On November 2^nd, the Opening Ceremony of “Beijing Forum for Performing Arts & Taihu International Stage Art Forum 2024” was held at the Beijing Performing Arts Centre.

YIN Li, Secretary of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee, met with the representatives of international guests attending the Beijing Forum for Performing Arts & Taihu International Stage Art Forum 2024 at the Beijing Performing Arts Centre. He said at the meeting that Chinese nation have created a splendid Chinese civilization and vigourously promoted the development of world civilisation. The Global Civilisation Initiative, proposed by President XI Jinping for further progress of the human civilisation, has received wide response from the international community. Beijing is a famous historical and cultural city that boasts a blend of tradition and modernity. With all kinds of literary and artistic resources at hand, Beijing is now an important window for exchanges and mutual learning between Chinese and foreign civilisations. As a national cultural centre, Beijing is currently striving to build a “City of Museums”, “Capital of Performing Arts” and “Capital of Scholarliness” in a bid to continuously improve its public cultural serviceability for a further blend of the history and culture with modern life and the Chinese civilisation with the world civilisation so that the masses feel the progress of the times and the development of the society and enjoy a richer spiritual and cultural life. We are ready to work with all parties concerned on maximising the role of the World Association for Performing Arts (WAPA) as a platform to achieve more results of pragmatic cooperation in product promotion, performing arts operation management and development, set design, talent training, etc. in order that more outstanding global performing arts organisations perform in Beijing. Together, we will promote the deep integration of science and technology with the arts to enrich the forms of artistic expression, to better meet the audience’s fastidious spiritual needs. We will also jointly promote the booming development of culture and create a new international space for the performing arts to enhance international cultural exchanges and people-to-people communication.

SIMA Hong, Deputy Mayor of Beijing, attended and addressed the Opening Ceremony. LU Yingchuan, Vice Minister of Culture and Tourism of China, delivered a video speech. Professor Shahbaz Khan, Representative of UNESCO Regional Office for East Asia, attended and addressed the Opening Ceremony. WANG Ning, President of the WAPA and President of the NCPA, gave a keynote speech. The Opening Ceremony was attended by an estimated 300 guests including the representatives of Chinese and foreign performing arts organisations.

SIMA Hong, Deputy Mayor of Beijing, said in her speech that present at the Forum are grandmasters and top professionals, who are invited for an in-depth discussion on cutting-edge topics. Given this golden opportunity for joint negotiation on industry development and win-win cooperation, Sge expect that honoured guests will express insightful opinions and work together to draw a new blueprint for the development of the industry. Looking ahead, the Beijing Municipal Government will continue its strong support for the global dissemination and innovative development of the performing arts, to create conditions for deeper cooperation between Chinese and foreign arts organisations.

LU Yingchuan, Vice Minister of Culture and Tourism of China, said in his video speech, that world-renowned art institutions and artists have been invited to the Forum for communication and experience sharing. They are here to have a discussion on performing arts operation management and development, artistic creation, audience cultivation and sustainability. Their discussion will help to deepen the integration of visual and acoustic. This is conducive to promoting art innovation and development.

 

Professor Shahbaz Khan, Director of UNESCO Regional Office for East Asia (UNESCO Beijing), said in his speech that thank the NCPA for its years of unwavering commitment to promoting the development of the global performing arts. The Forum, organised by the NCPA, is a very important gathering, where discussions and collaborations will be facilitated to help promote the constant development of the performing arts, thereby successfully pushing ahead with sustainability, diversity, cultural diversity and global cooperation.

WANG Ning, President of the WAPA and President of the NCPA, said in his speech, “I am very pleased to have a reunion with my old friends at the NCPA in the most beautiful season of Beijing to renew our friendship, talk about cooperation and share ideas about the future sustainable development of the global performing arts. The NCPA is ready to take the opportunity of implementing whatever is achieved at the Forum to push our friendly cooperation in the world’s performing arts to a higher level from a new starting point.”

The theatre is a crucial carrier for exhibiting culture, duty-bound to inherit and develop culture. As a national performing arts centre, the NCPA remains devoted to creating, producing, popularising and spreading artworks for greater development of world art. Since 2019, the “Beijing Forum for Performing Arts” has been successfully held for three sessions and the “Taihu International Stage Art Forum” has been held for five times. The World Association for Performing Arts (WAPA) has been founded, and it has 34 members from 22 countries. The members work together on exploring a new path for performing arts operation management and development and writing a new chapter of cultural exchanges.

Themed “Global Performing Arts: Towards a Sustainable Future” and “Integration of Visual and Acoustic Arts”, the “Beijing Forum for Performing Arts & Taihu International Stage Art Forum 2024” will be held with 10 sub-forums to take place, for the first time, at “a performing arts centre with three locations” - the NCPA, the Beijing Performing Arts Centre and the NCPA Taihu Stage Art Centre. The representatives of global performing arts organisations will have a discussion on hot topics such as young artist development, outreach and audience cultivation, performing arts operation management and development, integration of acoustics and aesthetics with stage art, musical creation and development, etc. The General Meeting of WAPA Members will also be convened during the Forum to build consensus on global theatre cooperation to jointly promote the booming development of world culture and art.

