"Really make cultural relics 'alive' and 'tell' stories with dance." "The pattern of every costume has a place, and every plot design can stand up to professional scrutiny." The national treasure cultural relics theme dance drama "Five Stars out of the East" received such media evaluation after the second round of performances in Beijing last year.
On the eve of the Lunar New Year, on January 28th, the dance drama "Five Stars Out of the East", jointly performed by the Beijing Opera and Dance Theater and the Xinyu Song and Dance Troupe, landed in Shanghai and opened the national tour in Shanghai Culture Square.
Stills of "Five Stars out of the East" Picture of this article Liu Xi photographed
The concept and theme of the dance drama "Five Stars Out of the East" are derived from the Han Dynasty brocade arm guard of the Han Dynasty, a national first-class cultural relic excavated at the hetianiya site in Xinjiang and Tianniya on the ancient Silk Road.
In October 1995, members of the Sino-Japanese Niya Site Academic Expedition team found a piece of brocade in an ancient tomb at the Niya Site in Minfeng County, Hotan Region, which was 18.5 cm long and 12.5 cm wide, with eight Chinese characters in seal script: "Five Stars Out of the East and Li China", after thousands of years, the colors are still as beautiful as ever.
Based on this creative resource, the dance drama begins from the archaeological site of Niya, where archaeologists discovered the "Five Stars Out of the East and China" brocade armband, and entered the time and space tunnel in the wind and sand, unfolding the story behind this brocade for the audience.
A major feature of dance drama is that it concentrates a rich and diverse vocabulary of dance. The shadow of the national dance can be found in the night banquet "Lantern Dance" full of Western colors in the Jingjie City, and the "Bundi" dance section of the people of all ethnic groups dancing together in the Jingjie Market seems to be a mixed presentation of street dance and tap dance, and the sleeve bending shown in "Splendid Embroidery" belongs to the category of classical dance. There are also handsome men "bathing dance", monk "square dance", and the masses "eating melon dance"... It has greatly subverted the audience's traditional cognition of national theme dance dramas.
The dance drama lasted two years from brewing and rehearsal to the stage, produced by Beijing Performing Arts Group, Beijing Municipal Aid Xinjiang Hotan Headquarters, and the Propaganda Department of Hetian Committee, bringing together the chief choreographer Wang Gang, screenwriter Xu Rui, composer Yang Fan, stage designer Liu Kedong, costume designer Yang Donglin and other main creative personnel.
"It's as difficult as an archaeology deep into the desert." Dong Ning, deputy general manager of Beijing Performing Arts Group, said.
In order to tell a good story, the main creative team personally went to Hetian in Xinjiang to collect wind, extracting artistic vocabulary from archaeological historical facts, local folk customs, ethnic costumes, ethnic music, etc., accumulating precious materials for creation.
Wang Ye, the chief editor-in-chief, said: "The characteristics of this drama are not heavy, eloquent, using humor, witty and relaxed performance methods, and suddenly entering another rhythm in a very smooth narrative, such a performance method makes the audience have many novel feelings." ”
Screenwriter Xu Rui was responsible for changing the script 12 drafts before and after. Composer Yang Fan developed his creative imagination of the theme song through his personal experience of Cai Feng, and finally decided to create it in a symphonic and epic musical language. On the basis of respecting the historical facts of the site, Liu Kedong, the stage design, streamlines the use of elements, and at the same time uses video means to drive the audience's imagination of the exquisite ancient city. In order to "let the cultural relics speak", Yang Donglin combined the elements in the excavated cultural relics in terms of clothing color, clothing style, pattern design, etc.
It is worth mentioning that the dance drama from production, production to performance, is jointly completed by Beijing and Singapore. Beijing Performing Arts Group has held 7 expert main creation seminars, inviting experts from Beijing and Singapore and various fields to discuss the content of the script.
In addition, there are 9 Xinjiang actors participating in the dance drama. When the repertoire was established, they came to Beijing from Hotan, Xinjiang, and rehearsed with the actors of the Beijing Opera and Dance Theater, cultivating a deep tacit understanding and feelings.
"Five Stars out of the East" has been performed in Beijing for the second round, with the continuous collection of suggestions and comments, Beijing Performing Arts Group and the main creative team have revised and improved the dance drama and polished the details.
The performance version of the Shanghai station has undergone a lot of changes. In terms of plot, the death of the protagonist Feng has been more rigorously modified, strengthening the connotation of blood blending and mutual help between various ethnic groups conveyed by this work; on the props, many unexpected small surprises have been added, not only the integration of popular elements on the Internet, but also through the addition of new props to make the stage visual more abundant; several popular dance sections have adjusted the details, formations, etc., so that they are more naturally integrated into the repertoire.
After the Shanghai station, "Five Stars out of the East" will also be transferred to the National Centre for the Performing Arts, touring at the Shandong Provincial Grand Theatre in Jinan from February 26 to 27, the Foshan Grand Theatre from March 5 to 6, the Quanzhou Grand Theatre from March 12 to 13, and the Shenzhen Binhai Art Center from March 18 to 19.