Stills from Dragon Gate King Kong
Stills from Dragon Gate King Kong
From the "Luoshui Neon Dress" costume restoration show held by Luoyang Museum during the National Day in 2020 relying on the cultural relics in the collection to restore 25 sets of ancient costumes, to the dance "Tang Palace Night Banquet" inspired by 13 Sui Dynasty three-color dance figurines inspired by Henan Museum on the Spring Evening of Henan Satellite TV in 2021, from the dance poetry drama "Only This Green" based on the Song Dynasty painter Wang Ximeng's "Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains", to the dance "You Chun" of Sui Dynasty painter Zhan Ziqian's "You Chun Tu" in CCTV's "Ancient Rhyme New Voice • Qingming" special program...
Literary and artistic masterpieces that seek artistic genes and creative inspiration from China's excellent traditional culture continue to emerge, and stage performance art works "break the circle" and come, which is wonderful. Henan Satellite TV's 2021 Qixi Festival's "Qixi Fantastic Tour" is one of the masterpieces of the real-life dance "Dragon Gate King Kong" based on the longmen grotto stone carved images fei tian and King Kong. Lotte, who holds an instrument in his arms, flies out of the cave and dances under the gaze of the Big Buddha, and the image of Vajralus is realistic and lifelike. The artist has given the legacy of traditional culture an artistic charm that spans history. The ancient yuyun dance art complements the long history and culture of the Longmen Grottoes, and profoundly interprets and explains the essence and meaning of "culture + tourism".
Music and dance in a contemporary perspective
Static cultural relics are dynamically presented, giving fresh vitality to traditional cultural relics. The Longmen Grottoes Research Institute took the lead in the attempt to "revitalize cultural relics". In close cooperation with Xinhua News Agency, a live-action version of the "Emperor Li FoTu" was released in April 2021. Originally created on the east wall of the Binyang Zhongdong Cave in the Longmen Grottoes during the Northern Wei Dynasty, the "Emperor's Diagram of the Empress" was originally created, and was divided into two parts: the northern section (emperor) and the southern section (rear), depicting the grand scene of the Northern Wei Xiaowen Emperor and Empress Wenzhao Li Buddha, and is an important carving work in the Longmen Grottoes. The original work was stolen by American antiquities dealers in the 1930s, the original has been destroyed, and the replicas of the Northern Wei Xiaowen Emperor Li FoTu and the Empress Wenzhao Li Fotu are now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Nelson Atkins Art Museum in Kansas City, USA.
Based on the comprehensive and informative investigation and research of the "Emperor Li FoTu", the researchers and the main creative team of the Longmen Grottoes Research Institute have comprehensively restored the cultural relics from multiple levels such as actors' costumes, makeup, hair buns, and movements, and through novel and flexible shooting techniques, the historical relics of the Longmen Grottoes have been vividly presented by new media, which has enhanced the audience's closeness to the historical relics of the Longmen Grottoes.
After this successful attempt, the competent department of Longmen Grottoes accelerated the pace of cooperation with relevant media to launch outstanding and innovative works of art. The dance "Dragon Gate King Kong" in the "Tanabata Fantastic Tour" evening party launched by Henan Satellite TV on August 13, 2021 is the most representative.
"Dragon Gate King Kong" is played by female dancers as thirteen "Trick Lotte", with graceful and colorful shapes, belts fluttering, and flying in the air. The localization trend of the Longmen Grottoes in carving is obvious, and the shapes, face shapes, postures, and costumes of "Trick Lotte" and "Trick Musician" are closer to women in the secular life of the Tang Dynasty. At the time of carving, the flying sculpture in the Longmen Grottoes is different from the slender and agile image in the Dunhuang murals, and the lower body is slightly fatter. Although the "Trick Lotte" in the dance of "Dragon Gate King Kong" is covered with many light streamers, the dance posture is relatively calm, solemn and solemn, which is very consistent with the image of "Trick Lotte". Each "Trick Lotte" handheld instrument includes Ruan, Zhen zhen, row flute, horizontal flute, sheng, cymbal, cane drum, without the rebound shape of Dunhuang Flying Sky, accurately and truly restoring the musical image of longmen grottoes, and reproducing the ancient musical activity picture of the mainland.
"Dragon Gate King Kong" has also made certain innovations on the basis of restoring history and reproducing tradition. The first is the innovation in clothing styling. The Longmen Grottoes are decolored due to weathering, and it is more difficult to verify the accurate original color of "Trick Lotte", and the costume design of the program chooses the dark and dark traditional Chinese colors such as peony red out of consideration for the beauty of the picture. In order to facilitate the performance and image shaping, the shape of the King Kong in the dance is compared with the King Kong carved in the Longmen Grottoes, and the ornamentation on the carved King Kong is missing. In addition to shooting in the Longmen Grottoes, the filming team also used digital technology including AR, 3D modeling, computer coloring and other digital technology, and the combination of virtual and real tried to maximize the restoration of the grotto statues in the color state. From a contemporary perspective, "Dragon Gate King Kong" injects fresh blood into the traditional music culture of Longmen Grottoes on the basis of respecting history, so that it can truly "live" at the moment.
Instruments in the evolution of history
Bai Juyi, a great poet of the Tang Dynasty, said: "The four suburbs of Luodu, the victory of mountains and rivers, and the first yan of longmen." "There are 2345 existing statue niches in the Longmen Grottoes, 110,000 statues, and their statues are three-dimensional and vivid, most of which are painted when they are built, although they have long faded after thousands of years of weathering, but there are still a large number of dance music image materials. According to statistics, there are 21 caves with musical instrument images in the Longmen Grottoes, 1 carved musical instrument scripture building, and 2 Buddhist seats; there are 17 kinds of various musical instruments and 176 pieces.
