Tan Yuanyuan had planned to retire at the age of 35.
But 10 years later, she's still jumping. Before the interview, she had just returned from her studio near her residence. The daily practice is no less than 3 hours, first basic training, followed by repertoire practice, always sweating.
Her new book, Tan Yuanyuan and Her Friends: A Fantastic Night at an Art Museum, was staged at the Shanghai Oriental Art Center from July 19 to 21. One by one, her former dance partner bid farewell to the stage, while she still spins and jumps in the spotlight, fighting gravity, injury and time day after day.
Tan Yuanyuan
Swans are migratory birds and always return
If the epidemic hadn't happened in 2020, Tan Would have hosted a gala dinner in San Francisco to celebrate her 25th anniversary with the San Francisco Ballet.
However, all performances and celebrations were cancelled due to the epidemic. On March 16 last year, at the last moment before the troupe closed, Tan Yuanyuan brought back 33 pairs of pointe shoes from the practice room and practiced with his 72-year-old mother.
The Swan
Seven months after bidding farewell to the stage, she appeared on the stage of "Dance Storm 2" as a contestant last October, dancing "Homecoming" with the melody of Saint-Saën's "Swan".
After "Dance Storm 2", she quickly joined the creation of "Art Museum Fantasy Night". Van Gogh's "Starry Sky", Vermeer's "The Girl with the Pearl Earrings", René Margheret's "Lover", Huang Gongwang's "Fuchun Mountain Jutu", Zhang Daqian's "The Elephant without An Elephant"... Inspired by these ancient and modern Chinese and foreign paintings, the dancers created a cross-border performance.
Every time he performs in Shanghai, for Tan Yuanyuan, it is "going home". Because there are her teachers, friends, and family, she is always extra nervous before the performance.
"Tan Yuanyuan and Her Friends" has brought world-class ballet stars to Shanghai to perform, because she wants them to know about China, her hometown of Shanghai, and also allow Shanghai audiences to see world-class performances on their doorstep.
In "Fantastic Night at the Art Museum", Tan Yuanyuan's identity is not only a dancer, but also an artistic director and co-choreographer. This time, she wanted to break with tradition and give the audience a whole new experience.
Shangguan News: Among so many famous paintings from ancient and modern China and abroad, which one is your favorite?
Tan Yuanyuan: I danced three works in "Art Museum Fantasy Night", "Swan", "Carmen", and "I Am Crazy for Margaret". My favorite is "I'm Crazy for Margaret," inspired by the Belgian surrealist painter René Marguerite's Lover. This painting, which I chose, depicts a veiled couple kissing. "Lovers" seems to confirm Elasmus's famous saying that "love is blind". Just like attending a masquerade, they know each other but don't know each other, and the unknown side of each other is deeply hidden.
All the paintings were chosen by the dancers themselves. Only when they really like a painting will they be inspired by a painting and will be endowed with imagination and creativity. The work brings together ballet, modern and classical dance. Musicians are also on stage, with piano, violin, classical guitar, bayan, pipa and other instruments.
Shangguan News: In "I'm Crazy for Margaret", what is it like to dance in a veil?
"I'm Crazy for Margaret"
Tan Yuanyuan: For me and my dance partner, it is a huge challenge. Because of the veil and dim lights, the vision is very blurred, and there is a very difficult double dance, almost "blind jumping", but the stage effect is very good.
My dance partner is Li Jiabo, who is a former principal performer of the Hong Kong Ballet and has a lot of stage experience. I used to be the guest principal performer of the Hong Kong Ballet and have participated in many of their performances, but I have never worked with him. This time, in just 10 days, I rehearsed "Swan" and "I'm Crazy for Margaret" with him, which was very tacit. I believe that in time, slowly running in, there will be a better and better presentation.
Shangguan News: How important is a proper dance partner for dancers?
Tan Yuanyuan: Dancers do not have a chemical reaction with every dance partner, and it is impossible to find a good dance partner. You need to communicate well with your dance partner, be patient, and trust each other. Because there are often many difficult moves on the stage, if the coordination is not good, it will be very dangerous.
Shangguan News: How did you think of the crossover between dance and fine arts this time?
Tan Yuanyuan: The concept of the work was collided with our main creative team together through the air connection brainstorming. Imagine a scene like this - in the midnight art museum, every famous painting has been resurrected, isn't it wonderful? I think that painting or dancing are both visual arts, a kind of presentation of beauty. Whether you are a dancer or a painter, you must have a story in your heart. Can the dancers use their limbs to express the artistic conception in the painting, present the spiritual strength in the painting, and arouse the empathy of the audience? It was an interesting challenge.
