Journey from the West

French composer completes 53-year quest to create a musical dance drama of classic Chinese novel, Chen Nan reports.

In 1966, for his 16th birthday, French composer Laurent Petitgirard's elder brother gave him a copy of the classic Chinese novel, Journey to the West. Petitgirard was fascinated. He read the novel over and over again, sparking the idea of putting it into music, a quest that took him 53 years to embark upon.

"No doubt because I had to complete my journey as a composer before venturing into creating the music to accompany the odyssey of the monk, Xuanzang," says Petitgirard, 73, who was born in Paris, and studied piano and composition as a child.

Journey to the West, by Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) writer Wu Cheng'en, follows the adventures of the aforementioned Tang Dynasty (618-907) monk and his three disciples — the animal spirits Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, Zhu Bajie, and Sha Wujing — on their journey to obtain Buddhist scriptures.

In early 2019, after he met Chinese dancer-choreographer Wang Yabin in Paris, Petitgirard decided to wait no longer and started to compose.

International collaborations have been a driving force in the Yabin and Her Friends project, which Wang initiated in 2009.For example, she collaborated with choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui from Belgium on Genesis in 2013; and with choreographer Elizabeth Roxas-Dobrish from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater on Dream in Three Episodes.

Petitgirard watched Wang's Genesis on television and, after watching Wang's choreographic work, Swan — A Different Story, in Lucerne, Switzerland, he says: "It was for me the confirmation that Yabin is a major choreographer and a first-class artist."