Have you seen Song and Dance China? How to write a movie review? Or after-thought is fine...

Burning Dreams--After Watching "Song and Dance China"

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After watching the short seventy-two-minute movie, the emotions are taken to a place by the movie. The movie is about a dream factory, a dance studio in Shanghai, where three generations of people have dreams and conflicts. The images presented in black and white are stunning! The modern scenery of Shanghai, including the highway, the Huangpu River, the street scenes, the skyline, every image is as beautiful as a painting. As for the people in the drama, the black-and-white images make us focus on the movements, expressions, and even the dialogues, so we can feel it more y. The music in the movie matches the era of the dance with a lot of old songs, all of which are very relevant to the plot, and complement each other so that people will remember the picture and the music together. Although it is a documentary, it doesn't give you the feeling that it is a documentary with no embellishments, but just focuses on remembering things.

The movie came about because the director was looking for tap dancers in China for an advertisement and found this dance class. The host of the dance class is Mr. Liang Yi (real name Liang Jinglin), who fell in love with tap dance and jazz dance after watching Gene Kelly's movies when he was young, and learned from a master by chance. He danced from Taipei to Singapore and Malaysia, and returned to his birthplace of Shanghai in his old age. Dancing has been his lifelong dream, and such a dream continues to burn in his seventies. He opened the Dream Factory to attract young people with dreams to join the dance scene in a place like China, where there is a lack of tap and jazz dance environments. From the beginning of the movie, the movie is a record of personal verbal interviews, presenting everyone's dreams. The dreams may not be the same, but they all emanate the passion for dance. From the joy on their faces and the sweat on their bodies while practicing, we can feel their seriousness. But slowly reality seeps in, and the Dream Factory needs funds to sustain itself, so it must perform everywhere, even no matter what the occasion. Everyone is the same in their persistence in dancing, but it's not all the end of the road for everyone. Some thought of going abroad for further studies, some would continue their studies, and members of the dance troupe came and went with great mobility. And although Liang Yi has learned to dance, but after all, is not from the class, there is no esoteric theory to support, he just know what kind is good, and the method of teaching dance is even more rapid, in the shortest possible time to let a person with no dance foundation to learn to dance. But in the middle of such a process still let him find a diamond in the rough, that is Yang Yang.

Yang Yang's solo dance at the beginning was very beautiful, and even touched the heart of the body to ignite the cells that want to dance, want to dance a show the beauty of the body. But as I watched, I thought to myself, "Isn't it dangerous to dance on the edge of the roof of such a tall building? It's as if you're dancing happily, but reality is right next to you, and if you're not careful, you'll fall into the abyss. We can see the tension between reality and dream all the way through the movie, and the contrast becomes clearer and clearer as it progresses. The dancers themselves are not well qualified, and they themselves understand that it is impossible for them to make it to the big stage, let alone the international stage. Even Liang Yi, despite having danced tap and jazz all his life, has never stood on American soil. He could only imagine it through movies or other films. And his wish to dance in the plaza in front of Broadway seems so compassionate. And after Liang dances a solo and the camera pulls up to the sky, I thought that was the end, but it wasn't. Instead, what follows is a more realistic pull, because this is a documentary and not your average movie, and the ending shouldn't just stop at a nice dream, albeit not a huge one. As the students hysterically scream "I want to be on the international stage" and "I want to dance", suddenly we, watching the film, realize, "If it wasn't for the blood, sweat, and glorification presented through the capture of these shots, these people would be nothing more than minor characters. Dreams can be big and beautiful, but what about reality? Even the green and blue Jan mentioned about being rich before being able to dance without fear. He tried to step out of such a situation, including trying to perform a combination of dancing and singing. But it's chilling to see him perform on TV in a costume like that. What do other people think of the people watching this group of dancers? Do they watch with an artistic eye, or something else such as juggling, watching theater, etc.? Without the support of the environment, the development of the arts would be hard, as analyzed in "Guns, Germs, and Steel", the ruling class and the cultural class are possible because of the breakthrough in production, where survival is not the first priority and people have the extra time and energy to engage in this kind of behavior.

But it is also because of this environment that they are so determined to pursue their dreams. The passion is stronger in them than elsewhere, and they are willing to burn their lives in pursuit of their dreams, making such choices with no consequences. But what about us? Although some of our dancers have reached the international stage (e.g. Hui Fong-yi, Ng Kwok-chu), we lack a generalized emphasis on culture, and we even have too many ideas about how to make a living. How to catch up with other advanced regions, I think not only the physical material pursuit, but also need to sublimate the inner idea of progress, so that even if we are on the island, still have the vision of international standards.