A delightfully meandering show, Minorities is a multi-media production celebrating the 55 ethnicities that make up, along with the majority Han peoples, the population of China. Alternately instructive, comic and slightly controversial, Minorities is the third work in choreographer Yang Zhen’s Revolution Game trilogy.

A little background: Yang Zhen creates interactive, entertaining works for Red Virgo, a theatre and dance company based in Beijing and active since 2014. Red Virgo’s works always stem from traditional Chinese dances from different ethnic groups. The Canadian Stage presentation of Minorities marks the performers’ first time in Canada. The two previous shows in the trilogy, Just Go Forward (2014) and In the Field of Hope (2015) have been seen in Europe and Asia.

The red standing microphones and red X’s on the tables in the theatre lobby carry out a visual theme that threads through the show. A backstage video scrim of multicultural faces with a Mao-like figure in the centre gradually lights up in colours as the show begins. As heavy metal-like rock music plays, five female dancers spring up among the audience, shaking their booty and swinging their arms in the aisles and between the seats.

They are Lou Hio Mei, Ma Xiao Ling, Aodonggaowa, Gan Luyangzi and Guzhanuer Yusufu. Acting as emcee, an engaging Lou Hio Mei takes to the red microphone to introduce the show and the performers by background, and in turn asking audience members for their names and origins. The first part of the show concerns the ethnicities represented, their cultural dances and songs and the dancers’ feelings about their own cultures. At times we feel we’re in the classroom as documentary footage of dance demonstrations screens behind the mannequins wearing ethnic dress and the shape-shifting performers.

Lou Hio Mei is from Macao, once a Portuguese colony at the mouth of the Pearl River. She identifies as Han, the majority Chinese ethnicity. She introduces Uyghur dancer Guzhanuer Yusufu, Mongolian Aodonggaowa, Tibetan Gan Luyangzi and Korean Ma Xiao Ling. Even before they don their traditional dress, these performers express their identities through dance and song. It’s not hard to see how distinct their cultural differences are. Yusufu’s Uyghur dance shows elements of Indian classical dance. The Tibetan drum dance Gan Luyangzi performs employs a round skin drum similar to that used in indigenous dance and song in North America.

But Minorities is no earnest exercise in identity politics. It’s high-spirited, a little self-mocking and ultimately a patriotic ode to the joy of “56 brothers and sisters” that make up the Chinese mosaic. Lou Hio Mei’s topless, hula hoop hip rotations soon inspire  her fellow performers to return to leotards, their red running shoes signifying a common purpose. A song performed by Huang Ping in traditional style spans past and present, and suggests the continuity of an inclusive Chinese culture.

Minorities

Concept and choreography by Yang Zhen

Music and photography by Qi Ray

A Red Virgo production presented by Canadian Stage

At Berkeley Street Theatre, Toronto, until October 27

Photo (from left) of Gan Luyangzi, Guzhanuer Yusufu, Lou Hio Mei, Ma Xiao Ling and Aodonggaowa by Dahlia Katz