Mysterious, magnificent, subversive... It seems that no word can describe Yang Liping's team's dance drama "Spring Festival". "The Rite of Spring", written and directed by Yang Liping, tells such a story: "God" voluntarily fell into the red dust because of his compassionate heart, and after thousands of years, he became a "man"; "man" became a "god" because he had the intention of enlightenment, was willing to dedicate, fearlessly sacrificed, and went from a humble "man" to a "god" beyond fate. The dance drama is based on a masterpiece of the same name by Russian-American musician Stravinsky. The traditional version of "The Rite of Spring" shows a linear story: chosen by fate and sacrificed. Yang Liping proposed the concept of "reincarnation" and wanted to try a curved story: life is no longer just born to death, but from birth to death, and then to nirvana; women are no longer passive sacrifices, but active sacrifice.
What is beauty? With the development of understanding, aesthetic education has increasingly become an important concept of modern pedagogy. In Yang Liping's new work "The Duty of Spring", beauty is not only expressed in audiovisual, storytelling, and dance, but also through the attitude and realm they show.
Audiovisual beauty
The stage design of "Spring Festival" was led by Ye Jintian, winner of the 73rd Academy Award for Best Art Direction. Ye Jintian has cooperated with Yang Liping many times. The music of "The Festival of Spring" was led by He Xuntian, a professor at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and a famous composer. He Xuntian was invited by Yang Liping to compose music for "The Festival of Spring".
1. Vision
As a world-renowned visual artist, film and stage art director, costume designer, Yip Kam Tim constantly explores and introduces his "New Orientalism" aesthetic concept, interpreting the enlightenment of ancient culture to the future. His creations travel in a variety of fields such as contemporary art, costumes, stage, and film art.
In 2001, Ip Kam Tim won the Oscar for "Best Art Direction" and the British Academy Film School 'Best Costume Design' for his film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, becoming the first Chinese artist to receive the above awards.
2. Hearing
The original 1913 stravinsky "Rite of Spring", the original song of Stravinsky's "Spring Festival" in 1913, using gloomy Lithuanian folk tunes to depict the celebration of spring by the primitive tribes of Russia, has a groundbreaking modernity, and was selected by the British Classical CD Magazine as the first of the 50 works with the greatest influence on the history of Western music.
However, the original music length is only about 40 minutes, which is not enough to meet the time requirement of about 75 minutes of Yang Liping's dance drama "Spring Festival", so Yang Liping invited He Xuntian, the pioneer of new musical languages and a professor composer at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, to customize music for "Spring Festival".
In 1995, He Xuntian created the history of the first Chinese record in the history of international recording, and his records such as "A Sister Drum" and "Yangjinma" were published and distributed in more than 80 countries around the world, selling millions of copies.
He has won fifteen international composition awards such as the "1989-90 American International New Music Composer Competition/Unique/Outstanding Musical Achievement Award"; and thirteen national composition awards such as the "Third National Music Composition Award/First Prize".
In the dance drama "The Rite of Spring", He Xuntian is ingenious and ingenuity, integrating Chinese folk music into it, the flute is melodious and ethereal, and the bells and drums are mighty, majestic and intoxicating.
The beauty of the story
Yang Liping's version of "Spring Sacrifice", yang Liping and Ye Jintian, He Xuntian and other artists together to launch a great adventure in this life "code", she proposed the concept of "reincarnation", want to try a curved story: life is no longer just born to death, but from birth to death, and then to nirvana rebirth of reincarnation; women are no longer passive sacrifice, but active sacrifice.
The beauty of dance
Recognized as the pioneering work of modern dance, the Rite of Spring is a ballet by the Russian-American composer Stravinsky, which premiered in 1913 at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in France. For more than a hundred years since the publication of this work, whether in the field of music or modern dance, it is full of insurmountable temptations, attracting countless artists to bend their backs, and it is also a "touchstone" for testing the height of artists' talents.
"The Duty of Spring" sounds like a noisy music, but in fact has ups and downs of emotions, requiring the dancers to have extremely mature comprehension ability and skills.
Being able to appear on the stage of this masterpiece proves the dancers' outstanding dance strength, yang Liping led the team to reinterpret the meaning of life with the reincarnation of the East, so that the new perspective is a firm challenge, a challenge to Western philosophy and aesthetics, and a challenge to the expressiveness of dancers.
In this version of "The Duty of Spring", the dance vocabulary is very different from mainstream Modern Dance in the West. These phrases are full of mysterious oriental imagery, full of power and charm that originate from this land. This is an oriental "Spring Festival" with Yang Liping's unique aesthetic.