The Development of Modern Dance in China since Reform and Opening Up
I. The History of Modern Dance
1. History of Modern Dance
1. The Formation of Modern Dance
Modern dance is a dance school that emerged in the West at the beginning of the 20th century in contrast to classical ballet. Its founder is Isadora? Isadora Duncon (1877-1927 U.S.A.) At the end of the 19th century, classical ballet began to decline, and the unchanging tradition of movement and stereotyped ways of performing made the dance lose its fresh breath and sublime taste. In the hustle and bustle brought about by the Industrial Revolution, artists were keen to return to nature in search of a sensual reality and the power of humanity. And modern dance was born out of this contradiction.
But Duncan did not establish a complete system of training, and left no heirloom. Shortly afterward, a large number of modern dancers emerged in European countries, including Ruth St. Denis and Martha. St. Denis, Martha? Ruth St. Denis, Martha Graeme, Rudolph Laban, Ted B. Gray. Rudolf Laban, Teddy Shawn, and many others. Mr. and Mrs. Ted Shawn and so on. In these pioneers of the art of continuous thinking and seeking, modern dance gradually have a complete system, become a new dance genre, quickly spread to various countries.
2. The Development of Modern Dance in China
As we know, at the beginning of the twentieth century, modern dance was revealed in the West on the grounds of breaking the shackles of tradition. During this period, Chinese dancers also had many opportunities to meet with Western modern artists, including Isadora Duncan, who studied under her in France in 1907 and returned to the Empress Dowager's Palace. Yu Rongling, who after studying under Isadora Duncan in France in 1907, returned to China to perform and create with the Empress Dowager Cixi; Wu Xiaobang, who after studying Expressionist dance in Japan in 1937, returned to China to promote dance as a way of facing social life; and Kuo Ming-da, who after studying Modern Dance in the United States in 1956, traveled to China to teach choreography to various local groups. Sages such as Yu Yung-ling, Wu Xiaobang, Guo Mingda, etc. had worked hard to establish an individuality and freedom for dance. Unfortunately, in the first seventy-eight years of the twentieth century, China was faced with the overthrow of the imperial system, the warlordism, the civil war, the war of resistance against Japan, the hiking to the countryside, the resistance against the United States and the Korean invasion, and the cultural revolution, which really did not leave any extra space and time for artists to delve deeper into the dance that they loved so much. Until 1978, the horn of reform and opening up sounded, in 1979 China began to open the door to the world, many people will think that modern dance to facilitate the tide at this time, is considered to be the reform of the spring breeze under the blossoming of a splash of splendor.
With the establishment of the City Contemporary Dance Company in Hong Kong, modern dance soon entered the mainland and developed rapidly on this stable and broad soil. 1980, the first National Dance Competition was held in Dalian, and a number of young performers and choreographers emerged, choreographing and performing programs that had neither the traditional full story nor the character plots. This was quite different from the traditional way of performing dance, but her appearance did catch the audience's attention and made them interested in this new dance. Immediately after, at the end of 1980, City Contemporary Dance Company went to Guangzhou for the first time to make an internal exchange performance, which was also the first regular modern dance performance on the Chinese stage after the reform and opening up. With this historic performance on stage, many dance schools in the mainland began to invite modern dance teachers from abroad and CCDC to China for short-term work and study exchanges. It can be said that the establishment of the City Contemporary Dance Company has opened up a broad road for the development of modern dance in China, and has trained the first batch of excellent modern dance talents for mainland China.
In 1992, the Guangdong Experimental Modern Dance Company was officially established in Guangzhou. Until 2009, when the 30th anniversary of the reform and opening up was celebrated, there were six professional modern dance companies in China: Hong Kong City Contemporary Dance Company, Guangdong Modern Dance Company, Beijing Modern Dance Company, Shanghai Jin Xing Modern Dance Company, Xiamen City Modern Dance Company, and Beijing Thunder World Modern Dance Company.
During these thirty years, these few modern dancers, inspired by the reform and opening up, took advantage of the opportunity to explore freely, absorbing the nutrients of thinking from the West on the one hand, and returning to the soil of China's original artistic philosophy on the other hand, quietly sprouting and waiting to thrive. As a graduate student who loves and is studying modern dance performance, I can feel the continuous pioneering and hard work of these few dancers in the past thirty years, but they may occupy a very important part in the history of Chinese dance, and today, I see their hard-won success.
II. Problems in the Development of Modern Dance in China
In the past, people have been worried that the expression of modern dance is too abstract and difficult to understand, and that it is completely different from the spirit expressed by traditional folk dance and classical dance in China, so whether modern dance can survive in our country has always been a matter of concern. However, to this day, we not only see the modern dance in our country has risen vigorously, and in our country's dance garden took root and blossomed, one after another emerged many excellent modern dance works and a number of excellent modern dance troupe and performers, dancing out of the modern dance boom, more and more young people like to modern dance. At the same time, the creative methods and experience of modern dance have also been absorbed and applied to the creation of many famous folk dances in China, which has led to innovation and breakthroughs in our creation, fully demonstrating that modern dance has played a positive catalytic role in the development of contemporary dance in China. However, at the same time, it also exposes some problems in the development of modern dance in China in the current period, which requires us to carry out a profound reflection.
