Modern dance has a broad definition and a tortuous development process in China. As mentioned earlier, Wu Xiaobang, Dai Ailian, Jia Zuoguang and other pioneers of the new dance art pursued the ethnicity and the spirit of the times of dance more strongly in their own dance enlightenment. Among them, Wu Xiaobang's wise words of "dancing with the pulse of the times" and "20th century classics" represented by "March of the Volunteers", "Song of the Partisans" and "Hunger and Fire" should be regarded as precious spiritual values of "Chinese modern dance". Modern Dance in China" should be regarded as the precious spiritual wealth. In the development of modern dance in China, broadly speaking, it seems that all dances that do not have a specific national style or classical program can be classified as "Chinese modern dance". However, we have not included in the category of "Modern Dance" those works mentioned earlier that refine the language of dance from life, reflect the social and historical events of public concern, and have a distinctive realist character, because, strictly speaking, they are different from the "Modern Dance" that belongs to the Western modernist art system. "Modern Dance", from the concept of creation to the form of expression have obvious differences.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Wu Xiaobang founded the Tianma Dance Studio, which systematically implemented the teaching system that he had created, which originated from modern dance. He systematically implemented the teaching system he had created, which originated from modern dance, and carried out various creative practices in order to walk out of the road of "Chinese modern dance". The works of this period include: "Ambush on Ten Sides", "Three Plum Blossoms", "Flat Sand and Falling Geese" ......, which are inspired by ancient songs and pursue the spirit of traditional Chinese culture; and "The Shepherd Boys Learn to Read and Write", "Soccer Dance", "Butterfly and Flowers" ......, etc., which are inspired by the real life. etc. His artistic beliefs remain the same, but the impact of the above works is not as great as that of his dances during the war period. Later, with the demise of the Pegasus Studio, the exploration of modern dance in China declined.
China's modern dance re-emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and grew with the deepening of reform and opening up. In the early days, a number of works were called modern dance by the public, such as Hope, Silent Song, Goodbye, Mom, Wedding on the Penal Colony, and Cutting the Strings, etc. These works broke through from conceptualization to linguistic patterns. From the conception to the breakthrough of language mode, all of them have obvious innovative consciousness and greater impact. However, with the exception of Hope, most of the works have not yet detached themselves from the expression of figuratively reflecting specific characters in specific events. Obviously, this is not a modern dance in the strict sense. Since then, Shanghai Hu Jialu launched his own series of works "Call of Ideal", "Rope Wave", "Blood Sinking", "Game Random Song", "The Other Side", "Monologue" ...... From the creativity of the works to the form of expression - language planting, it seems to be able to feel that the choreographer It seems to feel that the choreographer is approaching the "modern dance" in his mind. There is an Israeli wind blowing in the modern dance scene in Europe, and Kjaerbutz Contemporary Dance Company is considered to be the main creator of this whirlwind. In the series of performances of "Beijing Dance Fortnight: Focus on Observation", Kj?bcz Contemporary Dance Company presented "Even if" as the grand finale. Compared to the previous performances by Janes Dance Company from the UK, Cienfuegos Dance Company from Spain, Dancers Dance Company from Singapore, Oberlin Dance Company from the US, and three first-class dance companies in China led by Cao Chengyuan, Kj?bcz received the longest audience reception after the show ended. received the longest applause and tribute from the audience after the show dispersed.
Cross-cultural: Understanding the Other, Looking Back
"Israel occupies an extremely important place in the big map of international modern dance today. If we were to mention the most unstoppable powerhouse in the international modern dance scene at the beginning of the 21st century, it would have to be an Israeli artist." Beijing Dance Biweek planner Cao Chengyuan said that although Israel is located in western Asia's closest to Europe, but it is strongly influenced by the development of European dance, a new generation of Israeli dancers to receive the pulse of the modern dance trend eastward mature, in terms of cross-cultural cooperation, the Israeli modern dance is very right to speak.
As early as 1948, when Israel was founded, many Jews who wandered around the world chose to come back to the country, "They brought the cultural characteristics of different countries, so Israel is a multi-ethnic, diversified, multi-faceted assemblage, there is a rich soil for modern dance to carry out the creation of different facets." Rami Bell, artistic director of the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company, told reporters.
