Historically, what kind of person was the real ZiHuajun?

She, both literary and martial, lamented the difficulty of becoming a great dancer; Sixty years of dance career, she has perfectly achieved a gorgeous transformation from dancer to scholar, and her sincerity and dedication have brought her to the highest peak of dance art.

It is said that in March 2010, the air in Beijing just after the cold winter is still filled with a hint of coolness, and the national ethnic minority intangible cultural heritage project performance at the Beijing Tianqiao Theater is in full swing here, and this performance brings together (gathers) the ethnic minority song and dance performances of 20 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions across the country, which is a centralized review of the achievements in the protection of the intangible cultural heritage of ethnic minorities in recent years. In the backstage lounge, an elegant old man is talking cordially with the actors. "The big one brought it back," "Okay, for a while, (in Korean) I wish you success." "(Korean) Thank you, thank you." "Because we used to learn koreans when we were learning dance, sometimes we learned a little from them, and we remember this, 'Congratulations'. Her name is Zi Huajun, as the deputy director of the Expert Committee on the Protection of China's Intangible Cultural Heritage, she has been personally engaged in this work for more than ten years, when the 75-year-old Zi Huajun is our famous dance artist and dance theorist, she performed the "flying goddess", "peacock" and other beautiful stage images in the fifties has been widely known, she wrote "Dance Ecology" is one of the most important theoretical works at home and abroad, in the dance world everyone says that Zi Huajun is both literate and martial, In the face of people's praise, Zi Huajun's heart is another feeling.

She once said, "Dancers have the greatness of dancers, and scholars have the greatness of scholars." Really, both sides of them have not yet reached the end, the dancer is impossible to end, the "lover" who can never be pursued, the scholar himself has just explored, just an introduction. Zi Huajun was born in Tianjin in 1936 to a family of high-ranking intellectuals, and when he was nine years old, zi huajun, who liked to play football and climb trees like a boy, saw the ballet, and was attracted by the dexterous toes and beautiful dance postures, so he began to obsessively study. Zi Huajun, who studied at Nankai Middle School in 1950, did something unexpected to everyone when she graduated from junior high school, giving up mathematics, physics and chemistry to choose the dance troupe of the Beijing Central Academy of Drama, and her move caused an uproar on the campus in an instant. The teacher's concept at that time was that your good students should go to art, is this not a ghost obsession, do not follow the right path, some of them have this concept, at that time, later locked her in the teaching and research room to argue with her, saying that you can't do this, you are evil. In the face of the teacher's accusations, Zi Huajun, who was only fourteen years old at the time, blurted out a shocking word. She says art ignites people's hearts and minds more than big smoke pipes, she said. When the 14-year-old child was arguing with the teacher, this word came out, the teacher was stupid when he heard it, he thought that her words were quite philosophical, and he was not easy to refute, and then opened the locked door of the teaching and research room, saying that the child was not saved, let her choose to go. The 14-year-old child's deep feelings about dance have shown that Huajun's unique thinking ability is different from that of ordinary children, and her ability will bring a steady stream of inspiration and motivation to her life. In July 1950, Zi Huajun was admitted to the dance junior class of the Central Academy of Drama despite her family's objections, but when she really engaged in dance, she did not have the happiness she imagined, because at that time, the country set off a boom in the study of national folk dance, and Zi Huajun, who had been practicing ballet since childhood, learned national dance for a while. Zhang Yiqiu said, "Learning Chinese dance is more difficult for her, just that kind of Chinese dance steps such as chest, what, and for example, her legs are particularly long, if we practice classical dance at that time, it is according to the opera, this hook foot, hook the foot and we press the leg, when the nose touches the tip of the foot when pressing the leg, then her leg is particularly long and particularly difficult." Moreover, Zi Huajun felt that the folk dance was far less elegant than ballet, so he had a strong resistance in his heart. When Zi Huajun was struggling to extricate herself in the entanglement, her dance teacher Dai Ailian gave her careful guidance and care, this famous dancer studied ballet in the United Kingdom as a young man, and after returning to China, he devoted himself to the excavation and inheritance of Chinese folk dance, and she encouraged Zi Huajun to approach the folk to experience the song and dance performance form with strong local characteristics.