Keynote speeches was delivered on November 2^nd and broadcast live on a number of network media including the NCPA Classical Channel, the WAPA Official Website, cctv.com, etc.

WANG Ning, President of the WAPA and President of the NCPA, said in his keynote speech that it takes a long time to run a theatre and develop the culture. For this common cause of the entire world and the whole society, we need to reach consensus on four aspects - an excellent culture provides nourishment for theatre development, people orientation is a natural endowment for art production, open cooperation is a prerequisite for jointly creating a better future, and pluralistic integration is a general trend of industry development. As the theatre industry is ushering in a new stage of development at present, there are new trends to follow, such as art popularisation among young people, young artist development, multi-art integration, scientific management, etc. Here, I would like to take the initiative to launch a global young artist development programme to strengthen art popularisation, pursue extraordinary artistic quality, popularise art culturally, and develop cross-regional ‘Art+’ cooperation. Let’s go forward hand in hand to light up the future for the sustainable development of the world’s performing arts and work together to open up new avenues for cultural exchanges.

More keynote speeches were delivered by other honoured guests including Stefan Charles, Deputy Mayor of Arts and Culture of Cologne, Germany, Alex Beard CBE, Chief Executive of the Royal Ballet and Opera, Carmen Gloria Larenas, General Director of the Municipal de Santiago - Ópera Nacional de Chile, Matías Tarnopolsky, President and CEO of the Philadelphia Orchestra and Ensemble Arts, Emmanuel Hondré, President of the l’Opéra National de Bordeaux, Brad Cohen, General Manager of the New Zealand Opera, Irvin Peña Hernández, Executive Director of the Teresa Carreño Theater Foundation of Venezuela, and GUAN Jianbo, Vice President of the NCPA.

During the three days, global theatre gurus will gather to renew friendship, talk about cooperation and share ideas about the future sustainable development of the global performing arts. The Beijing Declaration will be issued at the Closing Ceremony on November 3^rd as a summary of the achievements made at the Forum to jointly light up the future for the sustainable development of the world’s performing arts.

What kind of unforgettable stage experience will be created when visual and acoustic blend and collide with each other in the contemporary theatre arts? At the Taihu International Stage Art Forum 2024, co-held by the NCPA and the China Institute of Stage Design on the afternoon of November 2^nd, famous set designers from home and abroad will jointly explore prospects for the development of colourful stage art under the theme, “Integration of Visual and Acoustic”.

LI Jin, a deputy director-level leader of the NCPA and Director of the Art Creation Centre, said that today, stage art no longer develops in the vertical direction of visual aesthetics only. Instead, it is intertwined and fused with multiple elements such as sound, light and shadow, virtual technology and so on, making the stage a comprehensive artistic carrier and space. Driven by the topic and idea of ‘Integration of Visual and Acoustic’, we look forward to more interdisciplinary and inter-professional collaborations, to a perfect combination of more techniques with art, to a presentation of more traditional cultures, new concepts and new methods, and to the integration of stage art and theatrical content.


CAO Lin, President of the Ninth Council of the China Institute of Stage Design, said that in the performing arts space of the 21^st century, the multi-dimensional human sensory system has been further mobilised and integrated. For the future set design, new digital media will push the narrative function of audiovisual elements to a higher level, thereby resulting in a multiplicity of textual meanings. The inner relation and interplay of audiovisual aesthetics is always presented to the audience in a certain theatrical form. Therefore, the Forum boasts two extensions: One is to study stage art education and talent cultivation from the perspective of visual aesthetic construction for musicals. The other is to look ahead at the development trend of musical theatre and stage technology from the perspective of visual-acoustic integration.

During the Forum, the set designers, experts and scholars from different countries and regions will share with one another their understanding and interpretation of the new changes in set design and provide new ideas for the innovative development of the set design industry.

Valuable personal experience and creative ideas will be shared in the form of practical cases and theoretical interpretation by many experts and scholars including Russian director Alina Chevik, WANG Xiangqian, a musical producer and General Manager of the Four Seasons Happy Song (Beijing) Culture and Art Co., Ltd., LIU Kedong, Vice President of the China Institute of Stage Design, ZHONG Haojin, President of the China Musicals Association, theatre director WANG Xiaoying, German set designer Wolfgang Menardi, REN Dongsheng, Director of the Department of Stage Art, Beijing Dance Academy, Japanese set designer Rumi Matsui, scene designer YU Haibo, XIAO Jie, Associate Head of the Department of Music of Beijing Dance Academy, ZHOU Lixin, a professor at the Department of Stage Design of Music of Beijing Dance Academy, and Italian set designer Domenico Franchi.

Under the guidance of the concept of “Integration of Visual and Acoustic Arts”, set design will be more focused on the integration and innovation of visual and acoustic in the future. As a grand event in the global set design industry, the Taihu International Stage Art Forum serves to bring together set designers of different cultures and backgrounds to explore the dual charm of visual and acoustic, thus injecting new vitality into the innovative development of global stage art.

Under the guidance of the concept of “Integration of Visual and Acoustic Arts”, set design will be more focused on the integration and innovation of visual and acoustic in the future. As a grand event in the global set design industry, the Taihu International Stage Art Forum serves to bring together set designers of different cultures and backgrounds to explore the dual charm of visual and acoustic, thus injecting new vitality into the innovative development of global stage art.