Chen Xiaobin
Guest Profiles
Chen Xiaobin
Young writers
Author of "Silk Road Flower Rain and Birth"
The dance drama "Silk Road Flower Rain" was born in Gansu in the early days of reform and opening up, and plays a pivotal role in the history of contemporary Chinese dance. Suddenly, more than forty years. Chen Xiaobin, a young writer, wrote a book "Silk Road Flower Rain Birth" from the bud of the creation of the dance drama "Silk Road Flower Rain", depicting the background and regional environment of the birth of "Silk Road Flower Rain", explaining the inner spiritual connection between the Silk Road, dunhuang grottoes and "Silk Road Flower Rain", and recording the arduous process of emancipating the mind of generations of artists, persevering, and using collective wisdom to usher in the willow dark flowers and achieve classic works. April 29 is World Dance Day, and this issue of Xinhua Interview takes you into the story behind the large-scale dance drama "Silk Road Flower Rain" through an interview with writer Chen Xiaobin.
Wonderful views
Why was "Silk Road Flower Rain" born in Gansu, the western part of the motherland?
At that time, there was a saying in the dance circles in Gansu: "Gansu's drama, but Shaanxi", and the influence of Gansu's dance art works often stopped in neighboring Shaanxi Province. Since the founding of New China, cultural undertakings have developed strongly, and national dance groups have sprung up, and the core of dance drama creation has always been Beijing as the important town, followed by Shanghai. Under the background of the above era, the dance drama "Silk Road Flower Rain" turned out to be born, and it was conceived and born in this land of Gansu, which can be described as a stone breaking. I think there are probably several reasons for the success of the dance drama. First, Gansu has the Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes. Beautiful things have their own vitality. Judging from the artistic background of the dance drama, the dance drama is the internal result of the development of the beauty of dunhuang Mogao Grottoes. Mogao Grottoes used their own beauty to save themselves, with Chang Shuhong, Duan Wenjie, the guardians of Dunhuang art, the protection and inheritance of Mogao Grottoes has a good foundation, thus attracting more artists and dancers to go to Mogao Grottoes to collect style. This has the artistic source of "Silk Road Flower Rain". Second, Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu, has a Yellow River. Artists from all over the world, in order to build the Great Northwest, gathered in Lanzhou, they drink the water of the Yellow River, struggle and start a business on the shore of the Yellow River, and the emotions, sweat and spirit flowing through them are the concentrated display of the Yellow River culture. Third, Gansu has its own cultural self-confidence. From the past to look up and learn outward, to look down and learn inward. The creative process of dance drama is a vivid embodiment of understanding the laws of art and testing the truth with practice. The dance drama reflects our cultural self-confidence in Gansu. Fourth, culture and art can also be ahead of the economic foundation.
Why does "Silk Road Flower Rain" look for the main creative elements from Dunhuang?
Since the founding of New China, Chinese dance art has achieved fruitful results. The comrades of the Gansu Provincial Song and Dance Troupe went deep into Dunhuang to study, study, and practice repeatedly, and finally creatively transformed the static and fragmentary mural art of the Mogao Grottoes into a coherent, vivid and beautiful dance image. On the basis of conscientiously grasping the scientific laws of body modeling art, not only the Dunhuang murals were resurrected, but also the dance of the Tang Dynasty, and many brand-new dance vocabularies were created, which wrote a new chapter and provided new experience for discovering and sorting out the ancient dance art of the mainland. The success of dance drama has led to the establishment of a new independent dance genre in the history of modern dance in the mainland, the Dunhuang Dance School. The vivid empirical evidence of the birth of "Silk Road Flower Rain" enlightens later dance creators to attach importance to the study of dance history, and the study and research of The history of Chinese culture and art should be deepened.
Why did "Silk Road Flower Rain" choose ordinary characters as the protagonists?
The party's literary and art workers always put the people in the highest position in their hearts and enthusiastically praise the ordinary people. There are three protagonists of the dance drama, the Tang Dynasty painter Zhang Zhang and his daughter Yingniang, and the Persian merchant Inus, who are ordinary people. Although there have never been two characters such as The Divine Pen Zhang Father and Daughter in history, there are thousands of painters and plasticizers who share the same fate as the Divine Pen Zhang Father and Daughter. Therefore, the choreographer analyzed and studied a large number of historical materials, and with high respect for the ancient nameless craftsmen, conceived of two vivid characters such as the divine pen Zhang Father and Daughter. The name "Shenbi Zhang" was summed up by Duan Wenjie based on historical facts. In the Tang Dynasty, there were 40,000 or 50,000 monasteries, thousands of grottoes, and a large number of murals and sculptures, all created by unknown painters such as "Shenbi Zhang". They are the true creators of Tang Dynasty art and Dunhuang murals. Yingniang, the daughter of Shenbi Zhang, was the embodiment of Kabuki in the Tang Dynasty. In the Tang Dynasty, music and dance were extremely developed, and in the imperial court, there were three major court music and dance institutions coexisting, namely Taichang Temple, Jiaofang and Liyuan. During the Sui and Tang dynasties, the pipa flourished, and the playing technique was highly skilled, from the court to the folk, resounding throughout the pipa. The image of a large number of pipa played in the Dunhuang murals is a reflection of the atmosphere of the times at that time. As an international city at that time, Dunhuang's dance music and merchants from all over the world exchanged and gathered here, so it was reasonable to have an artist like Yingniang who was good at playing the pipa and dancing skills, and there was a Persian merchant Inus.
At this stage, what is the practical significance of reproducing the creative process of "Silk Road Flower Rain"?
"Silk Road Flower Rain" not only shows the culture, but also returns to the depths of culture. "Silk Road Flower Rain" can express the sense of national community, and the history of Chinese dance is composed of multi-ethnic cultures. The emergence of the Dunhuang Dance School is a fruitful result of the endless development of the cultural genes of the Silk Road and the long-term accumulation and absorption of multi-ethnic cultural genes by literary and artistic creators. The continuous import of diverse cultures on the Silk Road Ancient Road has long buried the genes of ancient dance art in the traditional dances of different ethnic groups in the Hexi Corridor and Gansu, hiding the vast history of the Silk Road. "Silk Road Flower Rain" highly embodies the spirit of the Silk Road. The Silk Road is not only a commercial passage, but more importantly, the "Silk Road Spirit" embodied in the Silk Road. As a platform for humane and social exchanges, the Silk Road is where multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-religious and multi-cultural convergence and integration, and in the process of long-term exchanges, various countries have accumulated the Silk Road spirit of "peaceful cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, mutual learning and mutual learning, mutual benefit and win-win" as the core.