In fact, over the years, I have been trying to cross and integrate art. It is not only to integrate ballet, classical dance and modern dance, but also to let different art forms collide with each other, brainstorm, bring new inspiration and ideas, and let different elements and different ideas coexist harmoniously. I love working with artists from different fields to inspire each other and learn new things. Looking back at the art classics left over thousands of years, are not they all born in countless collisions and fusions? I believe that crossover can push art further afield.
"Tan Yuanyuan and Her Friends - Fantasy Night in the Art Museum"
Shangguan News: At this year's Spring Festival Gala, you and pianist Li Yundi and dancer Zhang Aoyue jointly presented "I Love You China", which is also an artistic collision. This is your third time to participate in the Spring Festival Gala, do you have a different feeling?
Tan Yuanyuan: Stepping into the CCTV Studio No. 1, you will find that the dressing room and the circular corridor are still familiar, as if you returned to the moment of the first Spring Festival Gala, and your heart was very excited. "I Love You China" is my heart's voice, because I have been abroad for many years, far from home, but when I hear such a melody, my heart is always boiling with blood.
Shangguan News: In the competition in Dance Storm 2, your first entry was "Homecoming". What do you hope your return will bring to Chinese dance?
Tan Yuanyuan: Swans are migratory birds and will always return. I think that dance is developing very well in China now, and both the market environment and the audience base have been greatly improved, which is an opportunity for every dancer. I hope that everyone can jointly promote the inheritance and development of dance art in China, and let more people accept, understand and like the art of dance.
Shanghai swans, how to fly to the world
Born in Shanghai, Tan Yuanyuan saw the famous Russian ballet dancer Ulanova dance "Swan Lake" on TV at the age of 5, was deeply attracted by the crown and feathers, and involuntarily tiptoed.
She asked her mother: What is this dance? Mom replied: This is ballet.
In 1986, Tan Yuanyuan was admitted to the Shanghai Dance School. Of the more than 1,000 students, only 12 boys and 12 girls were selected. However, her parents quarreled over whether she wanted to enroll in school. The mother once had a dream of becoming a dancer, but it failed to materialize, and she pinned her hopes on her daughter. My father, an engineer, thought ballet was an imported product, Chinese could dance anywhere in the West. And the dancer's artistic career is short, and he prefers his daughter to become a doctor or a lawyer and live a stable life.
In the end, the parents decided Tan Yuanyuan's fate with a 5 cent coin. The coin was tossed by her mother, face up, and although she was a year late in school, it eventually put her on the road to dance.
In 1992, Tan Yuanyuan won the gold medal at the French International Ballet Competition, and Ulanova was one of the judges. She said to Tan Yuanyuan: You are a very talented child, and you will have many opportunities in the future. But in your artistic career, you have to remember that you must dance with your heart, art is endless.
Shangguan News: Entering dance school a year later than your peers, can you keep up at the beginning?
Tan Yuanyuan: At the beginning, I was like an "ugly duckling" among my classmates, very inferior, always in the corner. The first time I took the stage, the lights hit, and I was too nervous to even distinguish between the upper and lower stages. After tears of sadness, I made up my mind to redouble my efforts. Repeat an action a thousand times just to do the best. When I first competed as a teenager, I was too nervous to lose. But the next year, I was on the stage of the International Ballet Competition in France.
Shangguan News: When I first went to the San Francisco Ballet, was I used to it?
Tan Yuanyuan: Before going to San Francisco, I studied at the Stuttgart Ballet School in Germany, and I never thought I would go to the United States. After going there, because I can't speak English, the biggest problem is communication. My dance partner at the time was Russian and didn't speak English. The two of us played dumb puzzles, all using gestures to communicate, so sometimes there were misunderstandings and jokes.
At that time, I was young, alone in the United States, and I was always particularly homesick. Every weekend I would take a two-hour drive to Chinatown for a long-distance call to Shanghai, because it was cheaper there, $3 a minute. When the phone rang and I heard my mother's voice, I didn't say a word, I just cried. Mom said on the other end of the phone, you can prove yourself. After hanging up the phone, I took the car back to the practice room and trained for a long time.
Shangguan News: The first dance play to play the lead role after becoming the principal actor of the San Francisco Ballet was "Swan Lake". This work is a touchstone for ballerinas, what's the hardest thing for you?
Tan Yuanyuan: The most difficult thing is the beginning of the second act, where the white swan and the prince meet at the lakeside, one big jump, then a small jump. It was a moment of silence, and everyone was holding their breath to see how you jumped the first step. That was the most heart-wrenching moment for all actresses, like dancing the Aurora rose in "Sleeping Beauty", and "slow board" was the hardest.
