MARGARET LENG TAN: DRAGON LADIES DON’T WEEP at the Queen Elizabeth Hall

★★★★

“when the otherworldly music is allowed to flourish, the piece achieves some truly transcendent moments”

Dragon Ladies Don’t Weep is a musical autobiography of renowned Singaporean avant-garde pianist and multi-instrumentalist Margaret Leng Tan. A meditation on music and loss, the piece is an experimental one-woman show that seamlessly blends elements of biographical monologue, musical concert and performance art, written by ‘dramaturg’ Kok Heng Leun using text from Tan’s diaries and recollections. Tan, a long-time collaborator of seminal American composer John Cage, channels all the experience of her six-decade career, which began when she entered New York’s Julliard School of Music at the age of sixteen, to produce a compelling and original performance.

Naturally, music is central, serving as catalyst and accompaniment for the recounting of some pivotal experiences of Tan’s life. Using the innovative instruments for which she is known, Tan creates a dynamic sonic palette that ripples throughout the performance, reaching instances of real beauty. Alongside a grand piano that she modifies on stage by placing nuts and bolts between the strings to produce a bell-like tone, she employs a child’s toy piano – her trademark – as well as the triangle, melodica, cymbals, and wind-up music boxes. The music made on stage transfers from the live instruments to a recorded soundtrack, allowing the solo performer to weave layered soundscapes throughout the show, performing music by composer Erik Griswold.

The staging is relatively spare, director Tamara Saulwick working with just the instruments, the performer and two visible displays, a larger screen upstage right and a central vertical column onto which patterns, and, occasionally text, is projected. Much as toy instruments are used to create ethereal music, from this minimalist set comes a fascinating visual spectacle. Video projections (Nick Roux) interpret the live musical performance and are central to the success of the work: intricate solo piano pieces elicit a moving tapestry of lines that teasingly form perfect shapes before quickly dissipating, defying our desire for patterns as the music subverts our expectations of obvious melodies. In one particularly effective passage, Tan uses multiple music boxes to recall her first meeting with Cage, when twenty Julliard pianists simultaneously played his composition ‘Winter’. She remembers how it sounded to her like melting icicles, and this description is reflected through projections that evoke dripping ice.

Dragon Ladies Don’t Weep is marked by the absence of two guiding figures in Tan’s life, her mother and Cage, who are recalled both through her descriptions of them and video appearances on the screens. These images are ephemeral: footage of Cage and Tan in conversation has its audio unsynchronised, and a video apparition of her mother becomes clearer and fades with swells of music, suggesting that while art may bring us closer to the memory of those we love, it will never return them to us. This sense of loss is deeply affecting, as the work considers the transience of life and the imperfection of memory.

Some of the spoken passages, despite allowing Tan to demonstrate her wry sense of humour, are a little flat, including a lamentation on the predominance of mobile phones in contemporary society which feels particularly ill-fitting. These sections are brief, however, and, when the otherworldly music is allowed to flourish, the piece achieves some truly transcendent moments, illustrating why Margaret Leng Tan is such an important figure in twentieth-century music and beyond. When combining music and the personal experiences of the performer, the piece is at its best, dragon ladies may not weep but they are not unfeeling.

MARGARET LENG TAN: DRAGON LADIES DON’T WEEP at the Queen Elizabeth Hall

Reviewed on 24th May 2024

by Rob Tomlinson

Photography by Crispian Chan

Previously reviewed at this venue:

MASTERCLASS | ★★★★ | May 2024

FROM ENGLAND WITH LOVE | ★★★½ | April 2024

REUBEN KAYE: THE BUTCH IS BACK | ★★★★ | December 2023

THE PARADIS FILES | ★★★★ | April 2022

DRAGON LADIES DON’T WEEP

DRAGON LADIES DON’T WEEP

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