SOUTHERN GIRL (1998)
Choreography: Lily Cai
Music: Gang Situ
Lighting Design: Jack Carpenter
Set Design: Matthew Antaky

Although China is diverse with varying traditions, customs, and aesthetics from region to region, common threads of being Chinese are intrinsically inherent, regardless of geographical upbringing. Southern Girl utilizes the image of a girl from Southern China as a window into the many facets and dimensions of the Chinese

female. From seductive to demure, mysteriously elegant to playful, sensitive to abrasive...her qualities resonate strength, integrity, and beauty.

PRESS QUOTES

• “Blending traditional and modern choreography, these mistresses of slow and sexy motion harnessed hypnotic movement. A visual meditation.”
~ Lord Martine, San Francisco Examiner

• By marrying vividly theatrical, demurely feminine Chinese dance with sculptural American modernism, choreographer Lily Cai has crated a form that is very nearly other worldly. It mesmerizes, although in the case of Cai’s newest work, Southern Girl, it can puzzle, too, like the unfamiliar idioms of a second language...The piece is meant to represent various facets of Chinese womanhood, but this is a pretty abstract portrait, unless China is teeming with playful young things in studded short sets and metallic, doughnut-shaped bonnets.”
~ Heather Wisner, San Francisco Weekly