Silent air drifted a wisp of erhu music, from far and near, and from near tends to be far away, which is mixed with sentimental, bleak, but also full of provocative dreams, memories and visions. Surprisingly, the disheveled old man in the music was enough to the "vitality", eyebrows trembling, shoulder and chest twisting, head and body swinging. In a moment, he actually stood up and jumped up, hand dancing red silk, feet on the ground, just like a "living" spirit. The music was so loud that he suddenly fell to the ground without a trace.
Then, the sound of the music came out brightly, clearly showing some "joy". A group of countryside singing and dancing students gathered around, a young dancer, a red silk in the hands of the elegant and elegant dance in the center of them. He is like a discharge machine, limbs emitting unlimited kinetic energy, "crazy" kind of dance, as if to a passionate blood all "dance" all. The students stayed watching, suddenly, also from the bottom of the heart outbreak of an unstoppable passion, everyone danced their own silk, let the body free flow, burst out of the roar of the soul. They jumped, sang, shed tears, through the old man, to find that belongs to their own "realm of life". At this moment, on and off the stage, the dancers and the spectators, completely devoted, all "forgotten".
The cycle of time is always so relentless, and the silence is filled with the melancholy and inexplicable erhu that pulls people's hearts and lungs, forcing the old man to pull that late out of the only dream in life. But even so, the old man still realized the "death" of the nirvana, in his extremely weak action world, wrought into the pure rice-planting songs, he used his body to highlight the character of the farmers, in exchange for the life of the "eternal life".
As a choreographer and director, Zhang Jigang emphasizes the power of feeling for life. Dance is an art of form, and the form of dance is so varied that it must have a profound cultural connotation while giving people a rich space for imagination. It should be the carrier of a civilization, the embodiment of the consciousness of a living group, and therefore it is the combination of "form" and "meaning". Zhang Jigang's conception of choreography is that "rice" (the subject matter) should be "wine" on stage. A Man Who Twists Rice-planting Songs" is the result of this "brewing". Zhang Jigang senses the life mood and vitality of the rice-planting songs from many folk dancers, and appreciates the simplicity and persistence of the rice-planting artists, and is thus touched from the bottom of his heart. He depicts the life of all Yangge artists through the life of one Yangge artist. This is a full of loess civilization qualities and emotionally rich life tragi-comedy, sent to the choreographer's endless attachment to this piece of land, this side of the living souls of deep concern, and thus there is this through the appearance of folk "stuff" love, until the value of human existence and survival of the psychological depth of care. Of course, this care is holistic, in line with the situation of the unity of the "loess culture", so it seems so real, simple, so "born". Every song, every dance, every joy and every sorrow here are all blended in a vivid "individual" situation, sublime and beautiful: however, one can clearly read from it a kind of human persistence and the great sacrifices made for this purpose, which undoubtedly shrouded the work with a great atmosphere of tragedy. This heavy experience of traditional culture's "nostalgia" enhances the cognitive value of the work, stripping his creation of its primitive interest and turning it into a deep emotional expression and serious cultural theme. This is the most aesthetic tension and cultural significance of Zhang Jigang's dance creations.
"A People Twisting Rice-planting Songs" has also been the highlight of dancer Yu Xiaoxue's career as a choreographer. When "a rice-plant-rock twirler" met him unexpectedly, his intuition told him: this is the "character world" that he needs, and this image is his. He mobilized all his dance cells, and told people a stirring story of tragedy with all his strength. 1995, in the third national dance competition, Yu Xiaoxue won the first prize of Chinese folk dance performance with this work.
Because of the special value of this work in contemporary Chinese dance creation, in December 1994, it won the "Chinese 20th Century Dance Classics" works nominated award.