Do the elegant and high-end ballet dancers in the audience's mind have to be confined to the low-key survival of the troupe within the system? As a former principal soloist of the National Ballet of China, who had left her job as early as 2006, Hou Honglan is trying to give a negative answer.
Economics Weekly (ID: Economic-Weekly) | Ye Lili
Under heavy pressure, the competition won gold
Everything is unfamiliar.
Strange language, unfamiliar city, unfamiliar face, Hou Honglan seems to have entered a new world. Here, ballet dancers from 25 countries shuttle back and forth, each with an elegant neck and gorgeous clothes, and when she first arrived, she did not even have time to add embellishments for the competition, and the black dance costume did not look like a swan, but more like a crow.
For more than a week, she would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night, suspecting that it was a dream, but apparently she had come alone to distant Luxembourg.
It was held in May 1997, the 4th Luxembourg International Ballet Competition.
Hou Honglan was under a lot of pressure. Because of this insistence on going abroad alone to participate in the competition, it has caused a lot of controversy before leaving. At that time, he participated in international ballet competitions at his own expense, and there was no precedent in China, and the previous procedure was generally to pass the selection competition of the Ministry of Culture first, and the winner was arranged by the Ministry of Culture to go to foreign competitions.
In fact, as early as 1990, Hou Honglan participated in the Ministry of Culture Junior Group Selection Competition and qualified for the International Ballet Competition in Lausanne, Switzerland, with the first place, but it was alleged that due to the shortage of funds of the Ministry of Culture at that time, he was unable to make the trip; shortly thereafter, for the same reason, he lost the qualification to participate in the Nagoya International Ballet and Modern Dance Competition in Japan. After experiencing the tension of two arrows on the string, and the sense of loss that was subsequently forced to give up, Hou Honglan decided to participate in international competitions at his own expense.
Various sounds followed. No one knew how to arrange for a ballet dancer to compete on his own, and neither the Ministry of Culture nor the Central Ballet, where Hou Honglan was at the time, had experience. Hou Honglan, who has always been obedient, insisted on it this time. "They think how I'm so stubborn, going from ministry of culture to embassy to get visas." But I felt that if I missed this time again, I would probably not be able to stand on the international stage for the rest of my life. Hou Honglan said.
The rules of the Luxembourg International Ballet Competition are that the contestants need to pay for the round-trip ticket at their own expense, and only if the promotion is successful, the organizing committee will arrange the contestants' accommodation, and if they are not selected, the next costs need to be borne by themselves. For Hou Honglan's decision, her mother was supportive, but only sponsored the air ticket and $1,000 in pocket money. Hou Honglan thought that if he couldn't advance, he might live on the street.
There were 4 rounds before and after the competition, during which in addition to the competition is the rehearsal, Hou Honglan also remembers that she did not know French, she used crappy English every day to inquire about the rehearsal place and the theater of the competition.
Hou Honglan's nerves were tense, and she gave her mental reserves for three rounds of competition, so that after the third round of competition, when the organizing committee decided to temporarily add a match to determine the final ranking of the final, Hou Honglan almost screamed out loud. "One more round of competitions was beyond my stress, I just wanted to finish quickly, what awards, what rankings, I didn't care at that moment." Hou Honglan said.
Hou Honglan regarded the 1997 trip to Luxembourg alone to participate in the International Ballet Competition and win the gold medal as the first turning point in his life.
On the night of the final, Hou Honglan chose the modern ballet "Ten Faces Ambush", with a mentality of being liberated after dancing, and she danced very confidently in that ballet.
During the competition, the organizing committee informed all ballet dancers that they needed to wait in the background with makeup, but Hou Honglan could not understand French, and after dancing, she took off her makeup, thinking that she had finally finished this matter and could relax a little, she even ran to the garden to relax, so that when she returned to the theater, the people who were looking for her reminded her to put on her makeup immediately, and she was too late, only hurriedly put on the performance dress.
