Modern Express News (reporter Li Ming) In the recently concluded 2021 Jiangsu Provincial College Students Drama Exhibition, the original dance drama "Nanjing Anecdotes" of Nanjing Academy of Arts stood out among many declared works and won the first prize in the long drama category. From the small theater of the college to the outside of the school, and then to the big stage, this campus work has transformed step by step, stunning the audience. The main creative team has also grown and become an increasingly powerful new literary and artistic force in Jiangsu. What are the creative stories behind this? How can campus repertoire be kept alive? Modern Express reporters reveal the behind-the-scenes story for you.
The dance vocabulary is rich, showing the beauty of Nanjing
As the ancient capital of the Six Dynasties, Nanjing has countless stories about it. The dance poetry drama "Nanjing Anecdotes" integrates the history of Nanjing's founding, folk culture, social hotspots, humanistic anecdotes, major historical events, and the spirit of Nanjing in the new era into the creation, and reproduces the transformation and development of Nanjing City in the thousand-year history in the form of dance poetry drama.
"We have taken the allusions and events related to Nanjing in history as the starting point of creation, from Tangqianyan to 1937, and then across to the new look of Nanjing's urban construction today, using skewers and dance fragments to present a kind of time and space travel, from ancient times to the present." Xu Wei, the screenwriter of the play and the dean of the Dance School of Nanjing University of the Arts, said that they referred to literary works about Nanjing when writing the play, such as "Nanjing Biography" and "The Disappearing Old Scene of Nanjing", etc. "Although the historical time span of this dance poetry drama is large, it is very grounded, interesting and humane." ”
The Modern Express reporter learned that the drama used a dance vocabulary that integrates tradition and modernity to express the story, history and character of Nanjing people. According to the director of the play, Wang Jiawei, "Anecdotes of Nanjing" integrates Chinese classical dance, folk dance in Jiangsu region, modern and contemporary dance as a whole, and vividly shows the historical beauty, the beauty of wind and objects, the beauty of humanities and the beauty of development of Nanjing City with a rich dance language, and draws many anecdotal pictures for chanting Nanjing's poems and real life themes.
The stage design is also a major highlight. The visual design of "Nanjing Anecdotes" adopts a three-sided enclosed stage art with both fashion sense and contemporaryness, forms a contemporary theater "white box" effect in the "black box" of the theater, and effectively uses digital media imaging technology to form a poetic image in the dance drama in the panoramic projection.
Relay performances to keep the campus repertoire alive
"This is my third year of participation in 'Anecdotes of Nanjing', from the beginning as an actor to later as a member of the working group, I saw a lot and learned a lot." As one of the participants of the dance drama "Nanjing Anecdote", Li Tianjiao, a 2019 Chinese dance choreographer class, witnessed the change of many dance segments in the play with a batch of actors, and also watched "Nanjing Anecdote" step by step from the small theater in the college teaching building out of the campus and to the stage of the Jiangsu Grand Theatre. Like Li Tianjiao, the students who participated in "Nanjing Anecdotes" all grew up with this play.
In this play, Liu Sicheng, a student of the 2018 Chinese dance choreography class, participated in the performance of 6 dance segments. Like Li Tianjiao, she stayed in this crew for three years. From field work to role performance, Liu Sicheng polished the characters in one performance after another and deepened his understanding of the roles. In her view, each role in "Nanjing Anecdotes" is not used to play, "but for dialogue, the ancients stood in Nanjing today, the present people stand in Nanjing in the past, this is a dialogue across a thousand years." ”
In addition to acting as a senior like Liu Sicheng until the end of graduation, the crew of "Nanjing Anecdotes" also constantly injected fresh blood to keep the repertoire alive. This is also an effective measure to maintain the vitality of the campus repertoire.
Class of 2020 students Wang Man and Fang Tianxiang both joined the performance of "Nanjing Anecdotes" in their freshman year. "This is the first time I have stepped on such a big stage after coming to Nanjing to study, and it is also the first time that I have come into contact with college students' theater performances, which is a very rare opportunity." Wang Man said that in the rehearsal process of preparing for the exhibition, she and her brothers and sisters, teachers and sisters spent every weekend in the rehearsal again and again, "creating and working hard in a down-to-earth manner, pursuing the perfect presentation of the work with the greatest enthusiasm for art." ”
(Courtesy of Jiangsu Grand Theatre, Edited by Jiang Wenjia)