On the morning of the first day of the year of the tiger, the Hangzhou station of the dance Poetry Drama “only this green” has just issued a ticket, and all three performances were sold out in seven minutes. From March 2022 to January 2023, the second round of national tour of “only this green” will be performed in more than 120 performances in 40 cities, and “green aesthetics” will set off again.
“We didn’t expect the popularity of ‘green’ as a dance project to this extent.” Yu Tingting, general manager of Beijing Sihaiyijia Culture Communication Co., Ltd., who is in charge of the national tour operation of “only this green”, told China first finance and economics that “only this green” was a hot money on the Chinese stage before the CCTV Spring Festival Gala. Its first round tour visited 18 cities across the country in 128 days, and it was difficult to get one ticket for 51 performances.
With “only this green” on the new year’s Party of station B and the Spring Festival Gala of China Central Television, it has broken the circle layer by layer and become a phenomenal work with a hot search topic of more than 420 million.
Chinese traditional culture and intangible cultural heritage are being transmitted to the world through different stage arts. Both the Oriental romance at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games and the visual shock brought by a touch of “green” on the stage of the Spring Festival Gala have become cultural hotspots.
Looking at the new and old popular models on the Chinese stage last year, almost all are dances, and they are all traditional Chinese cultural themes. From “only this green” to “five stars out of the East”, “Li Bai”, “Zhaojun out of the fortress” and “a dream of Red Mansions”, they are well-known in the circle.
However, the “green” can be described as a national upsurge. On the social network, a netizen from Paris lamented that “ancient Chinese art has been resurrected”. The dancers’ sharp eyebrows and eyes, crimson lips and high bun, as well as each neat sleeve swing, make foreign audiences feel the ancient Chinese charm from modern dance.
“We have caught up with the great era of the all-round revival of Chinese traditional culture.” Xu Junrui, the screenwriter of only green, said in an exclusive interview with China business that the China Oriental performing arts group, where the main creative team is located, is a national art troupe, so they chose to create with Wang Ximeng’s picture of thousands of miles of rivers and mountains, which is not only to advocate the return of traditional culture, but also a practice to carry forward traditional culture, “In fact, the gene of traditional culture has always been there, but we use our works to awaken the emotional resonance at the bottom of our hearts.”.
Zhou Liya, the director of only green, felt the enthusiasm of this generation of young audiences for traditional culture. Last year, she traveled all over the country with each stop of “only this green” and found that many young people would enter the theater in Hanfu. Compared with the pure acceptance of the past generation of viewers, the current audience has a strong willingness to participate.
Recently, China Central Television launched the topic of “green secondary creation” on the Internet. Countless netizens contributed inspiration and creativity from various angles such as painting, sand painting, beauty makeup and imitating “green” dance.
“This year’s netizens are so talented that they seem to be holding a magnifying glass to verify every prop, gesture and suit of this work, and realize the dream linkage with” only this green “from their professional point of view.” Xu Junrui lamented that because of the enthusiastic interaction of the audience, “only this green” has inherited a new life.
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Zhou Liya, Han Zhen, the director of “just green” and Xu Junrui, the screenwriter, are old partners. When the three creators wanted to make a work of traditional culture, they almost said the name of the picture of thousands of miles of rivers and mountains at the same time.
The painting of thousands of miles of rivers and mountains is the only work handed down by Wang Ximeng, a painter of the Northern Song Dynasty. In 2017, when the 11.9-meter long scroll was first exhibited in the Forbidden City, Zhou Liya and Han Zhen lined up for hours, but the viewing time was only a few minutes. The ups and downs of the mountains and the vast rivers in the painting are engraved in their hearts.
Paying tribute to traditional culture is the original intention of the main creative team. Xu Junrui believes that dance drama has no lines and has a natural link with painting art. It is most appropriate to use dance to present the aesthetic artistic conception of the picture of thousands of miles of rivers and mountains.
