On September 22^nd, the press conference for the 2021 NCPA Taihu Art Centre International Forum was held at the NCPA Taihu Art Centre. Among others, LI Zhixiang, Vice President of NCPA, CHEN Gong, Deputy Director of Beijing Design Week Organizing Committee Office and Deputy General Manager of Beijing Gehua Culture Development Group, CAO Lin, President of China Institute of Stage Art, GAO Guangjian, Stage Design Director of NCPA, ZHANG Qingshan, Director of Stage Design Department of Central Academy of Drama, YI Tianfu, Director of Stage Design Department of Shanghai Theatre Academy, and MA Lu, Director of Stage Design Department of National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts, attended the press conference.

As part of the Beijing Design Week, the NCPA Taihu Art Centre International Forum has been successfully held for two times. The first NCPA Taihu Art Centre International Forum in 2019 was themed “Integrity and Breakthroughs in Performance Design”, with renowned stage designers from all over the world to discuss the opportunities and challenges facing the industry together; Themed “Stage of the 21^st Century-Material and Virtuality”, the 2020 Forum was held both online and offline for the first time, with its opening ceremony and keynote speeches live-streamed simultaneously on the Internet, receiving over 16 million hits.

On September 28^th, the 2021 NCPA Taihu Art Centre International Forum will kick off at the NCPA Taihu Theatre and will run for two days. Themed “Digitalization and Stage Art”, the forum is co-hosted by the Beijing Design Week Organizing Committee, the NCPA and the China Institute of Stage Art, featuring more than 200 experts, designers and scholars from renowned art companies, art colleges, industry associations and professional technical associations at home and abroad.

In the keynote session to be held on the morning of the 28^th, GAO Guangjian, renowned stage designer and Stage Design Director of NCPA, will serve as the academic moderator; GUAN Jianbo, Head of the Stage Technology Department and Stage Technology Director of NCPA and co-founder of the Communications Group, BAO Yi, producer of Apologue 2047, and LYU Tingjie, Professor at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications and Executive Vice President of the China Information Economics Society, will share their insights. Foreign guests such as Anna Maria Meo, General Manager of Teatro Regio di Parma, Annastina Haapasaari, Project Manager of Opera Beyond by the Finnish National Opera and Ballet and Annette Mees, Head of The Audience Labs, Royal Opera House, will join the session via videoconference.

In the afternoon of the 28^th and 29^th, three professional forums entitled “Digitalization and the Future of Stage Art”, “Overall Performance Design in the Digital Era” and “Stage Design Space for Chinese Opera in the Digital Era” will be held, where experts and scholars from art institutions and colleges such as the China Institute of Stage Design, the Central Academy of Drama, the Shanghai Theatre Academy, the National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts, Tsinghua University, the National Theatre of China, the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts and the Beijing Dance Academy will give keynote speeches and dialogues.

The Forum is characterized by leadership, internationalism, scholarship, innovation and openness. LI Zhixiang, Vice President of NCPA, said: “Digitalization is now involved in all professional and technical aspects of theatre production, especially in stage design. This forum will reveal from the perspective of experts the opportunities and challenges that digitalization brings to theatre art, including aesthetic challenges and opportunities brought about by the richness of the expressive means of stage art. We hope that the forum will serve as a great platform for cooperation and exchange between the domestic and international stage design industry to share the latest practice and achievements in the fusion of technology and art and to lead the development of the professional and digitized stage design industry.”

This year’s forum will be held simultaneously online and offline. The main forum will be held at the NCPA Taihu Theatre, and sub-forum participants will attend by video conference. The opening ceremony and keynote speech will be streamed live on the NCPA Classical Music Channel and several online platforms in the morning of September 28^th.

In addition, the NCPA Taihu Digital Platform, which debuted at the Fourth Chinese Stage Design Exhibition this year, will also be officially launched during this forum. The platform, anchored in the NCPA’s Taihu Art Centre, will provide a professional resource management system for the stage design industry and will be open to the entire industry to promote offline interaction and online pooling of stage design talents, organizations, enterprises and resources.