Moreover, the San Francisco Ballet's version of "Swan Lake" uses a reflective floor cloth, like the surface of the lake, which can illuminate the reflection of the dancers. But such a floor cloth is very slippery, full of challenges and risks. In order to rehearse this dance drama, I have fallen on such a floor countless times, slid countless times, and then I have a beautiful presentation.
Shangguan News: Is the San Francisco Ballet highly competitive? What does a Chinese dancer have to rely on?
Tan Yuanyuan: Foreign dance companies, each has its own characteristics and style, San Francisco Ballet is more inclined to classical ballet. What kind of dancers each company recruits depends largely on the artistic director's vision. They generally value the aura and potential of a dancer. Shortly after I went to the San Francisco Ballet, I played Desdemona, the heroine of "Othello.". In Shakespeare's original book, she has snow-white skin and red hair, which does not exactly match my image. In foreign ballet companies, performance contracts are often signed once a year, and the liquidity is very strong. So to survive, the heart must be strong.
Shangguan News: To become a ballet star, what proportion of talent and acquired efforts are accounted for?
Tan Yuanyuan: For me, I am first and foremost a ballet dancer, and I strive to exert every movement and emotion to the extreme, which is my long-term persistence. Genius is certainly needed, because ballerinars have high demands on all aspects of the body. So many people say that the "white swan" is measured with a ruler. But I think the acquired effort should account for 80%. Of course, you can't practice stupidly, you have to practice with your brain.
To be a ballet dancer, you need a little persistence. For so many years, I have done one thing myself. People are inert, and sometimes the body is too tired to do so, and it needs strong willpower to support it. My biggest fear is getting hurt, but sometimes, even on painkillers, I have to jump. For ballet, you have to give up and sacrifice a lot. For so many years, I didn't have personal time, either on stage, or in the rehearsal hall, or in physical therapy, orthopedics, I was used to this kind of life.
Shangguan News: Last year was your 25th anniversary at the San Francisco Ballet, and the Russian choreographer Yuri Pozokov choreographed the dance "Mother" for you. In this work, when you jump, your mother sits behind you, moving and still in stark contrast. What kind of mother-daughter relationship is involved in it?
Tan Yuanyuan: During the epidemic, we can all feel how important family affection is. My mother has been abroad for so many years and often goes to see my performances, yuri often meets her, greets her every time, and we are all very familiar. He can feel and feel the strong affection between me and my mother, and he also uses this to express his nostalgia for his deceased mother.
At that time, because of the epidemic, none of us could have dance partners, so we could only dance solo alone. At that time, the venue could not be fixed, and Yuri wanted to go to a more empty, old place, so we ended up shooting in the company's warehouse.
Shangguan News: In this work, your mother is your dance partner.
Tan Yuanyuan: Yes, at that time, I also felt that it was crazy: my mother can't dance ballet, how can she be my dance partner? On second thought, although she would not lift me with her body, she supported me with maternal love, made me spin on the ground, and then lifted me into the air. She was always very strict with me. Growing up, she was always dissatisfied with my achievements. But at the end of Mother, she touched my head and smiled, representing her inner recognition of me.
Maternal love is selfless. When I mention this feeling for so many years, my voice will choke and my heart will touch. In short, she has always been the greatest support for me for so many years, and she sits behind me and gives me invisible strength.
Dancing is not difficult, the hard thing is to become an artist
Felipe Diaz remembers the first time Tan worked with the San Francisco Ballet, when he was her dance partner. As soon as this skinny Chinese girl stepped on the stage, she was so dazzling that he still remembers. "This talent is encounterable and unattainable. She had an attraction that even if she just stood on stage and didn't jump at anything, the audience couldn't take their eyes off her. ”
In the day-to-day relationship, colleagues found that the girl seemed to be weak, but it exploded with great power. "She's always fully committed to every show and demands on herself unbelievably high." San Francisco Ballet Master Anita Paciotti said: "One of the important reasons why Yuan Yuan's artistic career can be so long is that she has good physical qualities. She never stopped and was always tireless. More than once we've seen her fly back to the U.S. from China, get off the plane and come straight to the dance troupe for rehearsals. ”
At the San Francisco Ballet, Tan Yuanyuan was not all smooth sailing. After the age of 35, she encountered a bottleneck in her career, and once worried that she had passed the golden age, had no drama to jump, and could not grow. But just then, choreographer John Neumere's The Little Mermaid appeared.