But the difficulty of creation is beyond their imagination. At the screenwriter level alone, Xu Junrui changed her manuscript five times. Wang Ximeng’s life has no living materials. It can be established to tell the story of a talented painter and create contradictions, conflicts and ups and downs on the stage, but it is not what the screenwriter wants. “We can’t get spiritual satisfaction, nor are we willing to graft such a story casually.”.
Xu Junrui divided “only this green” into seven chapters. Each scene presents the essence of China’s intangible cultural heritage culture, using a contemporary exhibitor to “talk” with Wang Ximeng thousands of years ago.
Through time and space, poetic expression, the presentation on the stage is slow and introverted, with more emphasis on the inner logic of the characters. Han Zhen believes that the charm of the painting lies in its freehand brushwork. The green rhythm in the painting makes her feel the rhythm of the dance. If each dancer turns into a touch of color, the painting can live on the stage.
After eight months of creation, the main creative team continued to conceive the relationship between characters and paintings. In order to show the “green method” in the tradition of Song painting, Xu Junrui set up the role of “green”. Green is like mountains and stones in Chinese painting and poetic images in the play. This idea was inspired by an experience of Wang Zhongxu, the cultural and art consultant of the play and the research librarian of the calligraphy and Painting Department of the National Palace Museum. When taking photos of the picture of thousands of miles of rivers and mountains, Wang Zhongxu found that the cyan paint emitted a gem like light in the dark light.
Xu Junrui imagines that the green pigment has been waiting for thousands of years in the painting, and its shape has finally turned into mountains and rivers. The green itself is also alive. In the “painting” chapter of “only this green”, Wang Ximeng finally found his green. This plot made many viewers cry.
The editing and directing group consulted a large number of cultural and historical materials about the Song Dynasty, carefully studied the forms of the ancients in the song paintings, and presented the song people with a slightly bent back in dance. The “green” performed by Meng Qingmin, the lead dancer, has become a role admired by overseas netizens. The dancers’ slow 90 degree back bend makes them feel incredible, and even feel the essence of Chinese martial arts from the fast pace of dancing.
Han Zhen stressed with the dancers that they should not have a little girl’s shame in their eyebrows and eyes, but “keep mountains and rivers in their eyes”, “green is the embodiment of nature, the embodiment of culture, and the bridge between man and time and space”.
From this dimension, Xu Junrui wants to bring the craftsmen and cultural workers behind the cultural relics into the stage. To this end, the team invited the representative inheritors of national and provincial intangible cultural heritage into the rehearsal hall to personally guide the intangible cultural heritage process for the actors. Even the silk, brush and mould used in the performance are almost provided by the inheritors of intangible cultural heritage. On the stage, the processes of pigment making, ink making, pen making, silk weaving and so on behind a painting are presented.
“If the heart can contain the hills and gullies, the writing can meet the mountains and rivers”. Xu Junrui believes that the stage must do a good job in “subtraction” in order to make the audience feel accurate, advanced and not complicated, which is equivalent to the blank space pursued by Chinese aesthetics. “After seeing a large number of poems and paintings in the Song Dynasty and consulting experts, we refine this elegant artistic conception, which is not a deliberately created vocabulary”.
the secret of the popular money on the Guochao stage
When it was just approved in 2020, only with the list of the two directors of the play, Zhou Liya, Han Zhen and the main creators, one family from all over the world chose to jointly produce it, and subscribed for more than 50 performances for a national tour.
“We stepped in when the play had only one name and a list of creators.” Yu Tingting frankly said that generally, dance projects will focus on the starring dancers to attract dance fans, but what they like about this play is the reputation of the two directors before – as early as 2019, the dance drama “never disappearing radio wave” CO produced by Zhou Liya and Han Zhen won the “Wenhua grand prize” and five First Engineering Awards, and has been staged 400 times so far. At the same time, as the guarantee of box office, there are the strength of other main creators and the brand effect of China Oriental performing arts group.
One family from all over the world has introduced and produced Mamma Mia For this cultural performance company, “content is king” has always been the principle of success. But no one can predict the fate of a new work.
In 2021, the Shanghai station of “only this green” began to sell tickets. Yu Tingting didn’t have any materials in her hand. The promotion material was only a poster and the topic of “the picture of thousands of miles of rivers and mountains”. In the first week, the play only sold 200000 yuan at the box office, which was under great pressure.
