From Cheng Pai's "Overlord Farewell" to talk about the relationship between stage art and performance

I am a small white in the field of stage art, but I am very willing to share with you my knowledge and understanding of stage art and its functions of opera.

Start with a small thing. Two years ago, Zhang Huoding, a professor at the China Academy of Performing Arts, performed her new version of chengpai Peking opera "Farewell to the King", which caused a lot of discussion, some of which involved the sword in the hand of Yu Ji, played by Zhang Huoding. Zhang Huoding's version of "Overlord Farewell", the heroine uses a sword with a long spike on it, which has a more professional title, called "sword robe". "Farewell to the King" is a traditional repertoire of Kunqu opera and Peking Opera, and is also one of the representative plays of Master Mei Lanfang, who creatively added a sword dance in the play, and since then this sword dance has become one of the symbols of Mei Pai and "Bei Ji". Zhang Huoding used Cheng Pai to perform "BeiJi", which is basically a reproduction of Mei Lanfang's version as far as the plot is concerned, in addition to singing with Cheng Pai's singing voice, the most obvious difference is the addition of long spikes to Yu Ji's sword.

Zhang Huoding starred in the Peking Opera "Farewell to the Overlord"

The discussion about the identity of Yu Ji and whether the sword she wears should be accompanied by spikes is basically a boring question, Yu Ji is mostly just a military singer, the record of the "History of Xiang Yu Benji" is written together with her and King Xiang's beloved horse, she is not a female general who leads soldiers to fight, her sword is not used to kill people, just a decoration, so there is no discomfort with a sword spike. But what I am curious about is that Zhang Huoding obviously knows that mei Lanfang's performance version of this sword has no spike, why should she add a long spike to this sword? I would like to relay here the feelings of a very good young actor in the Sichuan opera industry, she has a very solid basic skills, she downloaded the video of Zhang Huoding's "Farewell" from the Internet, slowed down, almost frame by frame. In this era of popular "double speed chasing dramas", she used slow play to watch Zhang Huoding's "Farewell", and after watching it, she told me that this video made her "more afraid the more she watched".

I struggled to understand what she meant by "afraid." She is saying that Zhang Huoding's performance of this sword dance is simply intimidating to her peers in the slow-play video, because only in the slow-down video will it be found that Yu Ji's sword dance is not chaotic no matter how late the action is, the sword spike floats up without chaos, and the jargon of the opera is called "all the way smooth"; and not only the sword spike is smooth all the way, but all kinds of "bits and pieces" of her whole body are smooth. In the Peking Opera "Farewell To Ji", Yu Ji's outfit has a lot of dangling and prominent small pendants, the jargon of the opera is called "fragments", she wears pearls on her head, the costume is embellished with tassels, Yu Ji's large-scale sword dance performance, all these fragments "all the way smooth" have a pleasing feeling to the eye, especially when the two swords are separated, the two long sword spikes flutter separately, the performers are slightly careless, and once the dancing sword spikes are entangled with these bits and pieces, the beauty of the performance will be greatly reduced. If you look at it with a critical eye, Zhang Huoding's sword dance is not always perfect, and there is a small flaw in the performance in Shanghai, and the sword spike has a connection with the headdress for a moment. But this flaw reminds us of the difficulty of this sword dance - when Yu Ji's two swords dance with long spikes, they can neither consciously avoid the various hanging ornaments on the body, nor can they be entangled with any bits and pieces on the body, which is the place where the insider is "afraid".

Speaking of "fear", there is a well-known old saying in the opera industry: "Men are afraid of "Night Running", and women are afraid of "Sifan"". Usually people's understanding of these two sentences is only to say that "Night Running" and "Si Fan" sing heavily, and they are all "a dry" performed by one person, and there is no moment to breathe. Lin Chong in "Night Running" has to sing a large set of "new water orders", during which there are five different "walking edges", both continuous action amplitude performances, complex body, but also to sing this set of songs in its entirety, can not appear angry, the difficulty can be imagined, "Si Fan" is also like this. Of course, this understanding is correct, but the performance of Zhang Huoding's "Overlord Farewell" inspires us, "men are afraid of "Night Running", women are afraid of "Sifan"" and there is a deeper connotation, so that the performers are "afraid" not only of the heavy singing of these two folding plays, but also what makes the actors "afraid" is That Lin Chong in "Night Running" and the color void in "Sifan" are full of all kinds of bits and pieces. Lin Chong in "Night Run" originally wore a Luo hat, Yang Xiaolou changed to an inverted tassel helmet, with a hat on the top of his head, and two sagging scarves on both sides, wearing an arrow suit, a yellow tassel, a large belt, and a spike on the sword. Watching Pei Yanling's "Night Running", kicking the big belt, picking a towel in the hand, plus throwing a sword spike, the whole performance is dynamic, but all of them are crisp and clean. Mei Lanfang said that he performed the color of "Si Fan", holding the dust in his hand, the back of which was distributed by the costume, and there were two long lines and tails on the chest, all of which must be completely chaotic when fluttering. This is the further meaning of "men afraid of "night running", women afraid of "Sifan", not only singing heavy, but also the need to deal with these bits and pieces in a large body movement, they are not directly controlled by the body, but need to use internal strength to make them move in the right direction, so that they look like an extension of the body.

