Dynamic Yunnan

Last night we went to dinner at a restaurant called "La Gare du Sud"-- the building (or rather buildings) used to be a French train station. It was beautiful. The food was typical Yunnan style: lots of rice noodles, lots of mushrooms, and lots of fried dough.

After dinner, we walked to the theater to see Dynamic Yunnan, a beautiful musical that meshes together a lot of the cultures of Yunnan's 25 ethnic minority groups. I know what you're thinking, smiling minorities waving and dancing? come on... but this was not like any of the other "minority spectacles" that I've been subjected to in this country. The costumes, dancing, and music were all unbelievable, and everything was a lot more contemporary than I was expecting. They even had a scene where a bunch of teenagers of the Dai ethnic minority get drunk and dance and flirt until the sun comes up and all of the males have to carry all of the females back home. The whole time, everybody is singing traditional Dai folk songs. There was a scene with over 60 drums on stage, one of them being played by a three year old girl. The same three year old girl also sang a children's folk song toward the end. The most beautiful part of the show was probably the Peacock "epilogue" where a woman wore a beautiful dress that resembled peacock feathers and used her hands and arms to make the most beautiful/sophisticated ...shadow puppets I have ever seen.

http://www.dynamicyunnan.com/en/intro.htm

Check out the website if you are interested. They actually do shows all around the world.

I would see this a million times.