The variety show "Dance Millennium", jointly produced by Station B and Henan Satellite TV, deeply combines traditional dance with drama variety shows, travels through the four most representative cultural booms in Chinese history, and finds the most beautiful music and dance in ancient and modern times. The program was performed by China's top dance companies such as Beijing Dance Academy and China Opera and Dance Theatre, and achieved high ratings of 8.7 and 9.9 in Douban and B stations respectively. How does a niche dance program "break the circle" win the favor of young people? On December 24th, the program seminar invited experts and scholars from the Chinese Dancers Association, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Beijing Dance Academy, and the general director of the program to discuss this.
Luo Bin, secretary of the China Dancers Association and vice chairman of the association, pointed out that compared with music, art, film and television, dance has always been in a niche state. "More often it has a circle of its own, and this circle is sometimes self-congratulatory, sometimes it is self-indulgent, and more often it is a state of self-congratulation." However, this state has changed around 2020, and "the development of dance has a sense of fashion". "There is a dancer who proudly says that he feels very happy and has caught up with the good times, because of the works he creates, there are audiences chasing after him. This shows that we have broken through the professional circle and have a sense of existence in the outward social life. "Why is there such a change? He pointed out: "It was the people outside the circle who started to help us break the circle and forced us to go out. ”
Zhang Yanjie, a professor at the Beijing Dance Academy and deputy editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Beijing Dance Academy, believes that the core of the reason why "Dance Millennium" can "break the circle" through this form is that Station B, as a community of young people, has a close connection with traditional Chinese culture. Jiang Xiaowei, producer and general director of station B "Dance Millennium", said that in the past year, the number of viewers of station B's national style videos has reached 136 million, of which more than 80% are 18 to 24 years old, "traditional culture is the core of this program, we have been thinking about how to make a program that young users like in the field of traditional culture." ”
So, why choose dance as an incision in traditional culture? Jiang Xiaowei said it is because "we find that the experts in this industry are not at all self-contained, and many experts think of many problems, more pioneering than us, and he wants to do more innovative things - whether it is clothing, etiquette or even the five-thousand-year-old Chinese story... The content of traditional culture is precipitated in the works of dancers. It is a pity that these works did not enter the homes of ordinary people."
"Dance Millennium" has made an inspiring and innovative expression of traditional culture and contemporary aesthetics, and the program does not adopt the traditional dance PK competition, but uses the story plus 24 dances to create a new type of cultural drama dance variety show model. Using different directors' diversified creative styles to combat aesthetic fatigue, it even borrowed different film and television styles such as Wong Kar-wai films, the old version of "Journey to the West" and even science fiction.
This kind of story and dance expression is to let more people understand dance, Jiang Xiaowei introduced, "We divided 24 works into four directors to shoot, and these four directors each claimed six of their own interests." If you want to animate it or whatever, as long as you feel that this is the most interesting way of telling the audience that you want to express to the audience. I think that the creation of all works can be renovated and understood all the time, and he can make countless versions, and each version can be liked by some people. ”
Yan Zhenzhen, a teacher at the School of Humanities of Beijing Dance Academy, pointed out that this form enriches the presentation style of classical Chinese dance, embeds the highly emotional art of dance into the narrative logic dominated by real emotions such as the plot story, and uses the lens to strengthen the emotional expression of the actors. However, there are also difficulties and trade-offs in these operations, and the use of lens language and embodied narrative to cut into the dance as a whole may detract from the aesthetic space of heavy works such as "Xianghe Song".
For example, some viewers mistakenly believe that classical dance is an ancient dance that has been handed down from generation to generation and should be strictly restored. In this regard, the ideas of academia are more open than those of the general audience. In fact, classical dance itself is a contemporary creation, as Luo Bin pointed out, "Classical dance is an open structure, an attempt at integration, and a collection of many forms." From the artistic mechanism, it is entirely possible to adapt the classic dance, and the audience should also accept it according to what is created in the contemporary era. ”
In our time today, there is a simple and spontaneous "surging" feeling for traditional Chinese culture and traditional aesthetics. Lei Bo, an assistant researcher at the Institute of Ancient History of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, observed that there are a large number of expressions of strong emotional resonance such as "beauty crying" and "the knife killed me" in the barrage of "Dancing Millennium", and the national style and national tide are not only a kind of superficial symbol boom, but also contain a spiritual surge at the lower level.
Ji Fangfang, an associate researcher at the Institute of Journalism and Communication of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that the "breaking of the circle" of "Dancing Millennium" should be understood under the trend of today's media integration. In today's ecological environment of traditional culture dissemination, the platform has played an important role in the technical, social and cultural system, connecting experts and scholars, professional dancers, director groups, staff and users, and echoing the current national policy. The users who watched "Dance Millennium" on Station B participated in real time through the bullet screen, building an interesting cultural media ecology.
Text/Beijing Youth Daily reporter Zu Weiwei
Editor/Cui Wei