The story of "The Little Mermaid" is born from Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale "The Daughter of the Sea". The little mermaid fell in love with the prince, exchanging her voice for her legs, each step like stepping on the tip of a knife. However, she did not wait for the prince's love, and eventually turned into a bubble in the sea. Tan Yuanyuan felt that her body was inhabited by the soul of the little mermaid, as if she had jumped over her in the previous life. Whenever the music starts, it's the most beautiful moment of her life. In the end, Tan Yuanyuan's performance of "The Little Mermaid" made John Neumer exclaim: "You jumped out of my soul!"
Shangguan News: How has "The Little Mermaid" changed you?
The Little Mermaid
Tan Yuanyuan: Because of "The Little Mermaid", I went up a step. I learned how to express myself, reached the ideal state, and felt pure pleasure in the dance. With the increase of age, although the physical strength is declining, it will have richer experience and life perception, more mature, more expressive. You need to keep trying, keep honing yourself, and make quantitative change produce qualitative change.
Master John Neumeer said that every dance step has its own story, and it is necessary to connect these stories and express them with heart. Because I was so devoted, every time I finished "The Little Mermaid", it was difficult for me to "play". The state of muscle and spirit takes at least two hours to calm down. The next day it was going to be performed again, and the cycle began. To be a professional dancer, you have to be able to carry it both physically and emotionally.
Shangguan News: In addition to "The Little Mermaid", what other works are of landmark significance to you?
Giselle
Tan Yuanyuan: I like Giselle very much, it is known as the "crown of ballet", it is a poignant and moving love story. It has a lot of tiptoe jumping movements, very painful, and very dramatic, with high requirements for character building. When I first danced Giselle as a teenager, I didn't know what "jumping with feelings" was, and I could only frown desperately to express my emotions. It wasn't until I joined the San Francisco Ballet and starred in multiple dance plays that I realized the "very painful happiness" of dance. I wanted to create a profound character like the soul of a character under a microscope.
There is another work that I also like: Yuri's "RAkU", which is about a court love tragedy that occurred in ancient Japan.
Shangguan News: What does "RAkU" mean?
Tan Yuanyuan: It is the feeling of burning to the extreme.
Shangguan News: These works have one thing in common, the roles you play are extreme, always self-burning and self-sacrificing.
Tan Yuanyuan: Yes, burn yourself and finally enter an expression of the spiritual world. Like the one where Giselle goes crazy for love, it takes a very heartfelt performance. "The Little Mermaid" has been playing for more than two hours, and it has not come down on the stage, and it is also dancing with heart. "RAkU" is more extreme, dancing with spirit. These plays are all milestones in my artistic career, which have transformed me step by step.
Shangguan News: After so many years on the stage, what is the difference in your pursuit of art at different ages?
Tan Yuanyuan: When I was young, I always thought of winning awards, going to competitions abroad on behalf of China, and winning glory for the motherland. It was stressful, but lucky. When I went to study abroad, I was thinking about how to practice the kind of training methods abroad. Later, when I came to the San Francisco Ballet, I danced very diligently, I wanted to become a main actor, I practiced hard every day, and I had to present myself and prove myself when I had the opportunity. In fact, it is not difficult to be a dancer, the difficulty is to become an artist.
Shangguan News: How can one be called an artist?
Tan Yuanyuan: As a dancer, I think more about how to complete the dance moves accurately and in one go, because ballet attaches great importance to skill. But this is not enough, you have to impress them with your performance, and make them unforgettable with the image you have created. Artists have a powerful aura, are trained through thousands of times, pursue the ultimate, are full of creativity, and can bring inspiration and shock to the audience.
Shangguan News: I've seen you give lessons to children at the Drama and Dance Academy, and I've found that before you lecture, you always watch them rehearse.
Tan Yuanyuan: This can give the right medicine and let them really improve. I would tell them not to rush too much to express themselves, but to let the body feel the rhythm of the music. In fact, you don't have to work so hard in every action, but the coherence between the action and the action should be better.
Shangguan News: Your idol Ulanova didn't say goodbye to the stage until the eve of her 60th birthday, when do you wish you could jump?
Tan Yuanyuan: Now I no longer set limits for myself. Very fortunately, my physical condition still allows me to stand on stage. Moreover, my love and pursuit of art has not changed by a day. As long as I stand on the stage, I will be very happy and grateful. For me, ballet is my life, and I will continue to work tirelessly for the continuation of life.
Ballet dancer, born in Shanghai in 1976, is the principal actor of the San Francisco Ballet, starring in "Swan Lake", "Othello", "Giselle", "The Little Mermaid" and so on.
This article was published on the Liberation Weekend Dialogue edition of Jiefang Daily on July 23
Column Editor-in-Chief: Shi Chenlu Text Editor: Zhang Yi Photo Editor: Zhu Xuan
Source: Author: Wu Tong