Word: lans
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Lan-Fang, China's greatest actor (TIME, Feb. 17), began a two weeks' engagement in Manhattan by presenting selections from his repertoire of some 400 plays...
...King's Parting with His Favorite discloses a woebegone king who must hasten off to battle, whom nothing can console until his favorite does her sword dance, after which he is exultant and leaves her to her moaning. Oldest of Mei Lan-Fang's selections, this play was written two centuries before Christ...
...Lan-Fang's genius, say his Chinese critics, resides in the perfection with which he executes the bewildering Chinese orthodoxy of posture and diction. Playing his feminine roles he seemed like a painting of Hui Tsung miraculously come to elastic, undulating life. His dances with swords and wands possessed an extraordinarily feline continuity of movement. His falsetto was harsh but expressive. Watching his gait, his play with hands and voluminous sleeves, his tender coquetry, you could understand why Chinese poets have written panegyrics about his eye, smile, shoulder, even his waist...
...Lan-fang is 32. At the age of seven he had mastered Chinese music, studying with his uncle Yu-ti'en, famed musician and virtuoso on the stringed hu-k'in. When he was twelve, Mei Lan-fang, grandson of a great actor of the '50s, made his own debut as a tan (female impersonator). The impersonation of women is perhaps the greatest branch of Chinese acting, for women are not permitted on the stage.* Mei Lan-fang plays women's rôles entirely. He is president of Peiping's Actors' Association and his superiority in his calling is unquestioned...
...Pear Orchard" because they performed in a palace bordered with pear trees. Few would deny any title, however lofty, to a man who, in addition to being supreme in his art, can command a salary big enough to make even the most high-priced cinema blonde envious. Mei Lan-fang's annual earnings are reputedly equivalent...