"Sunrise", which Ba Jin called "the best harvest in China's new literary movement", is one of the representative works of the drama master Cao Yu. But this four-act play composed of dawn, dusk, midnight and sunrise is recognized as difficult to change. Among the many adapted versions, the version directed and performed by dancer Jin Xing is undoubtedly the most talked about, as can be seen in the appearance of the Wuzhen Theatre Festival last year.
From April 7 to 10 this year, the play will set sail again in Shanghai Cultural Square, and will immediately start the 2022 national tour, and on April 22 and 23, it will land at the Tianqiao Art Center.
The alienation of characters from all walks of life, represented by the protagonist Chen Bailu, driven by money and power, and in the sharp group portrait shaping and poetic expression of sorrow, the uneasy situation faced by individuals of life has also made Cao Yu gain the reputation of "the soul-destroyer of the times". In the Venus version, the dancing posture and imagery of modern dance attempt to cross the nearly century-old historical river and trigger the same frequency resonance in the hearts of today's theater audiences.
Speaking about the adaptation of "Sunrise", Venus said: "This is a story that Chinese knows, and the key is how to present and how to express it. The charm of the stage is that it is a space for the creator to express and a space for communicating with the audience. Thus, in this edition of Sunrise, the addition of modern dance opens up a new path for "presentation" and adds a more modern texture to the vision.
At the beginning of the curtain, the first to enter the audience's field of vision are the modern dancers of the Venus Dance Company. Compared with Chen Bailu, Fang Dasheng and other specific dramatists, the dancers are abstract meanings, living backgrounds, and externalization of character emotions... In corners that words can't reach, body language fills the narrative blank. As Cao Yu's daughter Wan Fang said: "The factor of adding modern dance makes "Sunrise" and today's people's fate, life, and life perception have a stronger connection." ”
At the same time, the stage design in this version of "Sunrise" also echoes modern dance, with a smooth slope that slopes upwards to the canopy, and the diagonal staircase divides it in two. In the cut space, the characters and dancers in the play stand on the slope with difficulty, and the difficult life situation of all sentient beings is clear at a glance. Beneath the slopes, crumbling wooden horses and mountains of books point to Chen Bailu's loneliness and oppressive and suffocating living environment, conveying the modern minimalist dramatic aesthetic.
Writer Ye Shengtao once praised "Sunrise" as "a group portrait that refuses to be sloppy with a knife and a chisel". Mr. Cao Yu's meticulous portrayal of social group portraits is also fully interpreted in this edition of Sunrise. In Venus's view, "Sunrise" is not a big heroine in the traditional sense, but a social group portrait. Every character in the play is important, and everyone is a person who makes choices to survive. Whether it is Pan Yueting, Jin Ba, Gu Ba's grandmother and other cadres who are in the upper class, or a group of "insufficient people" who are at the bottom of society, such as Cuixi and Xiaoshi, they are all different aspects of all sentient beings.
The complexity of Chen Bailu's key role is also in the interpretation of Venus's two roles, which forms a sharp mirror contrast with Cuixi. Chen Bailu, who is arrogant but helpless to degenerate, Cuixi, who is in the mud but has a golden heart, and two women who seem to be completely different, seek survival in different social classes, but have two similarities in behavior.
Stills Photography / Yin Xuefeng
Text/Beijing Youth Daily reporter Guo Jia
Editor/Ying Qiao