September 17th, 2:00 p.m., Hefei Anhui Grand Theater.
From the sunny and bustling market into the darkness of the theater hall, the city's hustle and bustle is shielded from retreat, the darkness brings everything into the world full of mystery and spirituality, and the reporter is looking for the person is hidden here, Yang Liping, a dancer.
Dance: always the latest
To see Yang Liping, there are lights, she quietly sat in the middle of the theater on a seat. As usual, dressed in national characteristics of the colorful dress pants, embroidered shoes, body embellished with silver ornaments sparkling with light, reflecting the black hair draped over the back of the long hair, e-brow cicatrizes, just like a quiet spirit of the bird.
The moment you shake hands with Yang Liping, it seems to be able to sense her qualities, soft to the extreme hand a little bit of ice, so that people feel in the hands of the flow of water, blowing through the wind, fluttering clouds. Reporters who have contacted Yang Liping often have a wonderful experience: with her communication, language is superfluous.
The rehearsal of "Reflections of Yunnan" lasted from two o'clock to six o'clock in the afternoon. Despite more than a year of performances around the world, the cast - hand-picked by Yang Liping from Yunnan's mountain villages, three-quarters of whom have never had formal
regular dance training - still exudes a strong sense of vernacular color. It was as if they were in their own villages, under the Cangshan Mountains and beside the Erhai Sea. Dancing and singing with such concentration and joy, the impression is not that they are
performing, but that they are intoxicated by their own rituals.
Yang Liping was there to watch and feel. So many actors, in the dim stage, everyone is only a silhouette, but Yang Liping can call out the names of different positions. A large theater, Yang Liping from time to time shuttle in every corner of the theater, loudly set up, which is not harmonious, which need to start over. Slightly sandy voice echoed in the theater.
The number of performances of Reality in Yunnan has reached 190 since its debut in August last year, but almost every performance has been different.
Yang Liping doesn't want "Reflections of Yunnan" to become something programmatic. What she wants to express is the original life of Yunnan's ethnic minorities, an untouched, unadorned ethnic flavor. Many people
don't agree with Yang Liping's idea of this kind of art, and there have been disagreements even within the troupe. Yang Liping said in an interview with the media: "There are people who suspect that I can't choreograph, so I always let the actors jump to see. Even the actors also elected representatives to talk to me, 'Yang Lao
Sensei, you can not prepare for the lesson, the dance choreography and then come to teach us to dance ......' I had to say, this is not a conventional sense of dance. And the costumes, some people say, 'dull, too dark.' I just thought it was bright,
and I stuck with it."
In fact, these young people from the folk do not know that Yang Liping is treating them as teachers, and she hopes to find something that really belongs to the nation from these clansmen.
Dance: stretch out your arms and blend with the sky and the earth
The youngest member of the cast of "Reflections of Yunnan" is Caiqi, a young girl from the Bai ethnic group, who is only five years old. At a meeting with the audience in Hefei, Yang Liping was asked why people in her hometown like dancing so much, and next to her,
Caiqi blurted out, "If you can't dance with your feet, you're not going to make it in the world for nothing. If you don't know how to sing with your mouth, no one will want you." In Caiqi's body, it seems that we can find the shadow of Yang Liping's childhood.
Yang Liping grew up in a single-parent family and lost her father when she was very young. Because she had three younger siblings, she was given the role of a half-mother. Farming, chopping wood, diving and cooking are all part of her daily routine.
"A lot of people think my life was too hard when I was a child, and some in the media say I cry when I think of my childhood, but in fact, my childhood was very happy." Although life was poor, "but we had enough for ourselves."
In Yang Liping's memory, the most recalled is the village life in the mountains and dams. Someone asked Yang Liping, who taught her to dance, she said it was life. In Yunnan's ethnic minorities, song and dance are an indispensable part of people's lives. "For example, when mending, we casually sing 'I picked up the needle and threaded the line ......'"
Yang Liping said there are too many legends, too many beautiful scenery in Yunnan.
Yang Liping said there are too many legends, too many beautiful scenery in Yunnan, people have been living in this environment for generations, naturally there will be an impulse to sing and dance, without anyone to teach, you will feel a rhythm, follow it to open your mouth, step, that is the song, that is the dance.
Yang Liping clearly remembers that when her grandfather died, her grandmother was not sad all day long, she always sang, and in her songs, she could find her grandmother's thoughts and feelings for her grandfather. Grandma told Yang Liping that dancing is to talk to God, and to feel that God touches one's hand when dancing. Yang Liping said she didn't really realize the meaning until years later. "Whenever I stretch my arms and dance, I feel that my soul extends infinitely, and heaven and earth are fused together,
and this wonderful feeling makes my whole body and mind have the most quiet peace."
It is precisely because of this that for Yang Liping, no matter living in the village or becoming a dancer, dancing is not a performance, not a profession, not a so-called art, but a way of life, a kind of rite of communicating with heaven and earth.
Yang Liping said, "To be able to extend myself with heaven and earth is a great honor. Yang Liping said, "I don't need to look at what I can touch with my hands", and she said to reporters with a smile, "You may only have one pair of eyes, but I have many pairs."
Yang Liping told the reporter a story: a thief to a temple to steal things, the results did not find anything, in a rage ran to the abbot to ask why the temple is so poor, the abbot pointed to the moon in the sky and said, "We are very
rich ah, we have a garden full of moonlight". While others think Yang Liping was in dire straits as a child, she thinks she had a very rich childhood. This is not a kind of self-satisfaction. It is, she says, an awakening of wisdom.
Dance: "I won't distort myself for anything"
From 1971, when Yang Liping said goodbye to her village, where she had lived for 13 years, and entered the Xishuangbanna Song and Dance Troupe, she began to have some thoughts in her mind about spreading the culture of her hometown. Of course, in Yang Liping's mind at that time this
was only a hazy emotion. But as she grew older, this emotion became stronger and stronger. "In fact, after leaving my hometown, I have to go back every year to see, in the process of seeing, I found that a lot of national culture has changed
The transformation of many stunts because of the loss of use and on the verge of being lost, some of the people are no longer wearing embroidered shoes and wear jeans." Yang Liping told reporters, handed down in the Luchun drums now only an old man will knock, these dozens of sets of drums full of human
evolution of the drums will die with them.
"But I can't tell everyone to wear national costumes and not jeans. I can't tell everyone to wear national dress, not to wear jeans. I can't tell everyone to continue to live without lights and television in order to preserve their traditions. What I can do is to do my best to slow down the disappearance of these folk arts."
In the eyes of many people, the production process of Yunnan Reflections is full of twists and turns, the investor is not optimistic about the prospect of return and withdraw their investment in the middle of the day, because of the inability to pay all the rent by the landlord to throw out, the actors because of the other troupes to give more than 100 yuan of wages
and jumped ...... in order to Yunnan Reflections,
Yang Liping sold her house and took exception to the advertisements. The house, exceptionally accepted the advertisement, all of this let the world to Yang Liping produced pity feelings. Yang Liping said, she will never distort herself for anything, "there
problems to solve it, those things are not what the ups and downs." "The spirit of all of us is pure and transparent, I won't hide anything, I won't make too much of anything."
Yang Liping insisted on folk songs and dances to the stage in their original flavor, from costumes, props, any detail must be "original"; but for the market operation, she is not like people imagine is an uninitiated artist
Artist, Yang Liping said that although she does not understand the commercial operation but she can ask people who know how to do it. In her view, this is all natural. As a dancer, you have to give the best dance to everyone, and a good effort will be rewarded,
and this will form a virtuous cycle, so that the traditional culture will naturally be developed.