Jiang Keyu, 42 years old. She is a dancer, and everywhere she goes, she carries a sense of strength. The dancer, who has been shut down several times in three years, was once one of the rebuilders of cameroon's National Dance Company.
While waiting for the performance to "thaw", she began to move from professional stage creation to ordinary life, linked with the village, influenced the villagers' interest in dance with her own actions, and realized a more authentic and creative way of life by co-creating dance works with ordinary people.
Jiang Keyu was instructing everyone to dance. She said to learn to stretch her body and become light like a swallow. Beijing News reporter Chen Jie photographed
Purple House rehearsal
The landmark building in Xixincheng Village, Xingshou Town, Changping District, Beijing, is a purple two-story house with a white Marble statue of Venus standing in front of the door, which is the practice hall of Guizhou woman Jiang Keyu and her Cameroonese husband, Abe Simon, the first floor of the house is used for warm-up, and the second floor has full-body floor mirrors and leg pressers.
Jiang Keyu, who is 1 meter 73 tall, has wheat-colored skin and moves quickly and quickly. One day in early July, she took six or seven women and a fat ten-year-old boy and rolled on the mat as they walked.
In front of the Purple House, Jiang Keyu and dancer Zhang Ping discuss the experience of dance bringing changes to the body. Beijing News reporter Chen Jie photographed
Jiang Keyu said that they are all bodies that have not undergone professional training, and what they do now is to open their bodies, and then they are shaping, that is, specific body movements, and ultimately to help everyone find the expression of their own bodies.
She pointed to her body and said that in order to get up quickly, you need to use your core strength, and you need to use your hand to push the floor to experience the relationship with the ground, such as rolling to this point to meet people, quickly pushing the floor, then letting go, exhaling, and lifting yourself up by rebounding.
"You all wake up at once. Yes, when you wake up, you rely on the core muscles to get you out of bed. Jiang Keyu instructed everyone to keep interspersing and moving, grabbing the empty seat to roll a bit, and then getting up immediately. This is an efficient warm-up method, did not roll a few times, everyone was red,sweating, lying on the ground without remembering, a member of the slight shaking got up and said a word, in fact, a circle rolled dizzy.
Easy go , Easy go...... Next, in the first chapter of rehearsal, everyone claps their chests, twists their crotches, stomps their feet, and squeezes through the mechanical rhythm of Simon's humming hip-hop. It may be that the queue looks too orderly and not unrestrained, Simon also rushed into the team with his chest, shaking his arm to the left and rushing right, Jiang Keyu shouted loudly from the side, "This feels like the river suddenly opens the floodgates, and you all rush over at once."
Entering the second chapter, the sudden is Hmong music, Jiang Keyusong developed a bun, an eighty or ninety centimeters long straight hair fell like a waterfall, she shook her head left and right without thinking, and the improvisational force of her body made the floor shake.
Jiang Keyu said that at this time, just like when children play, they don't think about anything, but only listen to their own body perception.
Jiang Keyu said, in fact, your body is with you every day, such as brushing your teeth and washing your face, but you do not feel that the body is assisting you, modern dance is to re-examine your habitual body, release your subconscious, which is why we must first learn to lie down when we enter modern dance.
Abbe Simon asked everyone to hold their palms together, let one person dance freely, and the other person was free to follow, and always keep the palms connected, so that everyone could "find the link". Beijing News reporter Chen Jie photographed
Jiang Keyu said that she had carefully observed the lying posture of her two little children, how they turned around, how they moved their small hands, how they sat up, and in modern dance, this must be re-perceived and expressed.
During the break, the fat boy was happy, pressing his face and body to the practice mirror, and swallow, who was learning to dance together, said that he was looking for a relationship with the mirror.
Jiang Keyu said: "Finding links and generating relationships is the starting point of modern dance, first of all, it has a relationship with itself, and then it enters between people and between people and society." ”
Get in touch with modern dance
Jiang Keyu, born in 1980, also started his dance career from the once popular Youth Palace, when he was 6 years old, Jiang's mother took back a newspaper with enrollment in the Youth Palace on Guiyang Street, "At that time, I paid 25 yuan a semester, I paid it once, and then directly entered the Little Flower Art Troupe of the Youth Palace."
Jiang Keyu remembers that the holiday time is particularly busy, there is a performance every day, "once a performance has a total of 12 programs, we have to dance seven or eight dances, there are still wages at that time, you have not seen eight or nine-year-old children get paid." 」
At the age of 14, Jiang Keyu was admitted to the Guizhou Provincial Art College (the predecessor of the Art College of Guizhou University), and three years later she was escorted to the Art College of Guizhou University, and in the first year, it happened that there was a refresher class at the Beijing Dance Academy, and she came to Beijing for the first time after retaining her academic status at Guizhou University.