Even Hou Honglan, who announced the winner's award speech, did not understand much, she remembered that in the end she was pushed up, and then a large group of reporters rushed up to take pictures, and the other dancers came up to congratulate her, and she reacted, and she won the gold medal for women's solo dance.
Hou Honglan regards the Luxembourg International Ballet Competition as the first turning point in her past life, and from this moment on, she also changed from a "well-behaved girl" to a maverick presence of the National Ballet of China.
Become the principal solo dancer
Hou Honglan was born in 1976 in Chengdu, Sichuan.
Her mother played an extremely important role in Hou Honglan's upbringing. From an early age, he was sent to study piano, painting, etc., because of his mother's love for these fields. Playing the organ, reading Shakespeare, writing novels, a little literary and artistic youth temperament of the mother, did not ask Hou Honglan to learn how well, she felt that piano, painting, this is something that can accompany a lifetime, when feeling lonely, they can give people spiritual comfort.
Dance was not her mother's first choice, but Hou was fascinated by it at an early age. At the age of 6, Hou Honglan began to learn dance. The teacher who taught her was very strict, and no matter how painful it was to practice dancing, she was not allowed to shed tears. "As long as the tears are still wrapped in the eyes, it will be fine, once they fall out, they will take the bamboo skewers of the knitted sweaters and ask me, do you still learn to dance, I said I still learn." 」 Hou Honglan recalled.
When she was a child, Hou Honglan was once regarded as an ugly girl, black and thin, and she hoped that she could dance on the stage in a beautiful dress and be praised. Hou Honglan did not realize at that time that this simple idea determined the direction of her life.
At the age of 9, Hou Honglan entered the Sichuan Provincial Dance School to learn classical and folk dance, and her talent began to show. At the age of 11, she competed in the National Dance Competition, which could have won, but the teacher at the time asked her to give the prize to someone else. Hou Honglan felt very wronged, and for the first time she felt that the world was sometimes very unfair.
At the age of 12, Hou Honglan transferred to the Beijing Dance Academy to learn dance. Once in a competition, the same scene was staged again. Hou Honglan feels that some things cannot be changed, what can be changed is to raise her strength to the point where others can't reach - if the gap is very obvious, others can't steal her championship even if they go to the relationship.
Hou Honglan began to work hard in secret. "Ballet is a process of quantitative change that causes qualitative change, such as kicking legs, maybe 99 times, but when you kick 150 times, you can do it." Because she rarely eats before practicing dance, Hou Honglan looks very thin, but her calf muscles are graceful and look very powerful.
One point of hard work is one point of harvest. Since then, Hou Honglan, who has won many awards, successfully entered the National Ballet of China and soon grew into the company's principal female soloist.
The dance career seems to be going well so far.
But Hou Honglan soon found that after Luxembourg returned to China in 1997, the team not only did not have the phenomenon of stars holding the moon, but there were more doubts than before. Because of this, "proving myself and telling them what strength I am" has become something that Hou Honglan ponders every day.
She hopes to do a solo ballet performance.
But a solo act requires the cooperation of other actors. In addition to the daily rehearsals and performances, she also took time to cooperate with Hou Honglan, almost all colleagues expressed opposition, and the troupe leaders also felt that she had "become less obedient."
It took a long time to communicate, and while waiting for consent, Hou Honglan practiced dancing very fiercely, often eating only an apple or drinking only a small box of yogurt at noon to start dancing, taking all the rest time to rehearse.
Hou Honglan named this performance "Honglan Style", and now she recalls that she feels a little young and crazy, but at that time, she was always criticized for why dancing was different from others, and she thought it would be different.
All the prize money received in Luxembourg was used for the show. That night, Hou Honglan danced "Black Swan Duo Dance", "Baht", "Red Girl Scout Army", "Death of the Swan", "Ten Faces Ambush", etc., such a high intensity made her almost exhausted, but also felt very enjoyable.
