But now my laoshi (teacher) is taking the backseat and letting the pros do their thing. I've gotten used to Zhu using words like "du," "ba," "da," and "ceng" to cue me to enter the stage, switch my position or execute a move to a specific beat. It's an efficient way for Jingju performers to learn their choreography in the absence of the orchestra and communicate among themselves during practice and rehearsals. This is known as luoguo jing (锣鼓经), a phonetic system that uses Chinese characters to represent the combination of sounds created by the instruments used in a play. He had secretly invited them in a plot twist that showed me just how unpredictable stage performance is.īut now, they're here to put the last piece of the puzzle in place, layering my Peking Opera routine with live music.įor over two months, my instructor Zhu Lingyu had mouthed the sounds of percussion music to steer my moves on stage.
I first met the quartet a few days earlier when they appeared – seemingly out of thin air – just before the second evaluation, much to everyone's surprise, my dismay but my mentor's delight. It's Day 94, and the band has officially entered the chat, less than a week before our public performance.
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