The dance drama "Tiangong Kaiwu" directed by director Lu Chuan will be performed for three consecutive performances at the Poly Theater in Beijing from October 3rd to 4th. As an annual funding project of the National Arts Fund, the play has been successfully selected for the "Grand Theater in Beijing" 2024 During the performance season, it attracted the attention of many audiences and industry insiders.
The dance drama "Tiangong Kaiwu" is inspired by the encyclopedia of the same name written by Song Yingxing, a scientist from the Ming Dynasty. The book is known as "China's greatest agricultural handicraft encyclopedia in the seventeenth century". Through the clever integration of stage, video, technology and other multi-dimensional artistic expressions, the dance drama vividly demonstrates the beauty of installation, technology and craftsmanship of ancient Chinese science and technology contained in "Tiangong Kaiwu", as well as the magnificent spiritual world of Song Yingxing .
html On September 23, a reporter from Beijing Youth Daily walked into the rehearsal site of the play and witnessed the cast and crew working against time to polish and perfect it. The play is divided into chapters such as "Nai Li", "Nai Fu", "Qu He", and "Ye Zhu". It uses oriental aesthetics to show "a blank page", "a paragraph of text" and "a painting" in sequence. It forms the huge book "Tiangong Kaiwu". On the stage, every dance segment is a dance vocabulary extracted from labor creation. Through the actors' agile and changeable dance and body, as well as the interweaving of blacksmithing, wheat waves, pouring and other melodies, farmers farming, weavers raising silkworms, workers Vivid scenes such as smelting are reproduced one by one, deducing the complacency and comfort of people's work.
On the same stage, in the same role, the young and old actors Song Yingxing use dance to tell different experiences and blend in the same spirit. "In the past, when we danced, the dance movements must be perfectly choreographed, but dance dramas have a lot of dramatic elements. Director Lu Chuan gave us a lot of inspiration in drama." Lu Kedi, who plays the young Song Yingxing, said, "Director Lu Chuan He has been encouraging us, hoping that we can make this play more lively. He hopes that we can truly communicate and collide on the stage. Although we have also performed some scenes, we will feel fresh every time we perform. It is very rare to have real communication with the audience on stage. "
In order to better show the state of the elderly Song Yingxing, actor Ma Jiaolong did a lot of homework in advance. "The most important thing about playing the role of the elderly Song Yingxing is to be steady. His movements are not. It's so powerful, but it has a sense of prolongation. It expresses the state of old age through eyes and some static methods. "In Ma Jiaolong's view, the biggest difficulty in this play is to capture the characteristics of the characters, "the second creation of the actors. It is very important to grasp the character's personality and show Song Yingxing's spirit and value."
The dance drama "Tiangong Kaiwu" is jointly produced by Jiangxi Theater Group and Beijing Dance Academy. Lu Chuan serves as the chief director and screenwriter of the play. In addition, top domestic creative teams such as chief editors and directors Gao Yan and Meng Ke, composer Lu Liang, costume designer Yang Donglin, stage designer Luo Yazhuo, and visual designer Bowen have joined. Wei Shenzhou, Outstanding young dancers such as Lu Kedi, Ma Jiaolong, Liu Jing, Hu Shi, and Yao Liang star in the show. The play previewed at the end of May and officially started a national tour starting in July, successfully completing 15 performances in 6 stops in Xiamen, Nanjing, Wuhan, Chengdu, Hangzhou, and Nanchang. During the tour, we continued to strive for excellence, fine-tuning, and changes, striving for a 100% perfect presentation. "I'm very excited, very tired and very worth it!" said the lead actor Lu Kecheng. "We are all working hard and trying our best to present ourselves on the stage in Beijing."
Text/Beijing Youth Daily reporter Tian Wanting
Photography / Beijing Youth Daily reporter Yuan Yi
editor / Gong Lifang
