Art | traditional culture to "break the circle" through dance, and experts discussed the new model of the variety show "Dance Millennium"

Recently, the Chinese Dancers Association and Bilibili (hereinafter referred to as Station B) jointly launched the academic seminar on the variety show "Dance Millennium", inviting 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 the "breaking of the circle" of "Dance Millennium" and the spiritual inheritance behind it.

Jointly produced by Station B and Henan Satellite TV, "Dance Millennium" 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.

Why does "Dance Millennium" "break the circle"?

Luo Bin, secretary of the China Dancers Association and vice chairman of the association, said that since the reform and opening up, due to the drastic changes in social life as a whole, dance has faced embarrassment in the market. As a niche art, if no one really pays for classical dance, it is difficult for this art style itself to have a good development. "Dance Millennium" shows the stage art that was originally limited to the theater through the lens and the communication means of online variety shows. He believes, "It is the people outside the circle who began to help us break this 'circle' and forced us to go out." ”

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.

Zhang Yanjie, 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 young people's community has a close connection with traditional Chinese culture. Jiang Xiaowei, producer and 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 themes." ”

(Picture from the program side)

How does traditional dance break through?

Dancing as an incision to traditional culture is the most appropriate, because the content of traditional culture, whether it is costumes, etiquette or even five thousand years of Chinese stories, has been precipitated in the works by dancers. "It's a pity that these works didn't make it into the homes of ordinary people," Mr. Jiang said. Feng Zheng, deputy director of Henan Satellite TV Innovation and R&D Center, producer and director of "Dance Millennium", also stressed, "We have three people who believe in this program, believe in the power of traditional Chinese culture, believe in the power of good stories, and believe in the power of dance itself. ”

"Dance Millennium" makes an enlightening and innovative expression of traditional culture and contemporary aesthetics. The program did not adopt the traditional dance PK competition, but used the story plus 24 dances, creating a new type of cultural drama dance variety show model; using different directors' diversified creative styles to combat aesthetic fatigue, and even borrowing different film and television styles such as Wong Kar-wai films, the old version of "Journey to the West" and even science fiction.

Wu Yan, associate professor of the School of Humanities of Beijing Dance Academy, pointed out that the first six chapters of "Dance Millennium" include three types of classical dances, namely Body Rhyme, Han and Tang Dynasties and Dunhuang, which inherit the aesthetic styles of different eras and cultural types in China, and vividly show the changes of Chinese civilization over the past five thousand years. For the inheritance of tradition, it is the important cultural support of Chinese classical dance.

Yan Zhenzhen, a teacher at the Humanities College of Beijing Dance Academy, stressed 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".

How does Chinese civilization innovate narratives?

General Secretary Xi Jinping recently pointed out in his speech at the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles and the China Writers Association, "It is necessary to grasp the relationship between inheritance and innovation, learn from the ancients, break the law and do not violate the law, and make China's excellent traditional culture an important source of literary and artistic innovation." "But the innovative attempts of traditional culture inevitably face questions and criticism."

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 Secretary 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. ”

Zhang Yanjie and Wu Yanjun, professors at the Beijing Dance Academy, believe that since the reform and opening up, we have a strong cultural consciousness of ourselves and think about where we should be in the world culture. In particular, contemporary young people, on the basis of looking at the world, have a clearer or more accurate awareness of Chinese culture.

In our time today, there is a simple and spontaneous "surging" 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". The national style and national tide are not only a kind of superficial symbol boom, but also contain a lower spiritual surge.

"Ta Ge" attempts to reproduce the artistic conception of ancient liturgical music in the form of dance, and the guardian spirit expressed in "The Illusion of The King Kong", starting from Dayu Zhishui, has always been a very important core of Chinese civilization. Leibeau believes that the "breaking of the circle" of "Dancing Millennium" shows that "modern China and ancient China are in the same vein in concepts, culture, home and country feelings, and even at the root of fate." This constitutes the cultural spirit in our hearts that has been constantly stirred and constructed by the experience of 5,000 years of Chinese history. ”

Editor-in-charge: Yang Xiaojun