in, while advancing sky-scrapers loomed against the immediate horizon, threatening monolithic merchants of the inevitability of progress. Asia, generally, seems to be always filled with a kind of livid contrast.
This was the general impression I had of the city from the luxury of my bus window which, I admit, really isn't a lot. And anyhow, we all had a really great time there, investigtigating the people and their language, culture, shops, restaurants and clubs to the best of our western abilities. Thanks again to Dan, Steve and Sandy for bringing us over and showing us a really superbly great time!
Directly after the show we somehow managed to all have a nice dinner, go out to a completely rocking club and get back to the hotel for a shower before taking off to the airport and Dubai for our next major show at the world's richest horserace (see my next blog).
To top the trip off, at check-in four of us lucky people, including yours truly, received a very auspicious upgrade into business class thanks to the airline over-booking seats. The service and food on offer was top class but none of us could really enjoy it as we needed to have a fairly good sleep instead. Still, economy has never been the same again.
...
Dan Miethke ∼ www.pyroptix.com
Black Dragon Media ∼ www.blackdragonmedia.cn
Phoenix Productions ∼ www.phoenixfiredancers.com
More thumbnails ...
1 vote 