After this "addiction", Hou Honglan returned to his regular life at the National Ballet of China, and it seemed that there was no chance for his career to rise. Hou Honglan decided to start a new attempt.
An unwilling exodus
After receiving an invitation from Bertrand d'At, the director of the French Rhine Ballet, Hou Honglan almost immediately decided to go.
"Dancers who dance classical ballet know what it means to go to France, the land of ballet, to exchange and learn." Hou Honglan felt that at that time, there were not many performances of foreign classic ballet repertoire in China, and domestic works and dances were not rich, and she wanted to contact some new things.
The National Ballet of China is naturally reluctant to release people. They did not believe that Hou Honglan would return after leaving, and although Hou Honglan repeatedly promised to return after a year, the process was still unpleasant. This laid the groundwork for Hou Honglan to leave the Central Ballet completely.
Hou Honglan did not expect that when she first arrived in France, she wanted to fight and return home. The dance rehearsed by the French Rhine Ballet is so avant-garde that she cannot accept it: the male and female duo can be changed to two male actors to dance and kiss affectionately; ballet shoes can be worn without wearing and dancing barefoot; modern ballet movements are strange and exaggerated, which is completely different from the classical ballet she was exposed to before.
Hou Later wrote in her autobiography that every dance she danced at the French Rhine Ballet shocked her, and every time she felt that the dance was avant-garde enough, the next one was more different.
"It almost shattered my original impression of ballet, it upended everything I had learned before. While China was still dancing classical ballet, Europe had begun to try to add various avant-garde elements to ballet, which was a process of tearing down and rebuilding for me, and I began to fall in love with this style of ballet half a year later. Hou Honglan said.
Hou Honglan remembers dancing a dance about a girl seducing an old professor with no sexual experience, and the dance was extremely provocative and seductive, which was impossible to appear in the National Ballet of China. In France, Hou Honglan was gradually able to let go of himself.
After being recognized by the French audience, Hou Honglan received praise from the French media - "Ballet Princess from China". She liked the title so much that she always set her Weibo nickname as "Ballet Princess Hou Honglan".
But she eventually decided to leave. Because she felt that dancing in France, the future is still a sight to behold, but rehearsals, dances, performances.
When he landed in Beijing, the sky was gray, and Hou Honglan began to feel that there was a bit of a psychological gap. Returning from France to the National Ballet of China is a process of re-adaptation, but the process is no longer as smooth as before.
"I came back to China to try more things, but the National Ballet of China couldn't accept my innovations, and I didn't want to repeat my previous life." Hou Honglan was hidden in the snow. She can no longer perform on stage, and if she must jump, she will be assigned to roles on the edge. Hou Honglan still remembers that she once danced the role of a grandmother, and she was killed in four eight beats, and the audience who knew her laughed at that time.
"The conflict of ideas cannot be solved by relying on snow to hide in this way, and I am not willing to compromise, so I feel that it is time to leave." Hou Honglan said.
The decision to leave the country remains controversial. Former colleagues at the National Ballet of China mostly look at her with a skeptical look – unwilling to compromise, but what can you do after you leave?
The first taste of entrepreneurship bitterness
Hou Honglan soon found that he was not a princess.
At the beginning of 2006, Hou Honglan founded the "Honglan Studio" in Shanghai, which opened the prelude to the evolution from individual ballet dancer to ballet producer.
Hou Honglan deliberately emphasized that she founded The Grand Studio rather than the Grand Wave Culture Company, because the longer she traveled, the clearer she saw that it was difficult to build this relatively niche artistic career in the direction of a profitable company. And this positioning has not changed for more than 10 years.
"Investors want to have a return on investment, while art is public welfare, it is difficult to negotiate the cost, and I hope to do some projects that I can control, so many times, investors and our ideas are very different." While waiting, there will be no news from the investor. Hou Honglan said that she has thought about corporatization, financing, etc., and has actually contacted some investors, but step by step she found that ballet and venture capital are always separated by one layer, and in the current stage of market cultivation, the two sides cannot reach a consensus.