“Although we have a lot of experience, it is People.Cn Co.Ltd(603000) that really builds momentum for the first wave of” just this green “that releases the fixed makeup photos of the play, and the reading volume of an article has reached 100000 +.” Yu Tingting believes that the initial publicity and marketing of new works is very important, otherwise the best project will be silent. After that, a series of step-by-step marketing promotion went online, stills were exposed one after another, directors and screenwriters were interviewed, and offline fan meetings were planned. Coupled with the fermentation of word-of-mouth after the premiere of the National Grand Theater, the box office began to rise rapidly.
The producers behind “just green” are the Palace Museum, China Oriental Performing Arts Group Co., Ltd., People.Cn Co.Ltd(603000) , and the co producers are usunhome Cultural Development Co., Ltd. and Beijing Sihaiyijia Cultural Communication Co., Ltd. Several institutions provide all-round assistance for the works from the aspects of historical professionalism, performance quality, publicity and promotion, planning and marketing, etc.
After the premiere of a new work, the director usually doesn’t follow the tour, but the two directors always follow the tour of the play. Zhou Liya said that during the process from the premiere to the tour, the creative team continuously collected the audience’s comments and feedback, modified and adjusted them to ensure the quality of each stop and the continuous upgrading of reputation. In her words, “only this green” has no final version, “only the best version”.
Under the situation that the epidemic situation continues to recur throughout the country and the performance has to “eat in the sky”, this green alone continues to create box office miracles. In November 2021, the play was faced with a delay in the performance of Harbin station and Nanjing station. Due to the epidemic, the performance of Hangzhou station was temporarily added. It was only a week from the time of billing to the start of the performance, but the tickets were sold out one day. In the second round of tour, in the northeast city where the sales of commercial performance projects are not ideal, the tickets of “only this green” are also sold out in half an hour.
Yu Tingting watched more than ten of last year’s 50 tours. She believes that the epidemic is also an “accelerator”, because there is no competition from overseas projects in the performance market in the same period, and Chinese audiences have spiritual consumption and aesthetic needs. The box office of “only green” is hot, which can be described as a favorable time and place. In the Spring Festival Gala, social benefits reach the peak.
One family from all over the world has performed and operated dance dramas such as “never disappearing radio waves”, “Confucius” and “dance classics”, which are all works with good reputation and box office. Among them, “the radio wave that never dies” performed 14 times in 2021 in Beijing station, with a box office of nearly 10 million yuan. The group dance segment “Yuguang song” was also on the 2020 Spring Festival Gala, which is also the representative work of the two directors.
No matter how good the box office of previous dance dramas was, it was also based on the “minority Carnival” of dance lovers. The popularity effect of “green” comes not only from the communication and fermentation of station B and Spring Festival Gala, but also from the demand for such traditional cultural works in the whole era.
“The fire of ‘green’ is similar to the 24 solar terms of the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics. We have all stepped on the pulse of cultural confidence and cultural essence. The aesthetics of the East and China’s traditional culture are worldwide.” Yu Tingting said that at present, they have received many inquiries from institutions in Europe, Britain and the United States, hoping that “only green” can perform overseas.
Xu Junrui hopes that those who like “green” can go to the theater to see the whole play of “only green” and get a more immersive, richer and complete viewing experience. For the team, the fire of “just green” is a double-edged sword. They need to polish their works more carefully to meet the high expectations of the audience and embark on a new journey – for a huge team with more than 80 people per tour, the second round of tour bears the expectations of the audience and tests their combat ability. China Oriental performing arts group used to focus on large-scale parties, and a large-scale commercial tour is the first time for this “national team”.
Another trend is that traditional culture is bound to become a new trend of stage creation. “Now there are a large number of stage works of traditional culture on the road, and we are very looking forward to seeing this phenomenon. Everyone is a spray, and more and more people are moving forward side by side with us, which will form a wave of cultural revival on the stage.” Xu Junrui said.
