The Weight of the Void: Embodying the Old Master

To play the young hero is a matter of vitality; to play the old master is a matter of weight.

Since my debut in a bearded role at eighteen, I have donned the guise of age many times. I have been Xiao He, the founding minister of the Han Dynasty, weighing the fate of an empire in my hands. I have been the stern abbot expelling the drunken Lu Zhishen, and the Dragon King of the Sea, transfiguring from Taoist to Buddhist in a single lifetime of stagecraft. But in 2017, the stage demanded something heavier.

I was to become the ultimate old man, the forefather of stillness, the “Old Master” himself: Laozi.

The Architecture of Stillness

History offers us a silhouette, not a portrait. We know Laozi-or Lao-Tzu-lived around the sixth century B.C.E. as a librarian in the Zhou Dynasty‘s imperial archives. We know he may have debated philosophy with Confucius. Beyond that, he is smoke and legend. Some say he was born with white hair, having gestated for eighty-one years; others claim he lived for two centuries.

For a dancer, this ambiguity is a gift. It allows us to step away from biography and into essence. The challenge is not just to move slowly, but to command reverence through that slowness. The beard I wore for this role was distinct, but the true costume was the immense gravity of the character. How does one dance the author of the Daodejing? How does a physical body express the “Way that cannot be told”?

The Unspoken Script

In the silent language of classical Chinese dance, we rely on qián tái cí (潛台詞)-the “unspoken lines.” It is the dancer’s internal monologue, the subtext that fills the void between physical movements. As Laozi famously wrote: “One who knows does not speak. One who speaks does not know.” Paradoxically, to portray this silence, my mind had to be incredibly loud.

In the piece Bestowing the Tao, the curtain opens on the act of creation. I am tasked with symbolically writing the 5,000 words of the Daodejing onto blank bamboo scrolls. To the audience, it is pantomime. To me, it is a ritual. I do not see empty props; I visualize the characters manifesting on the bamboo strips. I recite the unspoken lines as my brush moves: “Man follows the Way of Earth; Earth follows the Way of Heaven; Heaven models the Way of Tao; Tao models the Way of nature.”

There is a moment of hesitation-a pause where I must make the intangible tangible. “Mystery within mystery; the door to all marvels.” Only when the internal script is complete do the heavens on the backdrop open, and the stage floods with the dance of celestials. It is a moment where the dancer ceases to act and simply witnesses, absorbing the Shen Yun-the beauty of divine beings dancing-alongside the audience.

The Purple Qi at Hangu Pass

The narrative leads Laozi away from the celestial vision and into earthly conflict. Disillusioned with the decline of the Zhou, the Old Master mounts his ox and heads west, toward the solitude of the unknown.

At Hangu Pass, the boundary between civilization and the wilderness, a valiant guard named Yin Xi waits. Played by Principal Dancer Rocky Liao, Yin Xi represents the bridge between the sage and the world he is leaving behind. In the lore, Yin Xi spots a “purple glow” on the horizon-a visual motif of spiritual energy-heralding the sage’s arrival.

The choreography here shifts from the ethereal to the martial. A corrupt official, desperate to possess the scrolls for power, pursues us. The clash is inevitable. “He who acts with desire shall fail,” Laozi wrote. The official’s aggression is met with Yin Xi’s defense. When the guard falls, mortally wounded, the scene pivots from combat to compassion. I retrieve the Taoist gourd, pouring an elixir that revives him.

This interaction is crucial. It is not just a healing; it is a transmission. Yin Xi, realizing the magnitude of the man before him, kneels and begs to learn. The handing over of the bamboo scrolls is the climax of the dance. It is the moment the wisdom is anchored in the human world, entrusted to “a superior student who strives to practice it diligently.”

The Vessel and the Void

There is a profound resonance between the ancient Tao and our modern mythology. When Obi-Wan Kenobi speaks of the Force-an energy field that “surrounds us and penetrates us”-he is echoing Laozi’s description of the Tao: “Something perfect in its disorder… born before Heaven and Earth… It is regarded as the Mother of all beings.”

But the most poignant connection lies in the I Ching: “That which is metaphysical in form is the Tao. That which is physical is only its carrier.”

This is the dancer’s reality. Just as the bamboo strips are merely the carrier for the Daodejing, and the human body is the carrier of the spirit, the dance itself is a vessel. We are carriers of a culture that runs deeper than form. When I step on stage as Laozi, I am not just an actor in a costume; I am a temporary vessel for a wisdom that has survived two and a half millennia.

As the piece ends, Laozi rides off into the sunset, his mission complete. He leaves the scrolls behind, vanishing into the West. But in performing him, I feel a different kind of return. The Old Master may have left the world of men, but through the vessel of the stage, the Way travels back to us, ready to be walked once again.