SHAOLIN SECRET STORIES is a new music/theater/martial arts ballet, combining composer Fred Ho’s ingenious jazz composition with martial arts choreography and Chinese folk tales. Here’s what The New York Times critic Jon Pareles said of this newest episode (from review “Crouching Leopard, Somersaulting Dragon,” January 10, 2004, page B21): “a jazzy martial-arts pageant…impressive razzle-dazzle, a nearly nonstop display of leaping, punching, somersaulting, pole-twirling, sword-wielding combat…told, like the first installment, in narration written by Mr. Ho and Ruth Margraff that was delivered with melodramatic relish by an elegantly costumed narrator (Marina Celander)…high-flown storytelling and slangy retold dialogue, with glints of humor, while the martial artists rocketed across the stage…It was burly, foreboding music, using shifting meters to keep the tunes off balance and provide subliminal tension…”

The first episode of the trilogy, Voice of the Dragon: ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINESE AMERICA…The Martial Arts Epic recently completed a successful 33-city national tour with Columbia Arts Management, Inc. to performing arts centers in Iowa, New Jersey, Oregon, Washington, California, Texas, Arizona, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Virginia, and New York. Voice of the Dragon 1 was originally featured in the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s 2001 Next Wave Festival and at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s Peter B. Lewis Theater.

No F/X. No Wires. No Camera Tricks. All New, All Live Pyrotechnical Martial Arts Action and Explosive Afro-Asian Jazz. A Riveting Spectacle Of Transformation, Betrayal And Triumph through the Shaolin Martial Arts... With live revolutionary kung fu, urban capoeira, wuxu, and Peking Opera virtuosity, combined as ground-breaking martial arts ballet and cinematic music/theater, to tell the story of the secret backgrounds of the 5 legendary ancestors of the Shaolin Temple. A transgressive and transcendent work that merges the ancient and the avant garde. Featuring young rebel outcasts who become great warriors. From treachery to honor! From juvenile delinquence to revolutionary transformation and transcendence!

Voice of the Dragon 2: SHAOLIN SECRET STORIES, is the prequel second installment in the triology VOICE OF THE DRAGON, created and composed by Fred Ho and co-written by Ruth Margraff. The first episode, Voice of the Dragon: Once Upon a Time in Chinese America…The Martial Arts Epic was featured at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave Festival in 2001 and subsequently toured to over 33 U.S. cities in early 2003. Using popular kung fu movie structure, this second episode, SHAOLIN SECRET STORIES reveals the secret origins of the 5 heroic martial artist from VOICE OF THE DRAGON, during their early days before they discovered the Shaolin Way. SHAOLIN SECRET STORIES merges the balletic explosive action of the Hong Kong cinema, with multi-fighting styles from New York's toughest outer boroughs and the critically acclaimed live music of composer Fred Ho's Afro Asian Music Ensemble.

Ho’s vision blends a highly stylized "living comic book" with never-before-seen physical kinesis, tongue-in-cheek parody of pop culture with touches of slapstick humor and Jackie Chan-like physical comedy, along with razor sharp radical politics. These virtuosic martial artists explode through the riveting story written by Ho and cutting-edge playwright Ruth Margraff.

While evoking the poignant elegance of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon's epic characters, with a wink to classic Hong Kong over-the-top kung fu cinema, SHAOLIN SECRET STORIES is in a category by itself, impossible to pigeon-hole. Unlike anything in the movies, television or American conventional theater, SHAOLIN SECRET STORIES is a powerful and innovative new artistic work that entertains, enlightens and energizes audiences of all ages. The presentation by the Apollo Theater signals the return of this legendary venue to assuming its vanguard role in multicultural American performance by bridging popular forms and the avant garde, of introducing “Tomorrow’s Great Artists and Entertainers to Today’s Youth and Urban Audiences.”

Cast: Tom Kaseda (CHEN JAK), Philip Silvera (MIAO HIN), Sekou (GEE SHIN), Scott Parker (LI WEN MAO), Soomi Kim (GAR MAN JANG), Mei Chiao-chiu (Ng Mui and Elder Monk Quicksilver) with Pirates/Bandits/Monks played by Alexander (Sandy) Chase, Earl Weathers, Jr., Natasha Radivojevic, Ken Ng, Maribel Ramos and Marina Celander (Enigmatic Narrator)


ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINESE AMERICA… is composer Fred Ho's newest action-adventure music/theater/ballet epic, commissioned by the World Music Institute, The Mary Flagler Cary Trust and The New York State Council on the Arts.

Featuring a narrator/actor performing text written by Fred Ho with music performed by Ho's sextet, The Afro Asian Music Ensemble, ONCE... is a pioneering, groundbreaking, revolutionary multicultural work in a never before-seen explosive combination and fusion of dance and movement forms with pyrotechnical Chinese martial arts. An hour long epic action-adventure and fantasy fable, Fred Ho developed this new work as part of his growing body of opera/ballet/musical theater works aimed at both children, teenage and adult audiences. Blending in a highly visualized ballet with driving music, these works are Mr. Ho's challenges and cultural opposition to commercial music videos and MTV, to the pop culture idiocy and fake martial arts as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Xena, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and David Carradine/Kung Fu.

Fred Ho has created an exciting and sophisticated body of performance works that will mesmerize, entertain and educate the youngest of children as well as the most jaded of adult contemporary performance audiences.

ONCE UPON A TIME... was created to be a modern fable about the bitterness of betrayal and opportunism and the strength of loyalty, principles and integrity. While set during the early Ching dynasty in China (around the 1600's), with the overthrow of China's Ming Dynasty by the foreign Manchus, Fred Ho has reworked and revisioned a martial arts legend to serve as a radical allegory about the betrayal of late-20th century activism in the Asian American Movement by the role of sell-outs internal to that movement. It is a story of external aggression operating with the collusion and support of internal disloyalty and self-aggrandizement. The story also educates about the necessity to discard old forms and techniques that have been coopted and appropriated and to innovate new forms and methods in order to achieve transformation and liberation.

The intrigue of Chinese politics, the intense drama of Chinese opera, the grandness of Chinese heroic literature, the virtuostic power of Chinese martial arts are used to illustrate themes of betrayal and bravery, subterfuge and survival, lust for power and loyalty to principle, of determination in the face of destruction and defeat, and of integrity versus invincibility.

Vital to this performance will be an artist residency program and education/humanities outreach component to public schools from first grade to senior high school. Chinese martial arts, including Tai Chi Chuan, will be taught by the martial artist performing in the work to physical education classes. The primary objective is to combine body, intellect and spirit, not just teach defense skills, but to develop breathing, concentration, mental discipline, self-control, ethical behavior, self-respect, cultural diversity appreciation, health and nutrition, conflict resolution skills, and performance experience.

One of the artists, Jose Figueroa, a Puerto Rican native of the South Bronx, has pioneered a revolutionary usage of Tai Chi and Wu Shu (China's national martial art) in inner city schools with amazing results that have dramatically improved academic performance, increased self-esteem and personal discipline. Mr. Figueroa has served as a physical education specialist, curriculum developer and multicultural educator along with being a seven time national and world champion martial arts gold medal winner. It is planned that Mr. Figueroa, along with several other martial artists who perform in the cast, to be in residency in public schools to implement a martial arts curriculum and to involve the students in performing the actual work.

Commissioned by the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, the World Music Institute and the New York State Council on the Arts, the John Harms Center for the arts with support from Mrs. Mary Sharp Cronson/Works and Process Series at the Guggenheim Museum and Ms. Tina Chen.