Recently, the 14^th Chinese Dance “Lotus Award” for Dance Drama was decided at the Shanghai International Dance Center. The dance drama The Spring in Yangjialing, a co-production of the NCPA and Beijing Dance Academy, was presented on the stage of the Shanghai International Dance Center Theater on August 9^th as one of the six finalists for the Award.

The Chinese Dance “Lotus Award” is a professional national dance award set up by the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles and China Dancers Association with the approval of the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and General Office of the State Council under the auspices of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee. It is honoured as the most authoritative Chinese expert prize for dance. Jointly hosted by the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, Publicity Department of CPC Shanghai Municipal Party Committee and China Dancers Association, this year’s award attracted a large number of excellent dancing works.

With its unique artistic perspective and profound connotation, The Spring in Yangjialing became one of the finalists for the award. Guided by the idea that “A New Thought leads to a New Journey”, by the Spirit of the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art, by XI Jinping’s Thought on Culture, and by the spirit of literature and art upheld in the new era to build a modern civilisation for the Chinese nation, the drama links history and the present together to inspire contemporary literary and artistic workers to go into the thick of life, take root among the people, set their sights high and pay tribute to the people through dance to deeply practise their original aspiration of “making the people the central focus of development”. Designed for cultural inheritance and innovation, the drama unfolds with dance as the core to draw a poetic historical picture of new Chinese art and literature. Beneficial for all, it repays the people with dance to vigourously promote art popularisation among the general public.

In the 1930s and 1940s, a large number of literary and artistic workers came to the holy revolutionary base Yan’an in a time of national peril. Set in this historical period, The Spring in Yangjialing tells a story about young writers and artists awakening ideologically, depicting how these young people undergo a spiritual transformation in their daily life, work and “fight for the people”.

Produced by the NCPA BDA Youth Dance Troupe in cooperation with the Department of Chinese Folk Dance, School of Creative Studies and Department of Chinese Classical Dance of the Beijing Dance Academy, the drama boasts a creative team made up of first-class artists including the chief directors ZHANG Xiaomei and ZHANG Yunfeng, playwright XU Rui, composers CHENG Yuan and XIE Peng, and visual director REN Dongsheng.

During the creative process, the chief director ZHANG Xiaomei, creative team and cast went to Yan’an for several times to collect folk materials. Looking at the sharpness of the woodcut knife and thick brush strokes, they became aware that “literature and art are born to serve the people”. They implanted what they perceived in Yan’an in their creation. Inspired by the classic woodcut art of Yan’an, the drama presents a stage picture extracted from representative woodcut works and stories about woodcut creation. Dance and woodcutting are combined together in the drama to deeply explore and showcase their common qualities.

The dance drama, which took four years to elaborate, is based on folk materials collected several times in Yan’an in accordance with a literary and artistic belief that means “going into the midst of the people”. More than 30 seminars were held in Beijing, Yan’an and Ordos to gather opinions from experts and the audience, which were used to revise the script. The final script was polished to an “easy to understand and affecting” artwork, showing the spirit of the times and the honour of audience. So far, the drama has been staged for nearly 40 times, watched by a total audience of over 50 thousands. As a key work of stage art funded by the China National Arts Fund, the drama has received many honours - it was put on to kick off the First “Grand Performances in Beijing” Seasonal Productions, selected as a high-quality cultural project of Beijing in 2022, selected as an excellent stage artwork for the new era by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, awarded the Tenth Beijing Municipal Literary and Art Prize, selected for the Stage Art Creation Programme in the New Era by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, and won the Excellence Award at the 14^th National Dance Festival.

 

As the dance drama went to Shanghai to contend for the “Lotus Award”, its artistic value would undergo a test. Meanwhile, there would be an opportunity to show the Yan’an spirit of literature and art to audiences across the country. The work would showcase its unique charm on stage, which reflects how literary and art workers are inheriting and creating the Yan’an spirit in the new era to make a distinctive contribution to the development of Chinese dance art.