Chinese Dance Attracts Your Eyes

(Dance in China is so rich and varied. The Fifth National Dance Festival was held earlier this month in Wuxi. Locals say the event added a touch of glamour to the city’s golden tourism season. )

The music you’ve been listening to is called “the Happy Clay Figures”, a group dance presented by Wuxi’s very own dance troupe. It’s about an old man fishing on a pier on Taihu Lake. Instead of fish, he catches a traditional Wuxi clay doll. After the first, more dolls appear and begin to dance merrily in front of him on the wooden jetty. This is the first time that group dance has been included in the national dance festival. “The Happy Clay Figures” was awarded a prize for its performance.

The dance festival lasted about two weeks. Some 140 dances, both traditional and modern were staged, and more than 1000 performers took part in the event.

The first national dance festival was held in 1980, when the country was embarking on its reforms and opening up policy. It marked the rebirth of China’s great tradition of dance and the arts.

In the three festivals that have followed, a great variety of dance styles have been experimented with. Some have been controversial, reflecting the dancers’ desire to breathe new life and dynamism into the art-world. The fifth national dance festival, which has just ended in Wuxi, has seen the further development of dance in China. This time the onus was on developing traditional dance.

This is called “Wanting to Fly”, a modern dance performed by Wu Zhenyan. Dancing lithely and gracefully, Wu expresses the dreams of modern people. The body language and haunting melody of the dance have captivated her audiences.

“I’m very grateful that modern dance is, for the first time, included in the dance festival. This is a rare event. However, modern dance has already had its impact on many styles of dance in China. When I dance, it’s not just a duplicate of western modern styles. I try to blend into it the romantic charm and ideas of Chinese art. ”

Many new stars rose to the occasion. Wu Zhenyan is just one of them. The dance of “The Setting Moon on the Border” also left a lasting impression on the audience. It’s performed by a dance troupe from Shenyang, the capital of northeast China’s Liaoning Province, and depicts the life of soldiers in the border area.

Li Guangde is director of the dance.

"The music starts with ‘the Lullaby’, which is very familiar to the audience. Its message is one of peace, tranquility and comfort. But on the stage, under the bright moonlight, soldiers move across the dunes of the desert. Here, you get a sense of the harsh conditions under which they spend the best years of their life. And the contrast between the sweet melody and the movement of the dancers reveals the inner world of the soldiers, their thoughts and feelings. How they miss their loved ones thousands of miles away! And the sacrifices they make for their motherland. "

Their performance is so expressive, that you can see why many artists say dancing is not simply the movement of the body, but of the soul.

A postgraduate student from the Beijing College of Dance, Luo Hongmei, says she watched almost every performance that was staged at the dance festival.

"Dance in China is so rich and varied. Many ethnic groups have their own styles of dance. But the festival performances were not purely traditional. Traces of modern dance could be found in many of them. Nevertheless, it didn't detract from their distinctive national character. I think if there were encyclopedias of dance. The Chinese one would be the thickest."