Recently, the popular dance new variety show "Dance Millennium" ushered in the final end, and the New Year special "New Year into book night" drew a perfect end to this show. Up to now, the program has a score of 9.9 in the B station and a Douban score of 8.8, which has not only become a treasure of the variety industry, but also made the "dance" culture of Chinese culture deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.
"Dance Millennium" has a total of 8 issues, jointly created by Henan Satellite TV and Bilibili (Station B), and co-produced by Xianwei Digital. In this "One Dream Millennium" Chinese cultural exploration tour, Qiao Zhenyu, Zhang Xiaolong, Hu Yang, Hua Xiaoyi, Xu Minghao, the five recommended dancers of "Dance Millennium" and 13 dance troupes toured the Four Dynasties together, under the guidance of the divine book "Twelve Winds Dance Chronicle", they all incarnated into different historical figures, jointly looking for the essence of dance, leading the audience to appreciate the dazzling brilliance of Chinese civilization.
Because "Dance Millennium" adopts the film and television drama shooting method, embeds traditional cultural elements while integrating real scene and modern technology, and innovates the production mode of dance variety shows in one fell swoop. Many netizens commented on the bullet screen, "Watching "Dance Millennium", one second into the pit Chinese dance, proud of our traditional culture." Some netizens left a message that "it feels like a five-thousand-year-old cultural picture scroll slowly unfolding in front of your eyes." Some netizens even sighed that the dances and stories in "Dance Millennium" made me have a deeper love and pride in the identity of Chinese children."
Why did a dance variety show successfully brush the screen? Why did Gen Z "go into the pit" in a second? How should Chinese cultural programs come out of the "circle"?
"Dance + drama + variety" triple integration
Feng Zheng, general director of "Dance Millennium" and director of the Innovative Program Department of Henan Satellite TV, believes that taking dance as the carrier and taking The Stone present, while showing the art of dance, telling the Chinese stories contained in it, the excellent traditional culture of science popularization, and the narrative method of "Dance Millennium" are the reasons why many viewers are interested in the program.
"Dance is longer than lyrical and clumsy in narrative, so the cultural connotations in dance works are difficult to be interpreted by the audience." With the help of film and television, "Dance Millennium" integrates dance emotions into the story and helps the audience to reach its emotional core. Feng Zheng told reporters.
It is understood that the program is creative and innovative, and the director group has poured a lot of effort. "The dance that is selected first must be beautiful, highly artistic and representative, and at the same time have both a story and a traditional cultural core, which is easy to be transformed." Often a dozen days before the start of filming, the script, stage and other plans were all overturned and restarted. ”
"It can be said that 'Dance Millennium' is a bold attempt by Henan Satellite TV to deeply cultivate the dance field in the broad direction of culture, which popularizes the niche classic dance drama and presents it through the integration of film and television, dance and variety shows, providing new possibilities for dance variety shows." Feng Zheng said.
Jiang Xiaowei, producer and general director of "Dance Millennium" and producer of Straw Hat Studio of B Station Variety Production Center, has his own views on how to make the national style culture embrace young people. "Many people have the inherent perception that it is the older audience who likes traditional culture. The total number of traditional culture lovers in Station B is as high as 136 million, of which more than 80% of netizens are 18 to 24 years old. As of October 2021, the number of submissions for guofeng videos has exceeded 2 million. Young people are gradually becoming the main force of the audience for traditional cultural programs. We have been thinking about how to make a program that young users like in the field of traditional cultural themes. Jiang Xiaowei told reporters.
He believes that "Dance Millennium" is a cultural program, culture is the root, and dance is an incision. Some hall-level art is very small and has not been able to enter the homes of ordinary people, and these dance works often contain Chinese stories that have been precipitated for 5,000 years. This form of "dance + plot" makes the program style between film and television dramas and variety shows, which can convey the beauty of dance and be entertaining, so it suddenly captures the hearts of young audiences.
Taking dance as the carrier To the present, cultural traditions are the core
A dance touches a piece of history, and a story contains a true feeling. According to Feng Zheng, the director team has never deliberately selected Chinese stories or famous poems, which are naturally contained in these dances.
"Ice Play"
For example, "Qin Wang DianBing", which "You know that you have no clothes, and you are in the same robe with your son", combines nostalgia and homesickness, and stages a thousand-year dance with the help of the Qin Terracotta Warriors. "Spring Flowers Thank you, autumn water cool" "Dotted Lips" tells the story of the Northern Song Dynasty female lyricist Lady Wei's sad intestines that look forward to the return of the king day after day. "The Orphan of Zhao" of "Loyalty and Filial Piety" vividly shows the struggle between loyalty and adultery and the sadness and joy of small people before the great disaster. "Confucius" takes the meaning of words such as "threesomes must have my teacher", and shows the beauty of cultural heritage through the plot of "Zhong bow avoiding rain" and "student Dan on the flute".
