BEIJING, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) -- Chen Ailian, a famous Chinese dance performance artist, died of illness in the early morning of November 21 at the age of 81.
The reporter learned from Chen Ailian's daughter that Chen Ailian had previously found stomach cancer, and the course of the disease developed rapidly, "it was already advanced when it was found, and bone metastasis occurred."
Data chart: Chen Ailian. Photo by Du Yang, a reporter from China News Service
Feng Shuangbai, chairman of the China Dancers Association, revealed in an interview with the Beijing News that he himself had wanted to visit Chen Ailian in the hospital many times before, but he was rejected by the other party, because Chen Ailian did not want people to see himself in the illness. Before dying, Chen Ailian asked her family to change into the performance costume of "Spring River Flower Moon Night" and left this world without any regrets.
Chen Ailian's life is pure and extraordinary.
Born in Shanghai in 1939 in Panyu, Guangdong Province, Chen Ailian entered an orphanage in Shanghai with her sister due to the death of her parents. In 1952, she was admitted from the orphanage to the dance troupe attached to the Central Academy of Drama, and because of her excellent grades, two years later, Chen Ailian was selected to study at the Beijing Dance School, the first dance school in China.
In 1959, after graduation, Chen Ailian stayed on to teach at the school, and participated in the discussion of China's first Chinese classical dance teaching method and presented this textbook to the instructors, and served as the leader of the national dance drama group. Played the heroine Officinalis in China's first ballet national dance drama "Fish Beauty", and has since become a hit.
In 1978, in the dance drama "Princess Wencheng", Chen Ailian played Princess Wencheng and won the first prize of the Ministry of Culture, and was also awarded the title of "March 8th Red Flag Bearer" by the Ministry of Culture. In the same year, she starred in the Chinese art troupe for the first time in the United States.
It is worth mentioning that Chen Ailian played Lin Daiyu in the folk dance drama "Dream of the Red Chamber", and from 1981 to 1986, she performed nearly 400 times, each of which was very popular.
In 1989, in response to the attempts of the central government's literary and art system reform to promote the development of literature and art, with the support of the Ministry of Culture, Chen Ailian founded the self-financing private "Chen Ailian Art Troupe" and personally served as the head of the troupe. The art troupe travels all over the country, under the factory, the next township, the lower entertainment venue, the average annual performance of about 300 performances.
In 1995, she used all the proceeds from the troupe's hard work to create the Eileen Dance School. It is a secondary art school located in the southern suburbs of Beijing.
At the beginning of the establishment of the school, Chen Ailian and her husband lived in the school's tin roof bungalow, which was hot as a jar in the summer and cold like a cellar in the winter, and lived for 8 years until the dormitory building was completed in 2003. Later, she sold all her properties in Guangzhou and Beijing and made the school her home.
Later, she said in an interview that she had a complex, that is, she especially wanted to repay the society and do something for China's dance career and education. Because she grew from an orphan to a dancer, Chen Ailian felt that she had met too many good people, seized the best opportunities, and received the best education.
In recent years, almost every year there has been news that Chen Ailian has starred in dance dramas.
Just in 2019, the large-scale classical dance drama "Dream of the Red Chamber" was staged in Beijing, and the 80-year-old famous dance performance artist Chen Ailian starred and played Lin Daiyu in the dance drama, who was "like a delicate flower shining in the water when quiet, and acting like a weak willow to help the wind".
According to reports at the time, during the more than two-hour performance, Chen Ailian completed difficult actions such as lower back, split fork and continuous rotation.
Chen Ailian said, "Every time I rehearse, I will re-read the original work, and every time I will have a new understanding, constantly adjust the rhythm of the script, and add new movements and dance sections." ”
She feels that her experience is particularly similar to Lin Daiyu, "Lin Daiyu's parents died when she was a child, and my parents died when I was a child; Lin Daiyu is a Jiangnan woman, I was born in Shanghai; Lin Daiyu is weak and sick, and my health is not very good." ”
What kind of dance is a good dance? Chen Ailian believes that although dancers must have excellent skills, this is not the only criterion for judging an excellent dancer. "We can only better harness dance if we know its true attributes."
For Chen Ailian, dance is the love of her life. She once said that dance is an eternal art, "My dance life has no end, if you don't let me dance now, I am waiting for death." (End)
Source: China News Network