Each year the Adelaide Festival Centre presents the unique and exciting OzAsia Festival, and the opening performance this year, at Her Majesty's Theatre, was this remarkable work, Meeting With Bodhisattva, from U-Theatre of Taiwan. It was a unique combination of percussion, martial arts, vocal music with complex harmonies, chant, storytelling, and enormous spirituality.
Bodhisattva literally means "enlightened (bodhi) being (sattva)" and, although it appears in both major schools, the meaning here is clearly that of the Mah?y?na, rather than the Therav?da school of Buddhism. The bodhisattva is described in this school as a man who has chosen to devote his life to seeking enlightenment as quickly as possible, for the good of all sentient beings. Mah?y?na is the newer of the two paths and by far the largest, with more than half of the world's Buddhists following it. It is the form adopted in Taiwan, from whence this group have come. This is the path taken by the central character in this piece.
There are also the celestial bodhisattvas, who reside in heaven, Manjusri (Sanskrit), Wenshu (China), or Jam-dpal (Tibet) is one of these, the Bodhisattva of wisdom, who carries the sword of wisdom in his right hand and a book in his left. He is considered to be the initiator and master of all Buddhas, and it is he that sets our protagonist on his spiritual journey towards enlightenment.
The company is led by director, Liu Ruo-Yu, and musical director, Huang Chih-Chun, who plays the man who is sent to seek enlightenment, while sixteen other performers portray everybody and everything that he encounters along the way. The story is told in a unique way, with drums and martial arts movements choreographed together into a new dance form.
The drums come in various sizes and are like those used in India, and the instruments would be recognised by any who have attended a Japanese Taiko drumming performance. Although the others play with the conventional short heavy sticks, our seeker of wisdom carries a long stick, like those carried by monks for protection, and he uses this to strike both the head of the drum and the wooden body, as well as the stage, to create a range of sounds.
The music was not confined strictly to drums and cymbals. A guzheng (an ancient type of zither) and a dizi (bamboo flute) also appeared later in the work. Very martial and loud sections were thus contrasted with more serene scenes and gentle music as the journey progresses, the seeker letting go of his fears and accepting whatever comes.
This was a very meditative performance, and people after were universally saying that they had felt peace and calmness and had left the auditorium feeling uplifted and, I have no doubt, this was exactly the reaction this excellent troupe had hoped for.