In 1998, the Beijing Dance Academy was still the world of ballet, folk dance, folk dance, and classical dance, and only one teacher did modern dance, "I was attracted by their physical movements, I decided to enter her class", after that, Jiang Keyu was admitted to the Beijing Dance Academy.
The maverick teacher at that time was Wan Su, the current dean of the Creative College of Beijing Dance Academy, who was a dance master with her own unique dance system and a leader in the teaching of modern dance and creative dance in the domestic dance industry.
What is modern dance? Jiang Keyu didn't understand at first that the teacher would let you do the behavior and do the improvisational performance when you were fine. For example, if there is a towel here, what action do you see has to do with that towel, not dancing, how do you want to play? What do you want to do with it? Then everyone has to be different.
Everyone took towels to dance, some gave to others, I grabbed the towel and ran, and then the teacher said, well, stop, this is called Willow Dark Flower Ming another village, your sense of time is very good, "At that time, I was a bit enlightened, that is, you must have your own angle to make things, to have your own ideas, I began to feel for my body again, and began to like Pina Bausch (German modern dance master)".
When she graduated from undergraduate, Teacher Wan left Jiang Keyu and another student as an assistant to work with her, and after doing several projects, one day, Sister Na, who was also the teacher's assistant, asked her if she was going to Africa.
Meet Abe
The Ministry of Culture invited her and a companion to participate in the Sino-Kazakh Cultural Cooperation Project and was responsible for rebuilding the CameroonIan National Dance Company. The first thing Na Jie thought of was Jiang Keyu.
Cameroon, located in the central and western part of Africa, is known as "Little Africa", because of the mountains, forests, plateaus, plains, grasslands, rivers, beaches, deserts, rainforests, volcanoes in the territory of the full set, only dry and wet seasons, the temperature is similar to Yunnan, and most importantly, it is known for football and local music and mango trees.
In August 2005, 30-year-old Nars and 25-year-old Jiang Keyu came to Cameroon for the first time to recruit students for the reconstruction of the Cameroon National Dance Company.
The first batch of zero-based students because of lack of experience, when recruiting the second batch, Na Jie thought it would be better to find it in those who have experience in street dance in the folk.
That's when Abbe Simon appeared, leading the Black Star Dance Company for 4 consecutive years from the age of 16, winning the Cameroon City Hip Hop Competition, and he brought three members to the interview.
The exam is about playing classical music violin music to see the reactions of hip-hop performers. The result was that the two examiners looked stupid on the spot, and when the street dance met the violin, their performance could be so perfect.
Jiang Keyu and Abe Simon, playing with two children. Beijing News reporter Chen Jie photographed
Later, Jiang Keyu listened to Simon say that in fact, during that time, he was tired of street dance and looked for possibilities and opportunities to break through the bottleneck in many ways.
Three weeks later, after watching a performance and looking at the same feelings, Jiang Keyu and Simon became lovers from teachers and students.
Jiang Keyu said that teaching modern dance at the Cameroon National Dance Troupe is considering that modern dance pays attention to physical norms and inner feelings, and can easily integrate African elements when choreographing, preserving African cultural traditions, and nearly two years after arriving in Cameroon, more than 2,000 local people and representatives of diplomatic missions in Cameroon witnessed the rebirth of the Cameroon National Dance Troupe.
The President and His Wife of Cameroon have visited the performance venue many times, and the dance "Black Beauty" in the "African Night" of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games "Meet in Beijing" is the best gift for the Beijing Olympic Games.
In its fourth year in Cameroon, the project was completed. In the first half of 2009, Nales and Jiang Keyu, two ambassadors of China-Africa cultural exchanges, returned to Beijing.
In 2012, simon proposed to Jiang Keyu when he came to China for the second time.
Is anyone going to dance with me?
At the beginning of 2017, Jiang Keyu and Simon set up a company in Beijing to do projects, from creation to performance to cultural dissemination, from repertoire choreography to stage producer, technical guidance are all done by themselves, and the operation experience of the National Dance Troupe in Cameroon comes in handy.
Jiang Keyu said that at that time, we lived in a 35-square-meter apartment in the city, and we couldn't dance, so we wanted to have a bigger, cheaper, and non-disturbing space for creation and rehearsal.
After some searching, in October of that year, the two rented a courtyard in Changping Xingshou Town, Moyuquan Village, and rented a house in the adjacent Xixincheng Village, which was converted into a practice hall, a restaurant and an office, and all painted purple. In November of that year, the sons of Jiang Keyu and Simon were born, named Ah Bei Yu Jian, and two years later, the daughter was born, named Ah Bei Yu Mei.
