On April 28, the famous dancer Yang Liping announced the dissolution of the "Yunnan Yingxiang" team. On the same day, the modern dance company "Tao Body" also announced on the public account that due to the inability to pay the actors' salaries, the theater plans to disband in May.
On the day before World Dance Day, two major dance troupes announced their dissolution, which caused everyone to sigh for a while: in this special period, folk dance troupes are really too difficult!
Nineteen years later, the tragedy of Yunnan Yingxiang repeats itself
"Yunnan Reflection" is a unique and high-level large-scale original ecological dance drama, showing yunnan style in the form of dance.
This work not only had a great impact in China, but also had a very high degree of international recognition, and was once hailed by the media as the first song and dance collection to go to overseas markets with a successful commercial attitude and form a fixed brand.
Since its premiere in 2003, "Yunnan Yingxiang" has performed more than 7,000 times, and has achieved a box office of 100 million yuan in european tours more than 10 years ago.
What many people don't understand is that in fact, the "Yunnan Yingxiang" team is not the first time to experience dissolution, as early as the SARS period in 2003, when it coincided with the premiere of "Yunnan Yingxiang", but the big performance venue did not have an audience. In desperation, the dancers brought out of her hometown by Yang Liping returned to their villages and their previous lives.
It was not until the haze of SARS dissipated that Yang Liping reconvened the team members, which presented the dance drama in front of everyone.
However, 19 years later, I did not expect that now the tragedy will repeat itself, and the team of "Yunnan Yingxiang" has once again announced its dissolution.
"It's been two whole years, more than two years, and we've been holding on... This outbreak is really too cruel to continue to survive. Yang Liping, who has experienced various life storms, faced the dissolution of this dance troupe, it is inevitable to be sad and cry.
Cultural management is not easy, the stock price fell by more than 90%
In 2014, Yunnan Yang Liping Cultural Communication Co., Ltd. took the lead in landing on the New Third Board, and Yang Liping was the founder of the company, directly holding 59.4% of the shares. After the company was listed, it was popular with capital, and Yang Liping's value once reached 4 billion.
But cultural management is not easy, and the 2019 annual report shows that the company has suffered losses for three consecutive years.
Looking through the company's financial reports in recent years, it is not difficult to find that in fact, before 2015, the company's income of Yunnan Culture mainly relied on "Yunnan Yingxiang". After this, although new plays such as "Ten Faces Ambush" were newly launched, the dependence on "Yunnan Yingxiang" still existed.
In 2020, due to the impact of the epidemic, the performance of "Yunnan Yingxiang" pressed the pause button, but during the suspension period, the normal payment of employee salaries was also required, resulting in an increase in its cost; and in 2021, due to the amortization of the cultural assets of "Yunnan Yingxiang" and "Ten Faces Ambush", the cultural cost of Yunnan increased by 64.49% year-on-year.
According to the statistics of Yunnan cultural repertoire revenue, the operating income of "Yunnan Yingxiang" in 2020 was 2.98 million yuan, and in 2021 it was 3.62 million yuan, but in the past two years, the operating cost of "Yunnan Yingxiang" repertoire is much higher than the operating income - the operating cost of 5.7 million yuan in 2020, and the operating cost in 2021 is as high as 11.59 million yuan.
That is to say, "Yunnan Yingxiang", as the company's main income item, has continuously suffered losses. And it didn't improve, and eventually Yunnan Culture's stock price fell to 2.14 yuan the day after Yunnan Impression announced its dissolution, a drop of more than 90% compared to its high of 24.99 yuan.
The anniversary of the establishment of the dance company has become the day of the dissolution of the dance company
April 29, in addition to "World Dance Day", is also the day of the 14th anniversary of the establishment of the Tao Body Dance Company, but just the day before, they also announced the dissolution of the dance company.
In fact, in the past few months, founder Tao Ye has been fully preparing the company's "Digital Series" repertoire from April 29 to May 4, which is also a summary of Tao's 14 years since its establishment.
More than a dozen dancers line up for seven or eight hours a day, and Tao Ye and another founder, Duan Ni, two artists, also plan to re-take the stage and use this stage as their farewell stage.
However, the preparation stage was difficult, the two dancers were isolated because of prevention and control, which also made Tao Ye have to adjust the plan, and the worst case scenario that was intended was that the two people did not take the stage, and the other actors completed the performance as usual.
But things were worse than he thought — just a day before the festival was scheduled, the National Centre for the Performing Arts announced that all performances would be cancelled during May Day. This also became the last straw that crushed the Tao Body Dance Troupe.
Tao Ye said that due to the impact of the epidemic, the dance troupe has actually been in a negative operation state since the end of 2021. In the past two years, performances have been postponed and cancelled, often resulting in them being paid only enough to pay for a show in the past.
They have also tried innovative revenue points, such as designing dance classes for public enthusiasts or founding fashion brand DNTY, but they have not been able to talk about the company's rescue from the predicament.
Originally, the "digital series" was their last chip, but with the cancellation of the show, they also had to say goodbye to the dance troupe.
Some have fallen, and some are still struggling through the winter
In fact, Yang Liping's dance troupe and Tao body dance troupe are not unique, they reflect a current situation in the performance industry at the moment of the epidemic.
According to relevant statistics, the total number of national dance performances in 2021 was 0.41 million, and the box office revenue was 565 million yuan, while in 2019 before the epidemic, the national box office exceeded 20 billion.
In terms of the overall performance situation, the overall economic scale of the performance market in 2021 is 33.585 billion yuan, a decrease of 41.31% compared with 2019.
It can be seen that the shock brought by the epidemic to the performance industry is far more severe than imagined. In the face of such an epidemic era, some dance companies have collapsed, but there are still some dance companies trying to persevere.
Venus Dance Company has been around for 23 years since its founding in 1999. During the pandemic in recent years, we have found that not only can the company pay salaries as usual, but in the absence of performances, the members of the company can still create their own works, rather than worrying about their livelihood.
This is thanks to the efforts of Venus. "I'll earn money and let them dance with peace of mind" is a promise that Venus once made. Therefore, in recent years, we can see that Venus is frequently active in major variety shows, doing live broadcasts, and participating in commercial activities. It is also because he has a dance troupe behind him that needs to be supported.
Perhaps, the practice of "saving the country with curves" like Venus can bring some new directions to the artistic performers who are moving forward in the cold winter.
Write at the end:
Judging from the relevant data of the national performance market in 2021, all kinds of offline performances in the country have picked up in the first half of the year, and even reached a small climax during the May Day holiday.
However, from the third quarter of the epidemic in many places repeated, to now has been more than half a year, everyone for offline performances eager, hope that the epidemic can be effectively controlled, then it is expected to bring some warmth to the market at the main holidays in the second half of this year.