"There is a very moving sentence: In the past of life, there is always a person who owes you a word of sorry. Maybe we won't ask for that sorry, "Quietly Picking Up" for me, is to be able to walk back in the middle of life, put down some things, and then continue to move forward. Talking about the birth of "Quiet Recovery", choreographer Xie Xin said.
From February 25 to 26, the premiere of this work commissioned by the Shanghai International Dance Center Theater was completed, which was a gift from Xie Xin to his 36-year-old self, and also let people see a different Xie Xin.
The 36-year-old Xie Xin is in the middle of her life, with a small family, with children, her parents are full of white hair, and she also carries the life of more than ten people in a dance troupe. However, some memories are heavy, those hurts that have been suffered in growing up, those parts that were once thought to have been let go, will always bounce back when she is vulnerable.
"It turns out that those burns in the body, the body has never forgotten." Xie Xin hopes to use this work to reconcile and reconcile with the past, let go of the burden, open the knot of the heart, and start again.
The scene began with a warm-up performance of Xie Xin lying on the table. Chairs, cabinets, beds, the most lifelike objects, are hung on the dark stage... Time goes back, memories are rewinded, and the box of secrets is opened.
When doing stage design, Xie Xin's first reaction was that it should be the appearance of home. What will there be at home? There were tables, lamps, and diaries.
The diary records your thoughts, the lamp is like your family or the closest person in your life, and the table is a solid support, like home or father, as if it was born so solid. When the table is tilted, when the stool is weightless, when the diary is opened, everything on the stage is also real and illusory, and time and space begin to intersect.
When he was a child, Xie Xin had the habit of writing a diary, "It is full of words written to himself, come on, Xie Xin, you must be able to!" "The diary fell apart during rehearsals. Stage designer Hu Yanjun collected a bunch of old diaries, as well as 30 chairs and 20 kinds of old objects, which hung in mid-air, following the dancers' limb changes, and the waves rose and fell. "It's a dream-like space, and space is actually an externalization of the human heart." Hu Yanjun said.
The dancers' clothes were cotton and linen, like old photographs, with a yellowed, mottled texture. Although the fabric and tone are the same, the clothes of different dancers are subdivided into different styles, textures, and textures, trying to express those people in Xie Xin's memory that are either vague or clear. "She's a choreographer with feelings, and I'm also a tailor who feels good about hair. We didn't have tough moments of communication, only trust each other. Costume designer Li Kun said.
The music is also highly stylized, from "Entropy" to "QuietLy Rising", composer Wang Yubo has worked with Xie Xin for the second time. "The creative inspiration is to chat with Xie Xin, only by chatting, you can know what she wants, what she wants to express, what kind of music to present, and the rest is up to you to fantasize."
Wang Yubo said that "Entropy" is a minimalist way of creating music, the overall feeling is mechanical, cold, restrained, only in the occasional moment to reveal a trace of emotion, ""Quiet recovery" is open in the emotion, to use music to open the box in the memory, through music to present such an environment, to pull the audience inside. ”
Chen Tian, a popular dancer in "Dance Storm", was also invited to the stage. Chen Tian and Xie Xin met in 2017, and in the 2020 "Dance Storm", the two once danced "Not In", which touched the audience and had a tacit understanding.
This time they were invited to join, and Chen Tian and Xie Xin danced together again. At the end of the play, a cyclical collision is impressive: the two flesh fight each other, the closer they are, the more painful the collision, the farther away, and with each collision, you can clearly hear the impact of the flesh and the sharp wheezing until Xie Xin is knocked to the ground.
"We wanted to get close to each other, and the closer we got, the deeper the injury, the more the damage accumulated." Xie Xin put this dance in the final cathartic part, before she really let go, and let these injuries dissolve into pieces and dissipate with the wind.
"When the repository of the brain, the reservoir of emotions reaches a critical point, you will find that you need to make a move to put down, organize and start over." In the past, Xie Xin's rehearsal speed was very fast, and he could even complete a 60-minute big work a month, "This time I can't do it." She found that a lot of her previous choreography experience became less effective, and a lot of things were lined up and she couldn't say what she wanted to say.
After doing a lot of painful overturning and deletion, and experiencing various moments of self-doubt and contradiction, Xie Xin finally finished the line. Sitting offstage watching the row before the premiere, she was very happy and felt that this was what she wanted to say. "Reading" his life diary on stage, Xie Xin finally healed himself.