At first, the village was only for Jiang Keyu because he liked its house, and he didn't know anything else. Her daily routine is to raise babies, create, choreograph, and then tour the world with the works of the "Abbe Dance Company". The Abbe Dance Troupe does not have any foreign aid to help themselves, but earns income by doing performances. As a result, dozens of performances cancelled in the three years of the epidemic, especially in the first half of 2022, 12 were cancelled, leaving them completely in the village.
"Before so busy, all of a sudden there was no job, I didn't know what I was doing every day, the psychological gap was too big, almost couldn't adjust it, and later, I felt that I should find something to do for myself", Jiang Keyu took his eyes back to the village for the first time.
She tried to write a poster and put it on the door of the Purple House, with the headline "Is anyone going to dance with me?", you can't imagine, there are 9, all zero foundation, there are old villagers and new villagers, Jiang Keyu said.
Pan Guangyin, an old villager in Xixin City, signed up, "Dance is art for Jiang Keyu, it is life for me, I can make myself open up a little", xiao Pan, who has danced with Jiang Keyu for more than a year, will pull the curtains at home, open the music, dance wildly for a while, and slowly calm down, the in-laws who live in a courtyard know that she is rehearsing, and do not care about her. Xiao Pan's husband was influenced by him and also began to play African drums with Simon, Xiao Pan said that the atmosphere at home is changing, and his son's personality is also cheerful.
Jiang Keyu and Abe Simon led everyone to rehearse. Beijing News reporter Chen Jie photographed
In June, a villager's child, who had danced street dance with Simon for ten months, reported to the town's school and said that dance was no longer a skill for him to learn, and that dance had reached his life and could accompany him forward.
Nearby villages have public welfare activities in environmental protection and art, and Jiang Keyu and new and old villagers will also be invited to take their rehearsed performances to serve the community on a small scale, and through such interaction, get rid of some of the haze of the epidemic with everyone. "Everyone needs to have a channel to release and transform."
All of this gave Jiang Keyu a great inspiration, and she began to seriously consider the creation of a professional stage to a "vegetarian" life, to touch the parts that ordinary people need to express but are difficult to say, and encourage those who are dancing in their hearts but have repeatedly missed them, through the "Su ren body theater" performance, with themselves, with others, with society, with nature, and with the world, "this will be useful to everyone", Jiang Keyu said.
The Purple House practice hall is connected to a bungalow, and Jiang Keyu has made it into a small restaurant, and when the rehearsal is noon, the dancers eat together here. The aunt who cooks greets everyone with a large number of vegetables such as green peppers and celery and chicken breast to make a low-calorie meal. Jiang Keyu's mother came and would also make Guizhou beef powder to beckon the whole village to taste it, and the next-door neighbor even brought relatives living in other villages to taste it.
When not rehearsing, Jiang Keyu will make snacks, grind coffee for the villagers to taste, or organize some small activities such as painting and handicraft to interact with people in the community. There are also artists who once painted portraits of villagers one by one in Jiang Keyu's small restaurant.
Jiang Keyu made a discovery that after dancing with the villagers for a while, their words of greeting me have changed, before it was "did you eat", now it is "jumped".
In his free time, Simon also joined the village football team, playing with village officials and children. Usually, he likes to sit in the doorway and watch two children running around on the dusty village road, playing with the little dirt dog, hugging and kissing. The next-door neighbor would always say hello when he saw Simon.
Crowdfunded productions and performances
In the rehearsal hall on the second floor of the Purple House, 44-year-old Zhang Ping sat on the floor with her 83-year-old mother, her arms supporting her body behind her, her legs outstretched, and the two feet against her feet to do flexion and extension movements, Zhang Ping wanted her mother to relax, while saying, "I am the soft piece of mud, you can push me with a little force."
After the foot is the top of the head, just like the top cow of the child and the mother when he was a child, Zhang Ping and his mother gently pushed the cow while shaking back and forth, and then went out and then retracted. After a short while, Zhang Ping asked her mother, "Is she dizzy?", and the mother couldn't help but kiss her daughter's brain a few times.
Zhang Ping said that after her father died, her mother, who had been loved and loved by her father all her life, was confused. "Once, Jiang Keyu took everyone to rehearse in the woods in the mountains, I went to shoot a video for them, a group of people were dancing, and my mother walked in and began to follow the action", Zhang Ping said that she was very surprised, so she made up her mind to take her mother to rehearse together and perform on stage together.
Zhang Ping's mother is a typical traditional old lady, but every time she comes to rehearsal, she will take the initiative to hug Simon, during the rehearsal, Zhang Mother does not talk much, she or sit on the side to watch or do not say hello just walk straight into the line, in and out will not disturb others, free to take it for granted.