Rami leads the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company, Israel's foremost modern dance company today, with a year-round staff of 15 dancers, who, while mostly Israeli, also come from the Netherlands, Germany, the United States, France, Britain, Japan, Russia and elsewhere. "Because we tour more than 200 shows around the world every year, many of the dancers are quite familiar with us, and they feel that Israel is something special, so many choose to join our company." But Rami doesn't worry about cultural divides; on the contrary, he believes that "dance is an international ****common language, and the dancers have all undergone similar professional training, so we don't have too much difficulty communicating, regardless of nationality or religion."
While modern dance has always emphasized that dancers maintain their "selves" and "individuality," Charles points out that a problem that tends to arise in cross-cultural communication of modern dance in the United States is that "a lot of young people don't have much of an idea, and they come in and emphasize 'self' and 'individuality. Many young people simply don't have much of an idea, and come to emphasize 'this is me, this is me,' and in their understanding, the individual is the one who says what he or she wants to do, with no connection to the outside world, no connection to the past, to history, to the environment." This overemphasis on "individuality" makes dancers blur their personality and lose their uniqueness, and everyone looks the same. Charles came up with a way to deal with this by "letting the dancers understand what's behind what makes you who you are, and that everyone has a different life situation, a different cultural background, and to guide them to think about themselves and their existence, and to think about their own life. Dancers have to be guided to think about their relationship to the space in which they live, their family, their history, their cultural background, and to find out what makes them who they are."
Cross-media: Visuals are increasingly emphasized
Because of the importance of the United States in the history of modern dance, the Oberlin Dance Company, which is presenting "The Longest Day" at Focus on Dance, has also been in the spotlight. Founded in 1971 in Ohio by current Artistic Director Brande Weil, Oberlin is a major force to be reckoned with in New York.
"Today the world's modern dance landscape has changed a lot, New York, although still prestigious, but is no longer the modern dance hall of fame in the minds of many people, but instead of Europe, Australia and Asia there are more noteworthy and surprising modern dance groups; U.S. local modern dance, but also from the previous concentration of modern dance in New York, now scattered throughout the U.S., which the San Francisco San Francisco, is indisputably an important hub for many modern dance centers." Cao Chengyuan said. "The eastern part of the United States focuses more on thinking, the exploration of the level of thought, while the western part of the United States is more concerned with the human body and the display of power." Brand Weil summarized the difference between modern dance in the east and west of the United States in this way to the reporter.
In "The Long Wind and the Breaking Waves," Oberlin Dance Company's extensive use of "vocals" to broaden the sense of space on stage, as well as the use of "projected light and shadow" to create a powerful visual effect, all of which make people feel amazing. "In each production, we use different crossover collaborations of vocals, visual art and live music as appropriate." says Brand Weiss. Brande Weil said. Such cross-media collaborations have shown signs of being used extensively in other works in Focus on Viewing, as well as in the Youth Dance Festival and Alternative Platforms.
"Because body language has no grammar, many choreographers and directors are not satisfied with purely physical performances, and language, voice, facial expressions, and daily movements become the tools used by dancers to express their messages." Song Huiting, a graduate student of Nanjing Arts Institute who came to Beijing to participate in the Dance Fortnight, told the reporter that early modern dance was mostly body-oriented, emphasizing the conveyance of the dancer's body texture, while modern dance increasingly focuses on the presentation of visual effects. Dance as the body, combined with other media such as theater, sculpture, multimedia, installation art, experimental video, rock music, electronic noise and other cross-disciplinary cooperation, has become a modern dance has become a popular and trend.
But while cross-media creation has become a fact of life in modern dance and a possibility for every choreographer to enjoy, Ingall Burson, the artistic director of Ibsen International, who collaborated with choreographer Venus on the dance theater "A Doll's House," says, "Don't just move to multimedia to collaborate with dance unless you need to. " Ingall Burson believes that the essence of artistic creation lies in the expression of the dancer's views, ideas and issues, and although creation may use different media as times change, if you can't master these media, it's better to return to the dance itself and express the most basic concepts well.
Its most distinctive feature is that it reflects the contradictions of modern Western society and people's psychological characteristics, so it is called modern dance. American modernist choreographer Helen Tomminis summarized what makes modern dance distinctive: "There are no universal laws; each artist creates his or her own code."
Isadora Duncon
Its founder, recognized as the American dancer Isadora Duncon (1877^-1927 ;), believed that the practice of classical ballet resulted in the deformed development of the human body. She aspired to primitive simplicity and natural innocence, and advocated that "the dancer must unite the body with the soul, and the physical movements must be developed into the natural language of the soul," and sincerely and naturally express her inner feelings.