In the field of opera, the wear of actors is the responsibility of stage art. From the rare books of Yuanming miscellaneous dramas in the collection of the Maiwang Museum to the actors 'wearing passes' in the Qing Dynasty court's "Wearing Inscriptions" (sic - author's note), there are both costumes and small props including Lin Chong's sword and the dust of the color void, so the design of the dress has historically been an integral part of the opera stage art. Therefore, on the issue of how the stage art designs the characters to wear, there is an interesting phenomenon. According to the general understanding, the stage design character wear, must be designed from the perspective of how conducive to the performance, wearing can not hinder the actor's performance, so it is natural to think of the first thought of minimizing fragments in the costume, in the play to perform a large range of actions of the characters, especially martial arts actors, should not have a variety of bits and pieces. However, this is not the case. On the contrary, the large number of fragments on the costume is a very common phenomenon on the opera stage, and all kinds of bits and pieces are available. The small student's plume, the old student's hair, the hat wing of the official hat, the long water sleeve of the Dan horn, etc., are all fragments that the performer's limbs cannot directly control. However, if these things are missing from the opera stage, wouldn't the charm of the performance be detracted a lot?

It should be pointed out in particular that these bits and pieces in the wear of opera actors basically appeared gradually after the middle of the Ming Dynasty, and are rarely seen in the records of Yuan Dynasty opera literature. It can be seen that the original opera costume design fully considered the actor's demand for more comfortable performance, why is it slowly evolving in the direction of more and more pieces? Judging from the stage effect, the reason is self-evident - many of the unique skills in opera performances are related to bits and pieces. These bits and pieces did not affect the actor's performance often, on the contrary, it just made the performance more and more superb.

Since according to the general understanding, the stage art should be convenient for performance, and the various new bits and pieces in the development process of opera must appear in response to the requirements of the performance, on such occasions, the wear in the stage is not only passively serving the performance, but the evolution of the dress has become a sharp weapon to promote the improvement of the performing arts. Wearing without bits and pieces is beneficial to performance, and wearing that can stimulate actors to develop means to improve performance is a deeper "benefit". A variety of new bits and pieces on the costume make the performance means more abundant, the water sleeve is a clear example, the water sleeve on the costume of the opera Danxing actor began about the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, about two feet long, in the 1980s, some actors began to try to lengthen the water sleeve, from two feet, to six feet, nine feet or even twelve feet. Now the opera stage can often see more than two feet of long water sleeves, the result of the water sleeve lengthening is greatly enriched its expressiveness, it seems to be just a change in the costumes of the stage, in fact, it also reflects the development of the performing arts, let us see the evolution of the stage in the performance of the role played. But it should also be noted that these bits and pieces enhance the charm of the performance, and for the actors, they also greatly increase the difficulty of the performance. Yang Xiaolou changed Lin Chong's Luo hat in "Night Run" to an inverted helmet, and there were more scarves under the brim of the hat, which seemed to only add two small cloth belts, Lin Chong's image was more ethereal, and the difficulty of this drama performance was also improved. Zhang Huoding added a long spike to Yu Ji's sword in "Farewell to the Overlord", which improved the ornamentation of this sword dance and greatly improved the difficulty of the performance. From the long water sleeve to Lin Chong's scarf and Yu Ji's sword spike, all excellent performance artists consciously improve the difficulty of performance and pursue the limits of performance.

Judging from these examples, the various bits and pieces in the opera costumes are not added by the stage designers for the sake of beauty, but by the excellent performance artists to enhance the ornamentation of the performance, in a sense, the various pieces in the opera costumes are more of the performance artists deliberately to challenge themselves. In fact, not only opera, but also all the fields of performing arts have no shortage of such excellent artists, who take the initiative to set up obstacles for themselves, and then surpass these obstacles to make performance reach a new height. Therefore, the history of the wearing of opera is not only the history created by stage designers, but also the history of the development and evolution of stage art to improve the level of performing arts. This is an important historical experience and national characteristic of the history of Chinese stage art, and it essentially involves the cognition and understanding of the function of stage art.

This is reminiscent of the steps and slopes that have appeared on the opera stage in recent years. The opera stage design from the plane to the appearance of steps and slopes, the space is more three-dimensional, from the perspective of stage beauty, of course, there are visual effects. However, the steps make the actors tremble when they walk on the stage, especially the actors wearing thick-soled boots, which add to the fear of difficulties; on the slope, the opera actors cannot walk the round field, let alone do the flip-down action. So, is this kind of stage design because it increases the difficulty and promotes the development of the performing arts? In other words, if the opera actors, like Yang Xiaolou switched to Lin Chong's helmet with a scarf in "Night Run", and Zhang Huoding's long spike on the sword of Yu Ji in "Farewell", and found a way to walk more wonderfully on the steps and slopes, such a new design of stage art would have the effect of enriching and promoting the performance. The steps and slopes on the stage are like Lin Chong's scarf and Yu Ji's sword robe, which are all evolutions of dance, but the difference between the two types of evolution is that the scarf and sword spike enhance the ornamental performance, so it is good and correct; and before the opera performers create more wonderful steps on the flat stage, the steps and slopes can only be obstacles to performance.

The choreography and performance of opera must be related, nor can it be changed, the bottom line is not to hinder the performance, and the high limit is to help the performance. Zhang Huoding's sword spike for Yu Jijia in "Farewell to the Overlord" gives us a deeper understanding of the relationship between the beauty of opera and performance.