Summary: YANG BAN XI - THE 8 MODEL WORKS: During China's Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), the ballets "Red Detachment of Women" and "The White-Haired Girl" featured ballerinas pirouetting with rifles held aloft and male dancers executing venal landlords. On screen and stage these fiercely propagandistic stories, in which songs praising Mao always seemed to coincide with a glorious sunrise, were termed yang ban xi, and they were the only form of art allowed. Today young Chinese who crowd Starbucks cafes and modern discoteques know little about a world that disappeared decades ago. This Dutch production blends archival footage of the bad old days with interviews with Chinese baby boomers who sometimes wax nostalgic for what was, after all, their version of the '60s.