Rudolf Laban
The Hungarian Rudolf Laban (Rudolf VonLaban, 1877-1968), who systematically established a complete theory and training system for the Modern Dance School, created a training method known as the Laws of Nature, which summarizes the composition of the human body movements as "chopping, He summarized the composition of human movement into eight major elements, such as "pressure, impulse, twisting, sliding, flashing, pointing and floating", and believed that various movements could be composed by correctly dealing with the relationship between each element. The "Laban Dance Score" created by him is still one of the most influential dance scores in the world.
Ruth St. Denis
Ruth St. Denis (1877 ^-1968), a dancer who was contemporary with Duncan, was a pioneer of modern dance in the U.S. She extensively absorbed the dance cultures of Egypt, Greece, India, Thailand, and the Arabian countries, and formed a kind of modern dance with an oriental mystical color, which expresses a kind of religious spirit. Modern Dance. In recent decades, the dancers of this genre have developed separately, forming many factions with different styles and artistic propositions, some of which have made great achievements in the innovation and development of dance, while some of which have completely violated the basic ideas and artistic propositions of the early modern dance school, and are far away from the objective social reality of life, and have developed to the point that they are bizarre, grotesque and obscure, which are incomprehensible and unacceptable for the majority of the audience.
Graham and Humphrey
Among the students of St. Denis, M. Graham and D. Humphrey became the representatives of American modern dance, especially Graham, whose name became almost synonymous with modern dance. Although they were both students of St. Denis, neither of them was the successor of their teacher, but walked their respective artistic paths as rebels. Humphrey believed that the exotic dances of St. Denis did not reflect the human spirit. She established her own artistic theory and technical principles based on the basic principles of human movement, that is, the laws that constitute dance movements between falling and rising again, balance and imbalance. For example, if a person falls down before violence, he is bound to support himself and resist, and these movements contain the connotation of human conflict. Therefore, most of her works have symbolic meanings. While Humphrey was against his teacher in terms of external form, Graham was against St. Denis's artistic concepts in terms of the deeper psychological form of human beings. Therefore, her dances are called "Psychodance School". Graham emphasized that dance should be an objective expression of self-belief. In Mourning, she showed the distortion and spasm of the human body due to anxiety and pain, which was her "illustration of the human mind". At the center of her technical theory is the breath. She studied the changes in form that occur in the human body between exhalation and inhalation, and believed that the dancer could use the breath to propel the body into spins, leaps, and falls and rises. Her early work was controversial as being too dark and sensual, but she finally became a generation of dancers with the highest and longest reputation in the United States, influencing all areas of theater, film, and television. According to statistics, 31 dance departments have been established in domestic universities and colleges, but it is worrying that, except for Guangzhou and Beijing, two metropolises that have successively nurtured the only two modern dance troupes in the country, as well as Shanghai and Wuhan, metropolises where graduates of the modern dance program of the Beijing Dance Academy have landed, the dance departments of all other places are unable to provide qualified major or elective courses in the theory and practice of modern dance; in the developed countries of Europe and America, there is no qualified major or elective courses in the theory and practice of modern dance in the universities and colleges. In developed countries in Europe and the United States, there are many modern dance teachers who teach at the college, undergraduate, and even master's degree levels who can offer courses in both theory and practice; therefore, we still have a long way to go in the future, and the first and foremost task is to train and provide a large number of qualified teachers of modern dance, including both theory and practice, otherwise it is likely to result in Otherwise, it is very likely to cause the terrible consequences of spreading blackmail and misleading people.
What should be the development of dance in ordinary Chinese universities and colleges.
First of all, all interested students should be welcomed and encouraged to join the ranks of dance, because the dance in ordinary colleges and universities should be "non-professional" or "non-professional" in nature, which means that most of the students are not professional after graduation. That is to say, after graduation, most of the students do not want to eat dance rice, therefore, dance training and education for them, more of an interest, hobby, is "quality education" in an important part of the ...... Because of this, general Because of this, the dance offered in colleges and universities should not be the "elite dance" of the professional dance colleges and universities, but should be the "dance for all" in the national education series;
The next step is that the study and research of modern dance should be initiated as early as possible, and this kind of dance should be studied.
