Chorus: Rumination on the Nobility of Faces and Images
Lau, Yam (Toronto: YYZ Books, 2013)

What is difficult to manage is the expression of his face
- Confucius
SNOW IN THE SUMMER
Jean-François
Côté’s The Chorus stages the performance of a celebrated Chinese song.
In an inner courtyard of a Taoist temple in Beijing, an amateur choir of
retirees is juxtaposed with an individual child performer. The
performers sing the celebrated Chinese song “Snow,” transcribed from the
renowned poem of the same title, written in the nineteen thirties by
the young revolutionary Mao Zedong. The older performers would know this
song by heart from growing up in Mao’s era, while the young child,
separated from it by generations, would be learning the song as she
performs it.