【Under the guidance of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era- A New Chapter in the New Era】
Guangming Daily reporter Su Yan
On the evening of May 22, at the Kun Theater of Jiangsu Performing Arts Group located at No. 4 ChaotianGong in Nanjing, the kunqu opera xiaosheng Shi Xiaming and Hua Dan Shan Wen starred in the whole book of "The Tale of jade hairpins", and the scene was full of people. In the afternoon of the same day, at the Suzhou Kun Theater in Jiangsu Province, the collection of folding plays and the live-action version of "Dream in the Garden" were performed repeatedly, and the audience was mesmerized and lingered.
On the same day, Kunqu opera staged "A Tale of Two Cities" - both new plays and old plays, which shows that this fragrant youlan glows with the charm of "knowing the voice everywhere".
"This year marks the centenary of the kunqu opera institute, the 20th anniversary of kunqu's inscription on UNESCO's world intangible cultural heritage, and kunqu has encountered the best era, from not being able to stretch its hands and feet, to being more and more cared for, and can stretch its body perfectly." Ke Jun, a Kunqu opera performance artist and general manager of Jiangsu Performing Arts Group, described the earth-shaking changes in Kunqu opera. As the birthplace of Kunqu opera, Jiangsu occupies three of the eight major Kunqu opera troupes in the country, and gradually forms a good ecology from actors, repertoire to audiences. Ancient art is rooted in the broader soil, finding a path between "old rules" and "new creations", so that more people can enjoy a good life in the moisture of the "water mill cavity".
After a hundred years of branches and leaves, talents have a new chapter:
In the long river of history, the delicate and beautiful demeanor of Kunqu opera is continued
At Shipai Central Primary School in Kunshan City, fifth-grade student Zhu Dazhi is practicing "punching" in "Wu Dalang Youjie". This is a fragment of Kunqu martial arts drama, more than three minutes of squats, kicks, serial rolling, Zhu Dazhi's face does not change color. He has passed the professional examination and interview of the Shanghai Theater Academy's ten-year-old training class, and the cultural class examination was completed on May 16, just waiting for the end of the month.
Kunshan City has recruited more than 4,000 students for more than 30 years by holding "Xiaokun Classes" in 16 primary and secondary schools, and more than 40 people have been selected to enter key national colleges and universities and embark on the road of professional Kunqu art.
"Coming out of the crowd is the biggest change in Kunqu opera in the past 20 years." Ke Jun told reporters that now the number of Kunqu practitioners in the country is gradually growing, especially the proportion of young actors around 35 years old accounts for more than 60%, and the school is still constantly cultivating the next generation, solving the problem of Kunqu talents.
In any art, inheritance is crucial. Looking back a hundred years ago, Kunqu opera actors were forced to change their careers to make a living, and the inheritance of Kunqu opera was in jeopardy. In 1921, in the five-acre garden of Taohuawu West Dayingmen in the north of Suzhou, Zhang Zidong, Pei Jinmei and other people who loved Kunqu opera invited people who loved Kunqu opera to fund the establishment of the Kunqu Opera Transmission Institute. 44 "chuan" generation of artists, studied for three years, acted for two years, and inherited 400 Kun Zi Zi zi plays. In the following decades, the "chuan" generation of artists spread their branches and leaves in Hangzhou, Shanghai and other places, and the incense of Kunqu opera was continued.
"In the history of the development of contemporary Kunqu opera, "Fifteen Guan" and the youth version of "Peony Pavilion" are two works of cultural landmarks. In a sense, "Fifteen Guan" has saved a kind of drama and stitched up the once broken Vein of Kunqu Opera; the youth version of "Peony Pavilion" innovatively presents the classical aesthetics of Kunqu opera, which has aroused the attention and love of the whole people, especially college students, for traditional culture, including Kunqu. Wang Ning, a professor at the School of Letters at Soochow University, said.
Why is it called "Youth Edition"? Bai Xianyong, writer, producer and director of the youth version of "Peony Pavilion", knows what young people like and what the market needs. Therefore, considering the casting from the name, it reflects his good intentions to make Kunqu opera go to youth and the market.
Yu Jiulin and Shen Fengying, who are beautiful in appearance and have excellent voices, became lucky and were selected to play Liu Mengmei and Du Liniang. The older generation of Kunqu artists Zhang Jiqing and Wang Shiyu were invited to the Suzhou Kun Theater in Jiangsu Province, where they instructed two young actors hand in hand, "grinding" thousands of times, and half a year later, the two young people were reborn.
On April 29, 2004, the youth version of "Peony Pavilion" premiered in Taipei. The poignant love story, the gorgeous costumes and dances, and the original Nankun singing voice satisfy all people's imagination of the aesthetics of Kunqu opera. At the end of the performance, the audience stood up and gave a long applause. Subsequently, the youth version of "Peony Pavilion" began a college tour.
