"It's 3 p.m. Beijing time, 10 a.m. Moscow time, I'm in San Francisco, it's 11 a.m. – we're in a different time zone on the planet, it's dance, it's camaraderie, let's cross the barrier of the epidemic and get together through online video." On November 18th, the Sino-Russian Dance Art Education Forum was held in the "Cloud", and Tan Yuanyuan, principal dancer of the San Francisco Ballet, greeted Chinese and Russian dance art experts and scholars through video connection.
The theme of the forum was "Modern World - Cooperation and Innovation - Development of Dance Together", experts and scholars from the Shanghai Theater Academy and the Moscow State Dance Academy exchanged views on topics such as the cultivation and creation of ballet talents, and the two colleges also signed an inter-university strategic cooperation agreement.
Founded in 1773, the Moscow State Dance Academy is one of the oldest and most prestigious ballet schools in the world and is known as the "Cradle of Dancers". After more than 200 years of development, the academy has gathered many dance experts and scholars, is the largest dance academy in Russia, with a strong teaching force, and most of the dancers of the prestigious Bolshoi Theater Ballet are from the academy.
Leonova Marina, dean of the Moscow State Dance Academy, said: "Every year, foreign students from more than 20 countries come to our school to study, and some of them have the opportunity to become winners of Ballet competitions in Russia and even international level, hoping to further expand cultural exchanges and educational cooperation between China and Russia."
The Shanghai Theater Academy is a higher art school in China that trains drama professionals, covering drama, film and television, dance, opera, art and other disciplines. The Dance Academy and the Affiliated Dance School of Shanghai Theater Academy have trained many well-known dancers, including Tan Yuanyuan, over the years, and are active on Chinese and foreign stages.
Huang Changyong, Dean of the Shanghai Theater Academy, said: "The Moscow State Dance Academy and Shangju Academy, as well-known art academies in Russia and China, respectively, have made positive contributions to the development of national culture and the diversity of global culture and art in the process of development. "In the future, the two art schools will cooperate at the level of teaching exchanges, student training and academic interaction, including the exchange of teachers, the selection of international students, the opening of master classes and short-term training, academic forums and seminars.
Tan Yuanyuan is the facilitator of this cooperation. As a child, she saw "Swan Lake" on the TV screen, felt the charm of ballet, and aspired to become a ballet dancer and perform "the beauty of swans" on the stage.
In 1992, she participated in the Paris International Ballet Competition, and the Russian ballet master Ulanova, as a judge, gave Tan Yuanyuan a full score and encouraged her: "To become a very good ballet dancer, you must enter the play when dancing, and you must dance with your heart." This sentence became Tan Yuanyuan's motto, which benefited her for life.
As a dancer active in the international dance scene, Tan Yuanyuan has performed in Russia many times and cooperated with many Russian ballet masters, such as Natalia Makarova, Sergei Feilin, Alexei Ratmansky, Yuri Posokhov, etc., so that Western audiences can feel the charm of this ballet dancer from Shanghai.
Tan Yuanyuan introduced that Chinese ballet started late, and the entire development is inseparable from Russia: in the 1920s, some Russian expatriates began to teach ballet art in Shanghai and Harbin and other places, and performed some small performances; later, the Chinese ballet pioneer Dai Ailian returned from studying in Britain and devoted herself to ballet teaching; until 1954 and 1960, Beijing and Shanghai successively established professional dance schools, which officially announced the birth of Chinese ballet, and the first foreign teachers invited were also from Russia.
"Ballet builds a bridge of communication between the Chinese and Russian peoples. Looking back at the art classics left over thousands of years, are not they all born in countless collisions and fusions? I believe that cross-border and transnational exchanges can give artists more nourishment and push art farther afield. Tan Yuanyuan said that the exchange and cooperation between Chinese and Russian dance academies is a brand new attempt, and in the future, it will continue to expand the "circle of friends" of Shanghai dance, promote more world-renowned dance academies and academies to establish strategic partnerships with their alma mater, and make dance a cultural business card in Shanghai.
Column Editor-in-Chief: Shi Chenlu Text Editor: Shi Chenlu
Source: Author: Wu Tong