There is no turning back from the bow. Hou Honglan, who left the Central Ballet, wants to continue his ballet entrepreneurship, and there are only two ways in front of him: first, take out his savings to do projects; second, find enterprises to sponsor on the basis of projects. Mainly relying on these two roads, supplemented by Hou Honglan's personal appearance in film and television dramas, endorsement cosmetics, etc., the studio has come to the present.
Looking back now, the biggest difficulty at first was not the hardships of running the studio, but the mental pressure. Almost no one in the ballet world believed she could do it. The prevailing view in the industry at the time was that a ballet dancer left the ballet and her career was almost over, because ballet was an art category that required collective collaboration.
Hou Honglan still remembers that when she went to various ballet companies to seek cooperation opportunities, everyone distrusted her. The most direct criticism came from former colleagues. At the beginning of the establishment of the studio, Hou Honglan still maintained the habit of going to the Central Ballet of China every day to practice dance, and during that time she would occasionally hear a former colleague behind her back saying, "You see Hou Honglan still has to come back, it is still difficult to be outside by yourself." ”
"Leaving the National Ballet of China, the biggest feeling is isolation. It turned out that everything was arranged, I just had to dance, and suddenly I had to come by myself, find partners, contact the theater, do planning and advertising, and feel very different from before. Hou Honglan admitted.
Hou Honglan began to try to adapt.
The studio initially had only one agent, followed by assistants, planners and administrators, who also had little experience. Hou Honglan often receives phone calls when practicing dance to ask how to sell tickets, why the choreographer has not yet arrived, etc., which almost makes her unable to concentrate on dancing, but she can only deal with them patiently.
The biggest problem is the shortage of funds. Businessmen who used to admire Hou Honglan were reluctant to sponsor her ballet performances. "They asked me how the project was profitable, whether it was at the box office or something else, and I couldn't answer. I found that it's not enough to dance well. Hou Honglan said.
As a pioneer of the exodus system, Hou Honglan has no object to refer to, she does not know how to do it, and she does not know which direction to work in. In order to save money, she worked as a choreographer and actress herself, but the ballet world's suspicion of her made it difficult to find the right partner. Once, when she couldn't find an actor, she even used a pregnant woman as a dance partner, and specially designed a role for the latter as Mother Earth.
In order to make a name for himself, Hou Honglan began to participate in the festival with programs, each of which had only three or four ballet dancers. Although the festival will be responsible for the basic expenses of the team, she will still invest a lot of money in makeup, costumes, lighting, etc., all from her personal savings.
There is still another breakthrough to be made
The play that made Grand Lan Studio really famous was Shakespeare and His Women. Hou Honglan is the producer of this drama, she needs to control the overall situation, including market research, planning and promotion, media publicity, etc., these things she was not good at must learn to do.
Hou Honglan invited Hu Xuehua, who had previously directed the avant-garde film "Lanling King" as a director, the theme music was created by the avant-garde musician He Xuntian, and the choreography, lighting and costume design also invited people who were well-known in the industry at that time. Hou Honglan had high hopes for this.
The process of preparing for this performance was frequent. Due to the lack of declaration of male dance partners invited from France, "Shakespeare and His Women" could not be sold publicly for the first three days of the premiere of the Shanghai International Arts Festival, and due to insufficient funds, the theater refused to continue to rent the venue to the crew, and the salary of the studio staff could not be paid, and the team complained.
The dance partner was originally Hou Honglan's friend, and he collapsed first. "You're not a qualified producer. Without a raise, I quit. He angrily accused.
Hou Honglan was already anxious at this time, helplessly holding his dance partner and crying. Eventually the other side gave in, and he said, "I'll help you this last time." ”
On the day of the performance, Hou Honglan began to have a high fever, and he could not rehearse all day, and he slept until 6 o'clock at night to get up and put on makeup, but he was able to play normally. "The stage was strange, I was nervous and forgot that I was still sick because this show was so important to me."
