Fan Yangs Bubble Show Back in Seoul
By Chung Ah-young
Staff Reporter
Every winter, children are eager to see various shapes and hues of ``white bubbles’’ as much as snow.
And now Canadian bubble artist Fan Yang’s ``White Bubble Show’’ has returned to Korea after fascinating audience members around the world in cities like New York, Las Vegas, Tokyo, Belarus, and Hanoi.
Jointly produced by Yang and Neodus HQ, a local performing arts agency, the show, which began Jan. 3 in Seoul, is the eighth the artist has performed here.
Since 2004, the show has attracted more than 150,000 people in Korea. It was staged at the Dome Art Hall in Seoul from late 2007 through early last year and attracted about 45,000 paying customers, helping establish it as one of the nation’s favorite family shows.
Beginning in Hanoi, Vietnam, in March 2006, the act went on tour to Minsk, Belarus, in May the same year, Off-Broadway theaters in New York in 2007, and, last year, moved on to Las Vegas and Tokyo, Japan, dazzling more than 180,000 people. At New World Stages in New York, in particular, his show is on a 22 month-long run, which started in February, 2007, according to Neodus.
Children and their family members are being attracted to the bubble shows because they associate soap bubble making with their childhood days.
Watching seemingly endless ballooning bubbles, people conjure up long-cherished dreams and wishes and regrettable moments under the mystic bubble sea. Soap bubbles they would often play with in their childhood born again in every imaginable size, shape and hue in Yang’s hands.
In this year’s show, he employs new special-effects equipment and a dreamlike stage adorned with 3,000 LED bulbs to add to the fantastic and dramatic performance effects.
It includes blowing on his hands with soapy water to generate soap bubbles, encircling people inside a huge bubble, making a soap wall as long as eight meters, and creating geometrically fantastic and beautiful bubbles.
Particularly, in ``The Universe of Bubbles,’’ one of his newest presentations in the show, he uses 10 super-large wind fans, 20 snow machines, and 50 laser beam and bubble machines, to cover the entire audience with millions of bubbles and create splendid and mysterious scenes, creating the sensation of swimming in the ocean.
Celebrity couple Choi Soo-jong and Ha Hee-ra were again named as the show’s public relations envoys to attend events designed to help those who are culturally disadvantaged. The couple will invite people to the shows in order to provide them with a rewarding experience.
Yang was born to a Chinese-Vietnamese mother and a Hungarian-Yugoslavian father in 1962. He boasts 16 Guinness World Records on bubble performances using scientific principles.
He said that his bubbles are safe as the ingredients of the bubbles are made up mostly of water, oils from plants and soap.
The show runs until Feb. 22 at Theater Yong at the National Museum of Korea.
Tickets cost from 44,000 to 55,000 won. For more information, call (02) 541-1152.