Tai chi adds another form of movement to Bach

By Fred Crafts of The Register-Guard.

The way tai chi master Chungliang Al Huang sees it, it takes two to Tao.

In Wednesday's "Tao of the Well-Tempered Bach" program, Al Huang will perform with classical pianist Robert Levin. The two artists will offer a presentation that draws on the best elements of what they do separately - music and movement - while merging Eastern and Western perspectives.

To do that, Levin will play selections from J.S. Bach's famed keyboard instructional book, "The Well-Tempered Clavier" (BWV 546-94), a collection of 48 preludes and fugues that refers to a system of tuning. All the while, Al Huang will interpret the pieces through tai chi movements.

Chungliang Al Huang will carry out choreographed and improvised movements based on the Chinese meditative art of tai chi while pianist Robert Levin plays selections from Johann Sebastian Bach's "The Well-Tempered Clavier."

"It will be different," Al Huang promises. And serious, Levin adds.

"We hope that this kind of mixed-media performance will be anything but superficial and will bring people deeper into both elements of this," Levin says.

`I couldn't take the rain'

Al Huang, who grew up in China, came to the United States to study architecture at the University of Oregon in the 1956-57 school year, but soon left.

I couldn't take the rain," he says.

He earned a bachelor of arts at University of California, Los Angeles, and a master's in cultural anthropology and choreography at Bennington College.

Al Huang has received the highest gold medal from China's Ministry of Culture, and is a fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Science in Stockholm, Sweden.

As a performer, he has danced with both Sammy Davis Jr. and Bruce Lee, and he was featured in the film musical "Flower Drum Song." His own company performed at the Jacob's Pillow festival in New York City and at the American Dance Festivals in North Carolina.

Collaborations are nothing new to Al Huang. He has performed with artists as varied as Yehudi Menuhin, Paul Winter, John Denver, John Baez, Andreas Vollenweider and Paul Horn.

A regular at the Oregon Bach Festival since 1999, Levin also has played at festivals in Sarasota, Tanglewood, Ravinia, Bremen and Lockenhaus. As a collaborator, he has worked with Frans Brüggen, John Eliot Gardiner, Christopher Hogwood, Nicholas McGegan and Roger Norrington.

Improvisation is one of Levin's specialities. His free fantasies in W.A. Mozart's style, invented on the spot, and his improvised cadenzas have earned critical acclaim. And his completions of Mozart's compositional fragments have been recorded and performed throughout the world.

A chance meeting

The idea for this adventurous program - a first for the Oregon Bach Festival - sprang forth when the artists met following one of Levin's concerts three years ago.

Al Huang, who splits his time between homes in Gold Beach and Champaign-Urbana, Ill., had been attending Oregon Bach Festival events as a spectator for several years. Festival officials asked him to do a program, which he says will be "an attempt to bring the seemingly opposing East-West traditions into one synthesis."

"I grew up in a whole different musical tradition. Old music, especially Chinese classical music, is based on one long, flowing line. Music like Bach's music - contrapuntal, different kind of variations, tonal intricacies - is a major shift.

"I had to enter from a completely different way. For me, it was an organic pattern."

The open structure of the concert is based on what Al Huang notes is the Chinese philosophy of the creative life force or "chi": the primal energy, the breath of life.

"It is contained within the five moving forces of nature," he says: "Fire-Water-Wood (wind), Gold (metal) and Earth, in the cyclical flow and the constant, interactive transformations. They are metaphors of nature, to be experienced and embodied within the human person in our day-to-day dance of life

To Al Huang, Bach is "a divine god" who was "planting all these dancing seeds that sprout eventually into all these glorious, perfect, natural gardens."

Everything about Bach has intrigued him, even his name.

"Bach is very much a Taoist word," he says. "It means `brook' and `running water' and `flow.' That's another connection with the tai chi movement, which is all about flowing your energy."

"The Tao of the Well-Tempered Bach" is expected to open with Levin playing selections from "The Well-Tempered Clavier" while Al Huang interprets them in choreographed pieces. After intermission, both artists will improvise.

Although this approach may have the noblest of purposes, both performers acknowledge it might rankle some patrons.

"There will be purists of Bach who will say, `Oh, you can't do that.' Al Huang says. `We just want to listen to a beautiful musician, playing. That's enough for us.'

"There will be purists of tai chi who will say, `No way. No sound. Pure meditation. Not with Bach's music. How sacrilegious."

As a result, the performers have left themselves open to accusations of gimmickry. But Levin insists the program is a serious attempt at integration.

"It's certainly a great adventure for me," he says. "I've never done anything like this before. But Al is such an interesting artist that it seemed to me there was no risk - only a challenge, and a prospect for much excitement."