Hou Honglan invested more than 1 million yuan in savings for this performance, and the box office revenue was slightly surplus after paying various expenses, which made Hou Honglan feel that the studio could still do it. Not only that, but some merchant sponsorships have also come in. At first, Hou Honglan felt that this was a very novel thing, because not only to design some plots for the merchants to integrate into the dance, but also to discuss with the merchants, the specific rules even need to be refined to the number of times the name of the merchant was mentioned in the curtain and acknowledgement, and how to place the signs and flower baskets sponsored by the merchants at the entrance of the theater.
Despite this, Hou Honglan was still very happy. She doesn't mind planting ads for businesses in her repertoire, because with the money she can hire better actors and choreographers.
However, at present, the sponsorship income of Anglan Studio is still not enough. "The crowd watching ballet is relatively small, and if it can't be popularized, it can't open the popularity, and without the popularity, there is no considerable sponsorship, so for us, funding has always been a problem." Hou Honglan said.
In order to attract more audiences, Hou Honglan had to reduce the ticket price of the performance again and again. Different from the ticket price of 500 to 600 yuan per ticket on the market, the lowest ticket price of Honglan Studio is only 80 yuan. Even so, it is almost impossible to cover the cost of the project with box office revenue alone.
The more mature project that Ang Lan Studio has done is "Degas's Diamond", which was sponsored by Chow Tai Fook.
"A larger ballet project like this, the production cost is 3 million to 5 million yuan, and the box office revenue is far from enough." Around the world, ballet projects still depend on sponsorship. Hou Honglan believes that regarding sponsorship, the future Honglan Studio still needs to continue to work hard.
Hou Honglan also knows that she is the signature of the studio. Therefore, in addition to her usual performances, she occasionally participates in the filming of TV series, receives some advertising endorsements, and goes on some variety shows. She didn't want to enter the entertainment industry, but just to increase the studio's visibility.
Hou Honglan bluntly said that sometimes he envied Yang Liping. Yang has her own fixed dance team and signature play "Impression of Yunnan", as well as her own mature business model - her company can not only perform her own performances, but also be able to plan, create and package performances for others. All this provides a reference for Hou Honglan, and she feels that the first step she has to do now is to form a special market-oriented team to promote the good repertoire of Honglan Studio.
Honglan Studio performs an average of about 40 performances a year, but as of now, it still lacks plays with sufficient influence and are widely known in the market.
"Repertoire like "Red Detachment of Women", "Swan Lake" and "Big Red Lantern Hanging High" has been repeatedly danced by many ballet companies until now the public knows them. Honglan Studio currently has a repertoire, but lacks the funds to support continuous performances. Our goal in the future is to tour a play dozens of times across the country, and everyone knows this brand, so that even if I don't go on stage, the studio can survive on a good show. Hou Honglan said.
Hou Honglan creative 10 questions
1) What is the most fulfilling thing you've ever done so far?
Founded Honglan Studio.
2. What has always inspired you to move forward on the road of ballet?
I think it is the beauty of ballet art, the dream republic on the stage and the world I enjoy exclusively.
3. Who is the person who has influenced you the most?
parents.
4. Who are the dancers you respect the most in this industry?
All dancers who dance with their hearts.
5. What do you think is the most important trait of working in the art industry?
Talented, hardworking, unaffected persistence and a clear awareness of oneself.
6. What do you think is the biggest difficulty in engaging in ballet?
Limbs and minds are inconsistent.
7. What do you think is the most important trait of the creative class?
Curiosity, tolerance, childlike heart.
8) What was the biggest decision you made in your career?
Leave the National Ballet of China and pursue your unknown dreams.
9, the first thing to get up early every day is?
Drink a latte with thick milk foam.
10. What is the first thing before going to bed?
Aromatherapy, reading.
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