"The tour integrates lectures, seminars and performances, and cuts into the performing arts of opera from a cultural point of view, truly elevating Kunqu opera to a public cultural phenomenon, and cultivating a generation of young Kunqu opera fans." Cai Shaohua, former director of the Suzhou Kun Opera House in Jiangsu Province, recalled. In the past 17 years, the youth version of "Peony Pavilion" has been performed nearly 400 times at home and abroad.
In the past 20 years since Kunqu opera was left in the heritage, the "Ten-Year Plan for the Protection and Revitalization of Kunqu Art by the Ministry of Culture", suzhou promulgated the only local regulation in China for the protection of opera, "Suzhou Kunqu Protection Regulations", and held the National Kunqu Opera Art Festival for seven consecutive years.
Starting from the youth version of "Peony Pavilion", Su Kun's young actors have gradually matured in the experience of dramas such as "Jade Hairpin" and "Iron Crown Map", and actors such as Yu Jiulin, Zhou Xuefeng, Shen Fengying, and Shen Guofang have stood out. Jiangsu Performing Arts Group Kun Theater has accumulated 214 folding plays in 5 years by holding individual special performances, and 7 winners of the "Plum Blossom Award" have become the backbone of the transmission of help.
In June this year, on the occasion of the centenary of the kunqu opera institute, Su Kun will hold a cappella party to invite Zhang Jiqing, Wang Shiyu and other older generations in their 80s back to the institute to share the stage with students from all over the country. "Generations of Sukun people have a consensus that we must do a good job in cultivating talent echelons and maintain a delicate and beautiful Nankun demeanor." Yu Jiulin, who is already the vice president of Suzhou Kun Theatre, said.
Use "most traditional" to reach "most pioneering", and return "most traditional" from "most pioneering":
Constantly explore the resilience and tension of kunqu opera, an ancient art
As everyone in the industry knows, Kunqu opera is the most difficult to perform modern drama in all kinds of drama. Jiangsu Performing Arts Group Kun Theater rose to the occasion and opened the original modern Kun opera "Mei Lanfang Mei Lang" for the first time. The fourth generation of young actors of the provincial Kunqu who starred in the play used their long-term accumulated skills to overcome the challenges brought by modern drama to the Kunqu opera program.
"For Kunqu opera actors, the singing voice, body and water sleeve are familiar, and the creation of new plays is also relatively familiar. Modern drama is completely different, without water sleeves, thick-soled boots, hands and feet do not know where to put. Shi Xiaming plays Mei Lanfang, which is his first contact with modern drama. In the play-within-a-play part, he wants to sing the classic repertoire of Peking Opera Meipai across genres. In order to learn the essence of Mei Pai's singing voice, Shi Xiaming went to learn Mei Pai singing from Chen Xuhui, a Peking Opera performance artist and Mei Pai disciple.
At the 2019 Jiangsu Zijin Culture and Art Festival, "Mei Lanfang Meilang" won recognition as soon as it debuted. Kunqu opera critic Wang Renyuan excitedly said that "Mei Lanfang Mei Lang" is a major harvest of contemporary Kunqu opera modern drama.
"Mei Lanfang Mei Lang proves that the ancient Kunqu art can express modern life, modern characters, and modern spirit. This 'proof' is of great significance, showing the possibility and path of creative transformation and innovative development of the ancient art system, and solving the problems of artistic development that have plagued generations of artists and historians. Ma, a researcher at the China Academy of Arts, also said.
"The inheritance and development of Kunqu opera must be both an 'archaeological team' and an 'expedition team'. When adhering to tradition, it is necessary to dialogue with the ancients and worship the past; when facing the future, it is necessary to be able to carry the thinking, emotions, ideas and spirit of contemporary people to explore the stage expression that belongs to the contemporary era. Ke Jun believes that we must use "the most traditional" to reach the "most pioneer", and return from the "most pioneer" to the "most traditional".
Ke Jun was once the "most traditional" Kunqu opera person, "traditional repertoire, four skills and five methods, singing and doing fighting, generations of singing is like this, why innovate?" By chance, Ke Jun was "forced" to compose the first pioneering Kunqu opera "Afterglow". He appeared in plain appearances, and with the help of a thin layer of watercoats, he broke the barriers and barriers between the actors themselves and the characters, and strung the three characters in the opera together. Together with himself, Ke Jun realized four roles in one play.
From "Yu Yun" to "Faust", to "Tibetan Ben", "New Record Ghost Book", "Night Run", "Handan Dream", plus "319 Looking Back at the Forbidden City" co-authored with student Yang Yang, "doing subtraction" made Ke Jun feel an unprecedented freedom, and he felt that "he was closer to the essence of performance".
