Strange Tales from Liaozhai

Rather than reproducing traditional ghost stories or presenting exoticised images of ancient China, Strange Tales from Liaozhai returns to the philosophical spirit of Pu Songling’s writing: the use of ghosts, spirits, foxes and demons to reveal the complexity of human nature. The work explores the boundary between human and supernatural, reality and fantasy, desire and despair, asking: is imagination the only form of resistance left to us?Combining contemporary dance, experimental theatre, Chinese operatic movement, electronic sound, vocal textures and dark humour, the production creates an atmosphere that is at once grotesque, seductive and strangely romantic. The choreography draws on traditional Chinese performance techniques, including stylised operatic footwork and hair-whipping gestures, while breaking them open through distorted contemporary movement. The sound world brings together Chinese operatic vocality, electronic textures, blues-influenced elements and experimental music, creating a ghostly sonic landscape that surrounds the performers.The production’s visual language is minimal yet highly atmospheric, evoking the imagined study of Pu Songling while creating a surreal, multi-dimensional world of bodies, shadows and psychological tension. With its restrained yet unsettling stage design, Strange Tales from Liaozhai offers a distinctive encounter between Chinese classical literature and contemporary experimental performance.

 

Director and choreographer Yuerge says:“I grew up with twenty years of traditional Chinese dance training and then spent more than a decade transforming that background through contemporary dance theatre. After years of working between China and France, I began to ask what kind of work could truly belong to my own artistic language.Liaozhai has a very powerful energy. Its stories of humans, ghosts, fox spirits, demons and gods are never only supernatural tales; they are always about people. In this work, we begin from the fantasy of one man and reconstruct a Liaozhai connected to human desire, despair and resistance. I wanted to enter Pu Songling’s world through grotesque beauty, humour, extremity, confrontation and romance. These figures are dangerous, but they make the blood burn. Even if all fantasies collapse in the end, fantasy remains a force against suffering.”Before arriving in Edinburgh, Strange Tales from Liaozhai has been presented at major venues and festivals in China, including Shanghai International Dance Center Theater, Aranya Theatre Festival and Chengdu City Concert Hall. The work has received strong responses from audiences and critics, with viewers describing it as “a shocking visual and intellectual feast”, “a modern dance theatre work unlike anything I had seen before”, and “a Chinese horror aesthetic that should tour internationally”.