"Qin King's Soldiers"
The Orphan of Zhao
In addition, "Dancing Millennium" also presents a large number of famous sentences that have been passed down through the ages, such as "Poetry Classics Zheng Feng Zi Yuan" that sings "One Day Not seen, such as March Xi", "Will Enter the Wine" that shows Li Du's immortal friendship, "Sending Voices to Ask Sainan Things, Only Every Year Hongyan Fei" depicts Wang Zhaojun's various mental journeys out of the plug, etc., and even inspired the netizens of Station B to launch a "poetry contest" on their own in the barrage.
"Will Drink"
In addition to the tailor-made film and television drama theater, Jiang Xiaowei said that the director team also adopted interactions such as "melting stems", "imperial experience cards" and "convocation orders" in the program and comment areas, calling on the video creators of Station B to tell Chinese stories in an innovative and unique way and inspire young user groups to pay attention to Chinese culture.
According to the analysis of industry experts, although there are many factors in the "breaking of the circle" of "Dance Millennium", in the ecological environment of traditional culture dissemination, the platform has played an important role in the technical, social and cultural systems, connecting experts and scholars, professional dance workers, director groups, staff and users, and also echoing the current national policy. The users who watched "Dance Millennium" on the B station participated in real time through the bullet screen, which built an interesting cultural media ecology.
The road to the national transmission of Chinese culture has a long way to go
When most local satellite television is still following the trend in producing cultivation and talent shows, in 2021, Henan Satellite TV took the lead in launching the "2021 Henan Spring Festival Gala", "Lantern Wonderful Night", "Qingming Fantastic Tour", "Dragon Boat Wonderful Tour", "Qixi Fantastic Tour" and other "Chinese Festival" series of programs, attracting a large number of young audiences, "Tang Palace Night Banquet", "Luoshen Water Endowment" and other dances are also frequently "out of the circle". "Dance Millennium", co-produced with Station B, has broken out of the new road of variety shows of "traditional culture + new trend expression".
In Feng Zheng's view, Henan Satellite TV has been deeply involved in the cultural field for many years, insists on doing a good job in cultural programs, and firmly believes in the charm of traditional culture and art itself, which is rooted in our cultural self-confidence. In addition, the promotion of the embassy, the collective voice of the official media such as the People's Daily, the People's Network, the Xinhua News Agency, the Xinhua Network, and the Guangming Daily, and the spontaneous multilingual translation and Amway of netizens at home and abroad have successfully made "Dance Millennium" shine on overseas platforms.
In this regard, Jiang Xiaowei also has a deep understanding. "Symbols are the bridge of culture, and distinctive cultural symbols play a vital role in the inheritance and promotion of culture." Japanese ukiyo-e and Korean K-POP (Korea-Pop) are all over the world, while Chinese cultural symbols are rich but lack a fulcrum. I personally believe that the overseas dissemination of Chinese cultural programs, the story can be a good fulcrum. ”
It is understood that in "Dance Millennium", several dance dramas and musicals with great storytelling and ornamentation have long been famous overseas. Released in 2013, Confucius has toured the United States, Japan, Australia, Italy, Greece, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Serbia and other countries. In the early 1980s, "Silk Road Flower Rain" went abroad to open the road of foreign cultural exchanges, making "Dunhuang Dance" famous and shocking the literary and artistic circles at home and abroad. Listed as one of the four tragedies of meta-drama, "The Orphan of Zhao" was the first Chinese drama to be introduced to Europe, the French literary scholar Voltaire translated "The Great Revenge of the Orphan of Zhao" in 1775, and the British playwright William Hatchett also adapted it into "Chinese Orphans", which caused repercussions in the British cultural circles. Musicals based on the play have been staged in Italy, France, Germany and other countries.
In recent years, the status and role of culture in the competition of comprehensive national strength have become prominent, and the exchange, integration and confrontation of different cultures have become increasingly frequent. Academic experts generally believe that storytelling is undoubtedly an effective way of international communication. "We need to establish the concept of 'global humanities' and use authentic foreign languages, especially English, as much as possible to expound our theoretical views on China and tell our Chinese stories." Wang Ning, Jiang Scholar Distinguished Professor of the Ministry of Education and Professor of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, said.
Experts suggest that to tell The Chinese story well and create Chinese cultural products, we need to pay attention to the "combination of China and foreign countries", that is, Chinese cultural characteristic products must not only carry Chinese cultural values, but also conform to the international mainstream "cultural experience" and "feeling structure", and the combination of the two can effectively promote the dissemination of Chinese culture and humanistic scholarship.