A Cinematic Take on an Epic Life

Choreographer Wayne Eagling is exhausted. The former Royal Ballet star and current artistic director of the Amsterdam-based Dutch National Ballet is jet-lagged. He also partied last night in Hong Kong, where he has been tweaking and tightening the Hong Kong Ballet’s production of “The Last Emperor.” He made the large-scale story ballet for the company in 1997, at the behest of his good friend and Hong Kong Ballet’s artistic director, Stephen Jefferies.

First performed during the ceremonies marking the hand-over of Hong Kong to the Chinese, “The Last Emperor” makes its West Coast premiere, and the company makes its local public debut, Friday and Saturday at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts as part of a 16-city tour.

One might call this version of the ballet the director’s cut.

“Literally,” the Canadian-born, California-raised Eagling, 51, says with a laugh on the phone from his hotel, “because I am trimming music and compressing scenes I felt went on too long.”

Based on the 1987 Bernardo Bertolucci film of the same name, “The Last Emperor” traces the extraordinary life of Pu Yi, the last Manchu emperor, from toddler (he became emperor at age 2) to his final years as a gardener during the Cultural Revolution and his death at 61. The ballet features a score by Su Cong, the composer who along with David Byrne and Ryuichi Sakamoto shared a best-score Oscar for the film, which garnered nine Academy awards.

In 1997, Eagling had only five weeks to create the ballet. At that point, he had not seen the film.

“When I agreed to do [it], I went out and got the movie. I thought it was wonderful. When you see the movie, there’s a million extras, so many people. That was the hardest thing to do--to get that feeling of intimacy and the hustle and bustle of the movie.”

Eagling says he also read Pu Yi’s autobiography and the memoir by his Scottish tutor, Reginald Johnston, to get more insight into the character. He “got a feel for the piece,” he says, with dances about relationships. “I started with a pas de trois between Pu Yi and his brides--he had two at age 16. Then I made the pas de deux between him and his [third] wife. Then I [knew] I wanted to make a pastiche of the Red Army kind of Chinese dance, similar to all those Chinese ballets from the Cultural Revolution.”

Eagling borrowed cinematic devices by making use of blackouts between scenes to propel the story. “I needed to have ways to go from one period of his life to when he’s older. That was a good way of the audience accepting him being 10 years old to, all of a sudden, he’s 20. I like that format, and the blackouts could be quite short as the set changed instantly.”

The blackouts remain, but the sets are different now. The original rotating screens, designed by Liu Yuan Sheng, chief stage designer at Beijing’s Central Academy of Drama, have been replaced by Sheng’s painted sets, which are easier to take on tour. The sumptuous costumes, designed by Wang Lin Yu for a cast of 42 dancers, also remain the same.

Eagling is pleased with the current version. “I think it flows better now, [and] Michael Yang, who plays Pu Yi, is absolutely a wonderful dancer. I made the ballet for him; I was really inspired by him.”

Eagling, at 12, was living in Monterey, Calif. He was an aspiring marine biologist when he found himself in ballet school with his sister. It was a “Billy Elliot” sort of story--he flourished at the school and several years later, when London’s Royal Ballet was on tour, his teacher asked the company to look at her prize pupil. He was offered a place at the Royal Ballet School. Eagling’s career took off from there. He joined the Royal in 1969, becoming a soloist in 1972 and a principal dancer in 1975.

Many roles were created for him, including Ariel in “The Tempest” by Rudolf Nureyev, and ballets by Kenneth MacMillan and Frederick Ashton. Eagling also became known as something of a playboy-heartthrob, getting his name in the papers with the likes of party-girl heiresses Isabel Goldsmith (daughter of the late Sir James) and Francesca Thyssen.

Meanwhile, his choreographic resume was also on the rise: He made a rock video for Queen, as well as the ballets “Frankenstein, the Modern Prometheus” and “Beauty and the Beast,” both for the Royal, in 1985 and 1986, respectively. In 1989, Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters asked him to choreograph “The Wall,” the colossal concert-performance piece marking the crumbling of the Berlin Wall.

Recalls Eagling: “The [dancers] were more like 300 movie extras. They didn’t dance so much as march up and down with trucks. I had them be the army--playing soldiers. And I had them commando with a rope over the wall. I like a theatrical quality. The last thing I did in Amsterdam was “The Magic Flute” as a ballet. I’m attracted to narrative and theater.”

No wonder fellow former Royal Ballet dancer Jefferies summoned Eagling to Hong Kong to help him realize “The Last Emperor” as a dance drama. It didn’t hurt that the two had been flatmates in London decades ago and are still chums. Jefferies, 50, has been at the helm of the 22-year-old Hong Kong Ballet since 1996; he also dances the part of Pu Yi’s tutor. Talking by phone from Hong Kong, Jefferies says he decided on the project after hearing some of Cong’s music.

“I was a fan of the movie [and] always had ‘The Last Emperor’ in mind. The commissioned score, which was presented to me by Su Cong, was very good, and from there we made our starting point. I was very excited, so I commissioned Wayne to choreograph. I took a big risk, [but] any time you put on a new production, it’s a big risk.”

Although it was generally well-received in China, when the production debuted in New York in 1998, reviews were mixed. The New York Times’ Anna Kisselgoff wrote, “In all, a schematic production with some high points.” Newsday’s Sylviane Gold found the action “impossible to follow for anyone unfamiliar with the movie or Chinese history.”

Jefferies says he pays no mind to reviews and that he remains committed to taking the risks of creating new full-length ballets. Such works have been a signature of his tenure with Hong Kong Ballet.

“I’m taking lessons from history, and that is how the Royal became great because it created its own repertory. We’re probably the only company that creates two new, full-length ballets each year. The idea was to create a repertory unique to Hong Kong to promote interest abroad. Everybody does ‘Swan Lake,’ everybody does ‘Giselle,’ [but] nobody does ‘The Last Emperor.”’

Jefferies brought the company to Los Angeles to perform once before, in 1999, but it was for a private party. He says the ballet is only now getting around to touring in California because of the time it takes to build a reputation. “We were young and nobody was particularly interested in us,” he says of the last few years. “Now they are. We’re being flooded with requests.”

He adds: “I’m not trying to draw anybody in particular, I’m just trying to draw a public. We’re a company that’s here to entertain. We have a quality product and that’s what we’re about. That’s what every ballet company should be about. We do the classical repertory and we create our own. Because some of that is based on Chinese culture, that makes us unique and international.”

Eagling, who has been with the Dutch National Ballet since 1991, is happy to be a part of the company’s internationalism. “It’s quite nice for me to get away from the responsibilities of being a director, and just come in and do some choreography and have fun.”

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“The Last Emperor,” Hong Kong Ballet, Friday and Saturday, 8 p.m., Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, 12700 Center Court Drive, Cerritos, (562) 916-8500. $30-$45.