On June 28, Zhang Ping, 44, and her 83-year-old mother encouraged each other with a face-to-face approach before rehearsals. The old lady is very follow-up, and most of the group dances will participate. Beijing News reporter Chen Jie photographed
The old lady is very follow-up, and most of the group dances will participate. One day during the rehearsal break, everyone talked about childhood songs, Zhang Ping said that my mother had made up a small paragraph before, clicking and clicking, this section was when my mother heard the cuckoos in the woods, and then made it into a children's song and sang it to the children.
Swallow, who had just come to rehearsal three months ago, was an artist, but she looked hard at all, taking a lunch break, others chatting, and she was lying on her arm listening to the low, smoky voice of the famous old man Cohen. Seeing her again three months later, she landed like a swallow.
Swallow practiced martial arts when she was a child and loved to dance, and had a physical foundation, but she said that at first dancing was just a catharsis of physical energy, and she couldn't remember her own movements, "After dancing for a while, I gradually felt that the pleasure of the body brought spiritual pleasure, and I could remember the movements that made me comfortable, and then later, I found that dancing can also communicate and interact with people, and I finally know what is intimate relationship."
Freelancer Wu Xiaoniu said that when he first plucked up enough courage to come, he did not want to fall in love with dance, it turned out that dancing is not only movement and body, it is first of all, I am here, I want to express myself.
Su Su, a gong master from the city, said that using physical feeling induction links to express responses is my way of existence, in the space of the purple house, the most cattle thing is to spread out and do capitalization of herself, people who can create the above sense of space, how "open" she has to be, you think!
But three months ago, Su Su, the look of dancing was very sticky and stagnant, because her family was seriously ill, and the pain she faced every day could be healed in the field created by this dance.
In Beijing at the end of June, order was gradually restored. Jiang Keyu plans to perform at the "Dreamer" at the Basil Theater in mid-July as a phased summary of the "Vegetarian Project".
There are about 10 people participating in "Dreamer", and the age range of dancers is distributed from 10 years old to 83 years old, most of them are post-70s, post-80s and post-00s, most of them are new and old villagers in the village. The show lasts 50 minutes.
Jiang Keyu said, "This is a work of crowdfunding, the body movements of these materials are naturally generated by them, I and Simon were stimulated after watching the expression of their bodies, and then used 9 collective movements to make a necessary connection and integration for them." ”
Although it is a group performance, there is solo (individual solo dance). Everyone's habitual actions tell their own stories, and everyone projects what they want to express from the actions. Jiang Keyu said that she just organized these thousand words and turned them into a body theater and "fermentation" with the audience...
"We basically don't look at them in that traditional aesthetic, and we think it's beautiful if you're focused on your physical state, in line with your own rhythm."
The "Su Ren Body Theater" is operated in the form of workshops, focusing on discussions with participants, and the rehearsal location is also very flexible, but the formal performance, theater rental, lighting, sound, photography, etc. all need to be paid, and the necessary funds need to be raised to achieve the stage performance.
Jiang Keyu said that the performance of the "Su ren limb theater" is now the third time, she found that the first two times, everyone said, I just open the body, as long as I dare to dance, standing on the stage will be successful, but this time, they said, as if to go deep into their own hearts and go into some, they will ask themselves, why do I dance? Or what kind of state have I found out recently, and whether I want to shrink or expand?
Wait for "thaw"
Very suddenly, a few days before the original performance in July, Jiang Keyu miscarried, and after being hospitalized, she postponed the performance for a week and insisted on finishing "Dreamer", she said, because she also has a lot of appeals in her heart to tell, why not her pressure? It's like these ordinary dancers, none of them have not cried during the rehearsal, and there is no way to control themselves in that moment, which is actually the energy of the body.
On June 28, Jiang Keyu and Ah Bei Simon prepared to lead the villagers in rehearsal halls. Beijing News reporter Chen Jie photographed
In the future, for the "Suren Limb Theater" project, Jiang Keyu said that he will definitely stick to it.
For the commercial performance of the Abei Dance Troupe, Jiang Keyu said that the performance industry needs to be "slowly" thawed, and the uncertainty brought by the suspension of the whole half year to the industry also needs some time to recover. Now all the performances must be piled up in the second half of the year, and the schedule must be arranged with the theater continuously, and the time schedule of the dancers in the dance troupe is also chaotic, and some actors may quit. The performance industry was the earliest to stop and the latest to resume work, and the recovery is not in place in one step, and a little wind and grass may make the performance postponed and cancelled again.
Considering that the two children will soon have to go to school and the high cost of education in China, Jiang Keyu is also thinking about whether to return to Simon's hometown of Cameroon in advance, where the cost of living is low after all.
In her self-introduction to Dreamer, she wrote that dance is not only my profession, but also a language, telling stories with limbs, memories, presents, and dreams. Improvised life, improvised dance, and unattainable life dances are slowly entering my life theater.
Beijing News reporter Liu Min
Edited by Hu Jie, proofread by Liu Yue