"The attitude of the pioneer is to go forward desperately, innovate and expand." Ke Jun thinks. He hoped that the pioneer Kunqu opera could forge a path to the future of Kunqu opera.
Kunqu opera leads to the future, and it needs to find the way to connect tradition and contemporary. Gusu District, where the Suzhou National Historical and Cultural City Conservation Area is located, has tried a special Kunqu style in recent years.
In August 2018, the Kunqu opera "Six Memories of Floating Life" premiered in the Canglang Pavilion in the south of Suzhou. The work attempts to excavate the plot that coincides with the context of modern people from the original work, and recreates the Su-style life of Shen Fu and Yunniang in the Canglang Pavilion 500 years ago. As the first immersive Kunqu opera in China, the audience did not have seats during the performance, and with the transformation of Shen Fu and Yunniang's life scenes, they walked and watched while walking in the garden, breaking the boundaries of watching the performance.
As of May 21, "Six Memories of Floating Life" has been performed 182 times in Canglang Pavilion, with 30 people per show, the ticket price is not low, but it is always difficult to find a ticket, and young people are still the main consumers. After each performance, they have to linger outside the Canglang Pavilion, and the atmosphere of Su-style life is intoxicating.
"I define this play as a product of the integration of culture and tourism." Xiao Yan, the producer of "Six Memories of Floating Life", confessed frankly. Shen Fu and Yunniang's migration route along the Grand Canal has too many scenes of life that conform to Chinese aesthetics. Xiao Yan discussed with the screenwriter and planned to make more different versions at a rate of two folds per year. "In the end, it is not certain how much the "Six Memories of Floating Life" will become a folding drama, but what we have made must be the most Soviet-style and scarce cultural tourism product." Xiao Yan said.
Advocating an aesthetic of life, placing poetry and ideals:
Let the "elegance" of Kunqu opera be integrated into daily fireworks and help the hearts of the world's Taoists
Bacheng, on the shore of Yangcheng Lake, is a typical Jiangnan town, which was recognized by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism as the hometown of Chinese folk culture and art (Kunqu Opera) in 2018. The Southern Song Dynasty Gong Mingzhi's "Zhongwu Chronicle" contains: "Twenty miles west of Kunshan County, there is a village known as a mound, so the old legend: this tomb of the yellow banner, so far the villagers are good at funny and can make three anti-words." "In the village of Qiudun in today's Bacheng, the Kunshan cavity was started by the musician Huang Hao, and gradually evolved into Kunqu opera in the infiltration of the years, and Liang Chenyu's "Huan Sha Ji" opened up a new world of Kunqu.
Zhou Xiaojia, a propaganda member of the Bacheng Town Party Committee, told reporters that Bacheng has established the "1350" goal in primary and secondary schools, that is, 10% of the people can chant, 30% of the people like Kunqu opera, and 50% of the people can know and understand Kunqu opera. Through years of training, every public welfare Kunqu activity, once released online, is full within half an hour. Each webcast is watched by more than 100,000 people.
The public welfare Kunqu activities mentioned by Zhou Xiaojia mainly refer to the activities held by many studios with Kunqu culture as the carrier on the old street of Bacheng. Among them, Yu Jiulin Studio has carried out the most activities, with a total of 51 so far, widely inviting well-known Kunqu opera actors to come to give lectures and perform demonstration performances, and many listeners from other places to play "flying" special trips.
How attractive is traditional culture? The youth version of "Peony Pavilion" has been performed in colleges and universities for 16 years, and this group of fans has changed from college students to middle-aged people in their forties, but they will still pay attention to Yu Jiulin's performance information. Huang Xinrui settled in Beijing after graduating from university, and for more than a decade, as long as Yu Jiulin performed in Beijing, she would definitely take her husband and daughter to watch it together. This heartfelt love for Kunqu opera has never faded, and it is more mellow with the grinding of life.
"For more than a decade, the 'fan group' of Kunqu opera has seen it grow." Zhu Yiwen, president of yuanyuanqu society in Bacheng Old Street, said that there are many new friends in the various Kunqu contact groups she belongs to, and many of them are post-00s.
Lu Chengfang, a folk Kunqu performer who has been promoting Kunqu opera reviews at the Fuxi Guild Hall on Pingjiang Road in Suzhou for nearly 20 years, has the same feeling. "There was once a French guy who came to see me performing, and his major was opera vocal music, and his graduation thesis was on Kunqu opera." Lu Chengfang was surprised but also very relieved.
It's the season of magnolia blooming in Jiangnan again, full of flowers, stopping in the garden or ancient town, listening to a Kun zigzag play, even if it is a familiar phrase "not to the garden, how to know the spring color is as promised" - the moving posture and gentle singing voice of the three turns in that step are enough to make people feel that they are a "fireworks fairy". The moving part of life is all about it.
Guangming Daily ( 2021-05-30 01 edition)
Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily