I had an incredible Sunday before I headed off to the dance performance by Mongolian dancers on campus. Ever since arriving on the CUN campus, I have longed to go to the dance performances on campus. The dance dept of this campus is famous and well-respected in China, especially for their ethnic minority dances. They are often featured on international CCTV when Beijing has events.
I was expecting this to be the student dancers here but it was actually a guest dance troupe from Mongolia. The event had some publicity I'm sure. There were some VIPs there, all dressed in Mongolian outfits. There were the usual speeches before the performance began. There was a printed program for the performance. The show would consists of dance, vocal and instrumental numbers. The hall was not full and the audience was fairly polite given that TIC. There was no scramble for seats when the doors opened unlike some other events.
The show started off with a slightly modern number, with dancers in animal print costumes. The dance was not very well choreograph and did not show off the dancers in the best possible way. We hoped the performance would get better as the evening progressed. There were group dances but since I had watched "The Cyclone of Genghis Khan" with the top dancers of Mongolia, this troupe was not as good. There were similar dances but the dancers lacked the energy to keep the audience engaged.
I wonder whether the sound techs here have hearing problems because everything is so loud. They have a higher risk of damaging their hearing more than the audience. Sadly, I had left my earplugs at home and had to hold my camera to video the event, therefore I couldn't cover my ears. They hurt that evening. The singing was actually very good but the mics were turned up so loud that there was distortion. I noticed that the singers sang on pitch, to whatever the accompaniment was. The singing style is more strident than a western singing style, therefore the mics usually need to be turned down and not up. I am almost certain they could be heard in the hall without amplification because of the placement of the sound. I also mention this because these songs were sung on the grasslands, and they are trained to sing out in the open fields so an enclosed auditorium is not a problem.
I noticed that the musicians were trying to blend the old and the new. There was a performance of the Mongolian horse-head fiddle. The two players were accompanied by an electric guitar and an accompaniment soundtrack which sounded like techno. My friend asked me whether they were out-of-tune at one point, to which I nodded. These instruments do not have the exact same tuning as Western instruments, especially the synthesizer and electric guitar. They would have sounded better just on their own. (Opinion: The synthesizer poses another problem as its sounds are electronically generated, leading to another acoustic problem for the fiddle. There would be less overtones for the fiddle to match, I would think.) This item gained a lot of appreciation from the young audience.
On the other hand, the traditional Mongolian ensemble with three throat singers was a much better performance. Although the music was neither blaringly loud, nor thumping, the serene and mellow tunes gave a more genuine portrayal of Mongolian music. I have listened to unaccompanied throat singing and it is easy to appreciate the technique, but it is hard on the ears. I was very glad to hear how well this singing style blended with the instrumental ensemble. It was a very pleasant end to the evening for me. I wasn't quite sure whether the rest of the audience enjoyed this as much as I did.
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