1. Cultural differences between China and the West
Modern dance was introduced into China in the early eighties, and it has only been a few decades since then, due to the fact that there are a lot of cultural and ideological differences between our country and the West, which have affected the development of modern dance in China. The founder of modern dance - Duncan and modern dance master - Martha? Graeme, their works effectively reflect the social phenomena of the time, in line with the Western aesthetic (their works tend to be idealized, abstract, but still greatly reflect the objective reality of life). Martha? Graeme said: ? Dance is the image of the human soul. This means that artistic expression tends to be more? Expression? (breaking the previous completely on the reality of the objective things of the imitation reproduction said). Contemporary modern dance works in China are more inclined to? Formal fantasy? (advocating that dance creation is completely liberated from real life). It is very important for China's modern dance creation, which is in its initial stage, to actively absorb and learn from foreign cultures in the West. Secondly, there are differences in the economic and cultural development of different countries, and the aesthetic concepts of the people of different countries are not the same, which leads to the development of modern dance in different regions with their own characteristics. For some younger modern dance choreographers, their cultural roots are not enough to support them to accomplish some works with strong ideology, so they can only do some strange and weird movements and pile up some strange and weird works, while they are farther and farther away from the essence of modern dance. So we should think y about it, is it copying the western things? Or to come out of our own a modern dance creation and development of the road to?
2.
The development of the dance itself needs to be more individualized. The development of the dance itself requires the expression of individuality. This is where the value of each work lies. It also reflects the dancer's observation of things with their own unique insights, and can use body language to explain it clearly, so we must combine the actual, out of a belong to their own and suitable for their own way. But now there are some ? modern dancers? have been very? Individualized? So much so that the point of solitude, will put themselves on the stage, noiselessly waving a few hands, and then quietly go down, like this program will be very difficult to cause the audience's feelings **** song. Of course, we can't say that all the modern dancers in China are like this, but works like this that don't know what they're doing can hardly show the artistic value of modern dance. Now some people still have such a one-sided understanding: that modern dance is to be strange, the more different from others, the more puzzling to others, the more modern dance. Some choreographers and directors, before the creation of the work, have already taken themselves as a marginal person, in the work is just the pursuit of difference, the work itself is not high aesthetic value, so that the audience produces a modern dance is? The work itself does not have much aesthetic value, which makes the audience have the illusion that modern dance is unintelligible. The audience has the illusion that modern dance is unintelligible. There are many abstract works abroad, but they are very philosophical. In the abstract appearance often contains some relatively esoteric artistic concepts. Therefore, modern dance can not just stay on the surface of the dance, but should be from a deeper level to explore its inner spiritual essence, only to express its deep spiritual essence, in order to accurately convey their own conceptual information to the audience, not a show of mystery. Modern dance certainly needs to express itself, but only by expressing its deep spiritual essence can it accurately convey its conceptual message to the audience. The self is not the only thing that needs to be expressed. But it is not the self that needs to be expressed. Ego is not the same as I am the only one. No art can be detached from society, from the times, from the masses, from life. If we follow this? I am the only one. The polarization, will eventually make our modern dance development into a detached from the masses of a dead end, but stifled the development of modern dance in China.
3. deviation from the cultural fulcrum
Any kind of art to survive and develop in the long term, must have their own unique cultural support point, the reason why the domestic modern dance will appear some inexplicable things, in addition to modern dance choreographers and directors of their own understanding of the level of the relevant, but also with us did not really find their own cultural support point has a great deal to do. In addition to the level of understanding of some modern dance choreographers, it is also related to the fact that we have not really found our own cultural support point. Because any kind of culture and art must have a solid cultural foundation, if there is no deep cultural foundation, blindly pursuing the development, it will only create something lifeless. Although in a short period of time may stir up some small waves, but when it develops to a certain period of time, due to the lack of cultural roots of the support, its original artistic characteristics and charm will gradually disappear, coupled with the failure to find a new artistic ideas to improve their own, so that the life of the art has become a source of water, no wood, will inevitably go to the exhaustion until the demise.