The next step is to start studying and researching modern dance as early as possible, and to learn the concepts, methods and techniques of the art of "honoring the spirit of the times and advocating creative thinking", or at least to understand how modern dance takes root, blossoms and bears fruit on the university campus in the United States, the place where it originated, and to familiarize ourselves with the college dance troupe that has long been popular in Europe and the United States. -Pilobolus Dance Theatre", and the "Multimedia Dance Company" and "Esso Dance Theatre" which are derived from it. The successful experience of modern dance companies, so that we can take some detours; however, the most effective way, or suggest that each college and university first modern dance elective courses as soon as possible to open up, so that more students have the opportunity to contact this kind of dance, and then to make their own choices!
The dance of ordinary universities and colleges, no matter in training and creation, or in performance and management, should not copy the way of full-time and specialized dance companies, especially not in the arms and legs, copying the classical ballet's "three long, one small, one high, eight essentials are the most important" (long arms, long legs, long neck, a small head and high), and "the back of the foot," and "the most important thing" (long arms, long legs, long neck, small head and high). The back of the foot, as well as "open, taut, straight, standing" limb conditions, "light, high, fast, stable" movement essentials) of these harsh aesthetic model, but should go "according to the person, according to the local conditions, flexible, small and versatile, The road of modern dance is "tailored to the needs of each person, local conditions, flexibility, small and varied, body and mind, and brain leading"! Otherwise, it will not be able to give play to the unique advantages of college students such as active thinking, broad vision, highly dense information, more cultural deposits.
At the same time, we should know more: "ballet dance conditions, modern dance dance concept"!
To dance authentic modern dance, to be a real modern dancer, first of all need to have a thought, and then it is possible to create their own services to the body technology; therefore, in the Western modern dance powerhouse, college students are traditionally engaged in modern dance is the best candidate, and the university campus is the development of modern dance is the best environment! Therefore, modern dance, and even the ideas of modern philosophy and aesthetics throughout the 20th century, have long been the theoretical basis for the establishment and development of modern higher dance education. Modern dance has been developed in China for many years, especially in recent years, with the creative method of modern dance to create various types of dance works, people from the beginning of the rejection to gradually recognize and accept modern dance and its importance. Due to the special art form of modern dance, many people still only know the name of modern dance without knowing its connotation, so how to appreciate modern dance, I think it is worthwhile to start from the following aspects:
The first one is to appreciate the modern dance works with a tolerant mindset, we have said that the modern dance is a novelty, serious exploration for the ultimate purpose, so first of all, we have to be able to accept it with a normal mindset, while appreciating it, we have to have a sharp mind when appreciating the modern dance works. Therefore, first of all, we should be able to accept it with a normal mind, and at the same time, we should have a sharp mind and judgment when appreciating it. In the eyes of the general public, since it is a dance, it must be always dancing, but in modern dance, this concept does not exist at all, because the concept of modern dance is very broad, in the eyes of modern dancers, everything in nature can not dance, and every behavior and every action of human beings are not dancing.
Secondly, it is necessary to grasp the creative background and motivation of the creator of the work. In fact, a large part of a work represents the inner world of the choreographer and the creative mind at this time, and these phenomena are often expressed in the work, therefore, mastering the creative background and motivation of the creator of the work will help to better appreciate and understand the work.
Thirdly, the "dynamics" and "structure" of the work. Modern dance is a strong sense of form of art, therefore, modern dance, no matter what form of performance, the most basic is to start from the action, and the formation, continuation, development, change, the most important thing is to look at the action of the borrowing method, followed by the structure of the work, modern dance breaks the harmony of the ideal of the classical aesthetic principles of the real world and the pursuit of the pursuit of true beauty of nature, so the structure is particularly concerned about contrast, contrast, contrast, contrast, contrast, contrast, contrast, contrast, contrast, contrast, contrast, contrast, contrast and contrast. In the structure, it pays special attention to the contrast, the contrast between action and action, the contrast between dance section and dance section, the contrast between rhythm and rhythm, the contrast of emotion and the contrast of dance composition and so on.
Fourth, we should try our best to see more modern dance works, and in the process of appreciation, we should use the six senses we have to feel the works wholeheartedly. In modern dance works, the emphasis is on the weight of the dancers themselves rather than ballet-like lightness, in the movement emphasizes the process of space rather than the movement itself, in the space emphasizes the rhythm of the staccato rather than smooth, in the composition emphasizes the imbalance rather than the balance, emphasizes the process of the process of the revelation rather than the process of the concealment. After understanding these, you can then think rationally and analyze the work comprehensively.