When Zi Huajun went deep into the folk, followed the masses for the New Year festival, walked the streets and alleys, saw for example, flower drum lamps, flower drum lamps to the people's festival, walking the streets and alleys, the whole time you think that only this kind of dance can express the feelings of the people at that time, then you have to say dance ballet, and this whole life masses are incompatible, you will naturally love this kind of thing. Then when you have love, you will have the motivation to learn.

Under the guidance of her mentor Dai Ailian, Zi Huajun developed a strong interest in ethnic folk dances, and soon Zi Huajun finally mastered the movement essentials of various ethnic dances with her own efforts, she could finally gently lift her legs to 180 degrees, she could take off and jump in the air, maintain various instantaneous shapes in the air, as a thoughtful young dancer, Zi Huajun experienced the pleasure of a physical training process and was also immersed in another kind of thinking. When you dance, if you are a person with a heart, you will wonder why the Mongolian dance is this kind of dance, the Uyghur dance is that kind of dance, and you will have a lot of confusion accumulated in it. While carefully pondering and practicing various ethnic dance techniques, Zi Huajun is also curious about why folk dances take different forms, and how have dance movements evolved over the years? What Zi Huajun did not expect was that these reflections would become the driving force and direction of her theoretical research forty years later. In 1954, Zi Huajun was given an important opportunity to perform the duo dance "Feitian", which is a classic of Zihuajun's mentor Dai Ailian, which is a dance that combines the long silk technique of Peking Opera with the theme of Dunhuang. "Fei Tian" requires that the kung fu of this silk is very deep, its 12-meter long silk, they did not have a stick at that time, completely rely on the kung fu of the hand, it takes a long time for the silk to float up, don't let it fall, and then when it floats up, you jump up, so you have the kind that is in the air at the same time as the silk, this is by technology. As an actor, you should be like this, a technical can not have flaws, so she (Zi Huajun) danced "Feitian" has never been wrapped in silk, more than a thousand times have not been wrapped in silk.

Zi Huajun's extraordinary dance skills in "Feitian" often won applause, and also won awards in international and national dance competitions, although Zi Huajun's performance has reached a state of perfection in technology at this time, but gradually she thinks that "Feitian" is to throw silk flowers, so that even if it can dance, can such a dance ignite people's hearts? How to achieve the divine state of spiritual unity as mentioned by her mentor Dai Ailian, Zi Huajun tried to forget herself in dance and strive to dance with her heart. Just when Zi Huajun really knew what to be a good dancer, the Cultural Revolution came unexpectedly, Zi Huajun was sent to the factory for transformation, and he thought that his dance career had come to an abrupt end, it was the factory workers who rekindled Zi Huajun's passion for dancing. Those workers were particularly good, he did not regard "me (him)" as cattle ghosts and snake gods, and then, one day, suddenly locked the door, watched the teacher dance the "Peacock Dance", not to let her dance, frightened her, the poisonous weed can not dance, she is afraid of criticism. Later, none of us said, began to let her dance, she danced her lead dance, dancing, turning off the electricity, at that time often turned off the electricity, the result was candles, standing candles, they held up the candle to chase the light, but also let her continue to dance, she was particularly touched that time.