Three. The future of Chinese modern dance
Modern dance is a part of the world's human dance, has developed along with the process of the development of the world's dance aesthetics, and with distinctive national characteristics. The future of modern dance in China, how should we position it? The author thinks that it is difficult to copy the pure abstraction of European and American modern dance without regard to the aesthetic way of thinking of Chinese people. Chinese modern dance to Europe and the United States to learn from, but must not be pulled, drawing on a gourd, but only according to Chinese cultural customs and fusion **** exist. In the author's opinion, the 21st century Chinese modern dance should be originated from the Western dance model, to give a full range of amendments, and create a unique style of China. This is not arrogance, but a bold borrowing and deviation, and the highest aesthetic principles to achieve aesthetic and philosophical coexistence of the artistic realm. I fully believe that Chinese modern dance dresses up the modern dance genre in the most beautiful form and reveals a brand new face. Of course, this leap forward is a difficult and risky journey, and it is a long way to go, requiring great efforts to reach the goal. We have to choose what is good and follow it.
1. Respect for one's own national culture
The national culture and style of any country is a national characteristic. Chinese modern dance should have its own independent views and thinking, not to follow the same trend. Learning modern dance is not just about learning the shell of modern dance, putting on a few abstract movements, wiping a few strands of abstract colors, and letting the audience go hide-and-seek, but we must find our own cultural support as soon as possible. In terms of technique and ability, we are not inferior to the West, but we are somewhat limited in our philosophical and artistic understanding. Blindly pursuing and copying all kinds of things from the West will lose the fundamentals of our national culture. We should keep familiarizing ourselves with the history of our own national culture while learning and absorbing the essence of Western artistic thought and cultural spirit. The Chinese nation has thousands of years of rich and excellent traditional culture, from which we must draw a lot of nutrients to enrich ourselves, improve our own artistic cultivation, and actively combine the excellent traditional culture with the excellent Western culture in order to better develop our own modern dance. We should pay attention to the inheritance of traditional culture, but also actively study and absorb the experience of Western modern dance, so as to truly come out of a modern dance road of our own.
2. Bring back the truth, goodness and beauty of art
Although modern dance is undoubtedly a rebellion against tradition, I think it is only the pursuit of novelty that makes modern dance more attractive. However, I believe that the pursuit of novelty and uniqueness is not the ultimate goal of modern dance development, but the important thing is that the space and depth of modern dance content expression can make a nation's hope for a better life and aesthetic requirements, and in this way, to build their own civilization and the accumulation of cultural knowledge. However, art to cause the audience to think about the first need to get the audience's **** Ming, this **** Ming is from the audience interested in things, these things are not fabricated by the editor of the story out of thin air, but from life, but higher than the things of life. Obviously, modern dance expresses the thoughts and feelings of modern people and the description of real life is insignificant. Therefore, the new generation of modern dancers need to have deeper thoughts and feelings about life. Instead of half-understanding and acting as a fake. We should make better use of the Chinese aesthetic thought of art truth, goodness and beauty of life enlightenment and sentiment cultivation role, must not be detached from society, detached from the masses, detached from life. The first thing you need to do is to make sure that you have a good understanding of what you are doing and how you are doing it.
3. Organic combination of traditional and modern culture
While Chinese modern dance must properly communicate with the international modern dance, we must also find the traditional forms from our own people and the means of expression of modern dance, from which the essence of modern dance is reflected. How to combine tradition and modernity, on this issue, the famous dancers in Taiwan and Hong Kong, such as Lin Hwai-min and Cao Cheng-yuan, have accumulated rich experience in practice. From their works, we often see that they take nutrients from the traditional Chinese opera, and make full use of the traditional things in both performance methods and techniques, and do not stick to the modern dance itself. For example, Lin Hwai-min's Wubenji and Salary Passage, and Cao Cheng-yuan's Bird Song and Urban Romance have left a deep impression on people. They do not show off their skills in their works, and they capture the divine spirit of the yellow skin of the Chinese people, revealing the powerful penetrating power of art that the choreographer and director are pointing to the discernment from the bottom of their hearts. This shows that the key is whether the choreographer can think about tradition with philosophical thoughts and express today, tomorrow and the past with new ways of thinking.
Since the reform and opening up, Chinese modern dance has risen to the stage of history and shown its sharpness in the world dance world. This is a great sprint, won the praise of the world dance critics, which is very valuable. I believe that if a country can create anything valuable in any field, it can be enjoyed by all mankind and favored. Chinese dance art is recognized by the international dance world not because it is measured by Western artistic standards, but because it is rooted in the spirit of Chinese tradition. Only China today can bring modern dance to the stage. Today, China's economic take-off is the result of reform and opening up. We are willing to accept the world's advanced experience and can creatively absorb the essence of western science, education, economy and art. It is self-evident that we draw on and develop modern dance in order to enrich our cultural life, prosper our dance career, and play the role of dance in promoting economic and cultural construction!
References:
[1] The History of Western Dance Sichuan People's Publishing House Paul? Bursiche by Paul Bursiche
[2] The History of Chinese Dance by Wang Kefen, Shanghai People's Publishing House
[3] Contemporary Western Aesthetics by Zhu Di, Wuhan University Publishing House
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