The musical instruments in the Longmen Grottoes are divided into three categories: percussion, blowing pipes, and playing strings. Percussion instruments include chimes, clapboards, cymbals, waist drums, cane drums, chicken drums and so on. Among them, the chime and the clapping board are the traditional percussion instruments in the mainland, and the cymbals, waist drums, cane drums, and chicken drums are all imported instruments from outside. The images of cymbals and waist drums appeared more often, and the images of cymbals appeared 5 times and 12 times respectively in the caves of the Northern Wei and Tang Dynasties, and the images of waist drums appeared 10 times and 11 times, respectively. Chimes, clapping boards, cane drums and chicken drums appear less frequently.
Wind instruments mainly include sheng, horizontal flute, vertical flute, flute and grate 5 kinds, the first four are the traditional wind instruments of the Central Plains, and the flute is imported from the western region. The flute appeared 30 times in total, the horizontal flute image in the Northern Wei and Tang caves appeared 11 times and 10 times respectively, and the vertical flute image appeared 2 times and 7 times each. The images of the pipe and the sheng appeared 22 and 20 times respectively, respectively, of which the images of the pipes appeared 9 times and 13 times respectively in the caves of the Northern Wei and Tang Dynasties, and the images of the sheng appeared 10 times each. It appeared 3 times and 8 times respectively in the caves excavated in the Northern Wei and Tang Dynasties.
There are four kinds of musical instruments, such as Ruan, Zheng, Pipa, and Zhenzheng, of which Zheng and Ruan are traditional Chinese instruments, while pipa and zhenzheng are foreign input instruments. The Zheng and Ruan images appear 17 and 7 times, respectively, 6 and 5 times in the Northern Wei Caves, and 11 and 2 times respectively in the Tang Dynasty Caves. The pipa images in the Longmen Grottoes include four strings and five strings, which appear 10 times and 6 times respectively, of which the four-string and five-string pipa images in the Northern Wei Caves appear 3 times, and the four-string and five-string pipa images in the Tang Dynasty caves appear 7 times and 3 times respectively. The image of the Zhen Zhen only appeared 3 times in the caves of the Tang Dynasty.
Among the 14 kinds of musical instruments carved in the Northern Wei Caves, wind instruments such as sheng and flute are the most popular, and percussion instruments such as cymbals and waist drums have a high rate of use and popularity. Instruments such as the four-stringed pipa, the four-stringed pipa, and the lute that rarely appeared in the Northern Wei Dynasty increased exponentially in the Tang Dynasty. Wind instruments such as flutes and horns used in the nomadic life of ethnic minorities in the north were introduced, and the form of drumming music appeared, prompting the gradual transformation of gagaku into folk music, and the traditional folk music of the Central Plains was gradually combined with the Buddhist music imported from Tianzhu to form a Faqu, which was often used for banquets and sacrifice occasions. It is not difficult to see from the image of the combination of musical instruments the transformation from gagaku to folk music and the fusion of Buddhist music and folk music.
Tricks in the midst of social change
There are a large number of "trick music" performance scenes in the Longmen Grotto dance music images, and there are 176 bodies of "trick lotte" and "trick music people". Dancers who play music in the celestial realm are called "Trick Lotte", which is located at the top of the Buddha statue or in the position of the cave dome; the dancer who plays music and dance in the earthly ordinary music and dance activities is called "Trick MusicIan", which lives at the bottom of the Buddha statue. The number of "Trick Lotte" and "Trick Musician" and the number of musical instruments in each cave has been artificially designed to a certain extent, not only the number of people is closely related to the size of the cave, but also the movements of the Trick Lotte and the Trick Musician in the cave are symmetrically composed, forming a pair of regular units. The hand-held instruments of the "Trick Lotte" and "Trick Musician" in each hole are different and diverse, forming a relatively complete band combination.
There are 34 groups of various musical instrument groups in longmen grottoes, including 16 groups of northern Wei caves and 18 groups of caves in the Tang Dynasty. The Northern Wei band is smaller, with more combinations of 4 instruments, and the group with the most instruments is 12 instruments. In the Tang Dynasty, the scale of bands continued to expand, and more than 8 kinds of instrument combinations were more common, and a band of 18 instruments appeared in the backlight of the Buddha statue in Fengxian Temple. In the Northern Wei Caves, there were only "Trick Lotte", and in the Tang Dynasty, there were "Trick Musicians", large-scale music activities increased, and the trend of secularization of music performances was obvious. The "trick music" in the Longmen Grottoes is a reflection of the development and prosperity of social music culture at that time, leaving a very precious historical material for the study of the history of ancient Chinese dance music.
As a world cultural heritage, the Longmen Grottoes carry the ancient and splendid civilization of the Central Plains and reflect the achievements of cultural exchanges on the Silk Road. The colorful grotto art contains a large number of precious musical instruments and trick music images, which are of great value and significance for the in-depth study of the ancient musical characteristics of the mainland, the characteristics of national personality and the development of religious culture. With the integration and development of cultural heritage and tourism, it has increasingly become the main theme of the national cultural development plan and the prosperity of the tourism market, injecting new vitality into the ancient artistic miracle of the Longmen Grottoes in the new era.
(Author: Guo Kejian Wang Yubo, Dean and Professor of the School of Music of Zhejiang Normal University, Special Researcher of Zhejiang Normal University Base of Zhejiang Provincial Research Center for Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in the New Era; Master Student of Ethnic Musicology class of 2021 of Zhejiang Normal University)
Source: Guangming Daily