In 2022, Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti posted the beautiful scenery of China taken from space on social platforms, and wrote in Chinese, Italian, and English, "Looking up at the vastness of the universe and looking down on the prosperity of the category, it is enough to enjoy the entertainment of hearing and hearing, and believe in Cola." Wang Xizhi's "Lanting Collection Preface" written more than 1,600 years ago still has a resonance across time and space, across the east and west, and this heavy spiritual power is the origin of awakening the Shanghai Opera House to create the original dance drama "Yonghe Nine Years - Lanting Collection Preface: Dance Biography". From May 10th to 12th, "Nine Years of Yonghe" took the stage at the National Center for the Performing Arts, dancing the birth and inheritance of "Lanting Collection Preface" from a modern perspective.
The timeline of the dance drama "The Nine Years of Yonghe" runs from 353 years to the present, and the work begins with a young man named "Geng" visiting the "Orchid Pavilion Collection Preface", and unfolds the flow animation scroll of the Orchid Pavilion Elegant Collection in the lush forest and bamboo cultivation. When Wang Xizhi recalled his childhood experience of learning words, he thought about the turbulence of the troubled times, looked up at the vastness of heaven and earth, and wrote the "Preface to the Lanting Collection". Time flies, Tang Taizong Li Shimin is fortunate to get the true work of "Lanting Collection Preface", can't put it down, under the respect of him and people with lofty ideals in the past dynasties, "the world's first line of books" is famous all over the world, and it is praised endlessly.
As the first original dance drama that shows the history of calligraphy works in a panoramic way, "Yonghe Nine Years" first fully excavated the "Lanting Collection Preface", and the titles of the whole play, such as "Wandering Eyes", "Pitching the First World" and "Wandering Remains", are all taken from the original text of "Lanting Collection Preface", and the calligraphy is reflected in dance is a major highlight. How do you get through two completely different art categories? Director and choreographer Wang Yabin highlights the "vividness" of classical Chinese dance, and strengthens the "twisting and tilting circle" between the movement of the body and the high coordination of "hand-eye-body steps", so as to "imitate" the breath, strength, rhythm, amplitude, starting and turning and other calligraphy movements.
In the group dance of the Lanting Yaji part, the dancers use elegant and tough ink-colored water sleeves to "reproduce" Wang Xizhi's splashing ink when he is flowing and flowing; Wang Xizhi's love for geese and the allusions to the 21 "zhi" characters in the "Lanting Collection Preface" inspired by the posture of the goose are also vividly told by two smart women's group dances; In the dance section of "Yongzi Eight Methods", the movements of the male dancers are vigorous and powerful, and they dance the essence of Wang Xizhi's calligraphy of "side, strangle, crossbow, sword, strategy, sweeping, pecking, and stinging...... After the interpretation of the lineup led by dancers such as Song Yu, Zhang Aoyue, Li Shengzhao, Tan Yimei, etc., all kinds of designs are quite remarkable.
In terms of stage presentation, "Nine Years of Yonghe" focuses on highlighting the freehand simplicity of Chinese aesthetics. With the cooperation of stage designer Shen Li, lighting designer Ren Dongsheng, and multimedia designer Hu Tianji, several screens move and rotate, the multimedia images change and flow, and the lighting based on traditional Chinese tones is rich in meaning, coupled with brief visual elements such as bamboo forest, flowing water, war, and court, which quickly and lightly drive the scene switching. Costume designer Wu Lei and character designer Jia Lei dye the characters with strong colors, azure blue, pale green, blue blue, purple purple, concubine red, and moon white. It is worth mentioning that the composer Lu Liang composed a soundtrack of continuous brilliance, he mainly used the representative instrument of the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties period, the guqin, supplemented by traditional instruments such as pipa, guzheng, bamboo flute, flute, xun, erhu, etc., which are rich in color and ups and downs.
"Nine Years of Eternal Harmony" has a good idea, but in all fairness, there is still room for improvement. For example, many viewers mentioned that the young man who appeared as a tractor in "Yonghe Nine Years" is very similar to the scroller of "Only This Green", but it is a pity that Geng does not have a deep connection with other characters, and even if it is all deleted, it seems that it is harmless, so the context of the inheritance of "Lanting Collection Preface" in contemporary times has been weakened. In addition, the style of the upper and lower halves of the whole play is somewhat separated, and it is true that the main creative team has the original intention of making the work break through the creation of "Lanting Collection Preface" itself and further open up the space of expression and meaning, but from the perspective of actual effects, the two eras in which Wang Xizhi and Li Shimin are in switch relatively suddenly, and after Wang Xizhi left, the overall appreciation of the dance was also slightly reduced. Li Shimin's multi-line narrative and dual-space parallelism are very ingenious, but at present, due to the occlusion of the stage, some audiences will completely miss the undercurrent that occurs in a certain space, which will affect the understanding of the work.