After the Cultural Revolution, Zi Huajun reappeared on the stage, and in 1981, a three-person dance party initiated by Zi Huajun and cooperated with two dancers, Yao Zhuzhu and Wang Kun, began to be staged in Beijing and Tianjin. During the performance, Zi Huajun indulged in the dance with the life experience given by ten years of setbacks. The newspaper at that time once commented that "the three dancers have reached the realm of physical movement and mind, but in the praise of all parties, Zi Huajun has a new thinking." But your bouncing degree, all your abilities are not as good as when you were young, so you have never grasped the most essence of the height, of course, if the general audience looks, you are still so skilled in silk, your dance posture is still justified, but you know in your heart, the realm you want can't come out, so sometimes after a dance, the audience's applause is applauded, and the pain in your heart is pain. In 1983, after the completion of the national tour of the three-person dance party, Zi Huajun made a painful choice: bid farewell to the stage she had dedicated for forty years, and then Zi Huajun wrote this feeling into his essay "The Lover" that can never be pursued", which said: "The real tragedy of the dancer is that when your form is full of youth and vitality and has the greatest degree of shapeability, you may not really understand the mysteries of the dance world, and when you mature, the body also begins to age, and the heart, form, body, and soul are difficult to unite." Zi Huajun, who bid farewell to the stage in 1987, was appointed director of the Dance Research Institute of the China Academy of Arts, and since then she has embarked on a new journey of research on dance art.

Zi Huajun explored the dance world until she realized the cruelty of love and hate behind the dance world at the age of forty-seven, and she will continue to explore the true meaning and mystery of the dance world in another way. When she was the director, Zi Huajun found that the research on the theory of folk dance in China was very weak, so she decided to refine and decompose her feelings and confusions when dancing folk dance, and write a theoretical monograph on Chinese folk dance. Three years later, under the guidance of other famous scholars, Zi Huajun pioneered the new theory of "dance ecology" and completed the famous "Introduction to Dance Ecology". If you have these elements to refine, it is easier to learn, such as footwork, like tibetans are walking on support, then some dances in Eastern Europe move very fast under the legs, or kicks, it has characteristics in footwork, and the characteristics of footwork are related to its rhythm type, if you make these elements more scientific and rational, then you can't learn it faster. Feng Shuangbai said that the greatest power of "Dance Ecology" is to provide a path, as if solving a mathematical problem, it gives an equation that everyone can use, with this equation we can solve the physical problem; With a method like Dance Ecology, we can decipher many of the secrets of dance art. In 1994, the book was selected as one of the 100 books of the World Center for Humanities and Sciences Exchanges, and is known as the representative discourse of chinese contemporary rational art theory, and many dance researchers have now written far-reaching academic articles with far-reaching influence based on this book as the theoretical basis. At the same time, Zi Huajun saw many heart-wrenching phenomena in the process of writing "Introduction to dance ecology". Under the impact of modern economic development, the earthy forms of song and dance of ethnic minorities have gradually become contaminated with the smell of inferior perfume, and some people even look down on this cultural wealth inherited by their ancestors and leave them far aside, so that the original folk art has fallen into a situation of endangerment. Because after she studied the ecology of dance, she found that the development of art is closely related to its environment, that is, the change of the human environment, the natural environment, and the survival and development, so if you want to protect an art, you must completely protect its ecological environment, so she began to have a self-consciousness and cultural consciousness to pay attention to this matter. As a result, when Zi Huajun was a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in 1995, he submitted a proposal called the protection of cultural ecology, thus becoming the first person to advocate for the protection of intangible cultural heritage. Intangible cultural heritage is passed on by human beings by mouth or action, it is not simply a skill or a form of performance, but a regional culture, the symbol of the wisdom of our ancestors and the crystallization of hard work, in order to further understand the national folk culture and art and its living environment, Zi Huajun regardless of his elderly body personally visited folk artists everywhere, Zi Huajun to that time still clearly remember in 2003 when she visited an old artist who presided over folk sacrifices in Xiangxi, Hunan Province. Deeply experienced the sincere feelings of the inheritors for their traditional culture. She was in her 80s, very old, and she went to see him, and then he couldn't walk at the time, and he helped her out and took a picture of her. Later Zi Huajun she told him, the old man is well protected, you are a national treasure, that is, our culture depends on you to inherit, you have a lot of precious traditional culture that you need to inherit, and then they sued (complained) to her, and did not know whether it was true or false, and then the leader of the Xiangxi Cultural Bureau told her that after you left, the person stood up, originally helped out, could not walk, he suddenly felt that he had value, and the culture he carried on him was valuable.