By Han Manman
Last year’s biggest surprise in the Taiwanese film market was the teen romance You Are the Apple of My Eye, which topped box offices in Taiwan and Hong Kong and generated a buzz on the mainland.
While credited with propelling Taiwanese cinema back to popularity, the movie is only part of a larger trend.
After a decade-long slump, Taiwan’s films are sweeping box offices both at home and abroad and winning awards at film festivals. The success is thanks to a new generation of filmmakers who are bringing hope to the ailing industry.
You Are the Apple of My Eye contained an array of romantic elements needed to make viewers relive their sweet high school memories when it premiered on the mainland last month.
The film, based on a semi-autobiographical novel by Taiwanese author Giddens Ko, was Ko’s directorial debut.
Apple of My Eye tells the story of five guys. Giddens’ character, played by Ke Zhendong, is a prankster and a mischievous student who strives to win the heart of Shen Jiayi, an honors student who is popular with all the boys in her class.
The film is split into three parts and follows their relationship through high school, university and into adulthood.
The small-budget film was a surprising success in many Asian film markets and has already become Taiwan and Hong Kong’s highest-grossing Chinese film.
“The film turns its lens on youthful confusion, rebellion and first love. It’s more like a bittersweet romance than a coming-of-age comedy,” said Chen Xing, a mainland viewer who also called it “pop cinema at its finest.”
But Apple of My Eye is just one among many small-budget productions finding success abroad. Many critics are pointing to the sudden boom as a sign that Taiwan’s film slump is over.
Cinema was introduced to Taiwan in 1907 by the Japanese filmmaker Takamatsu Toyojiro. However, the films were in Japanese and functioned as propaganda tools for the island’s colonial rulers.
By the 1950s, Taiwan began filming movies in Chinese. However, most focused on civic virtue and were set in the countryside.
In the 1970s, Taiwanese cinema thrived and its popularity spread throughout Southeast Asia. But that golden age came to an end with the influx of Hollywood pictures during the 1990s.
Just when almost everyone seemed to lose faith in the sector, director Wei Desheng’s Cape No. 7 rekindled hope for the industry in 2008. The movie generated box-office returns of $18.3 million, a record for a Taiwanese film.
The film is about the unwavering pursuit of music, dreams and love and provides a lavish presentation of the breathtaking scenery on the south side of the island.
Director Wei exquisitely portrayed a secret love set in the Japanese-occupied Taiwan of the 1940s. Unable to disclose his affection for a local woman before returning to Japan, a Japanese teacher wrote seven unforgettably passionate letters. Although the letters were only mailed 70 years later, they became the catalyst of a second inter-cultural love affair.
Cape No. 7 received strong attendance due to word-of-mouth. Since then, the island has produced new blockbusters with broader appeal.
“Previous Taiwanese directors were preoccupied with profound issues such as destiny and history – issues that seem distant to many,” said film critic Steven Tu. The new generation focuses on the strength and frailty of the island’s people and institutions – topics that strike a chord with the audience.
Monga, for example, which topped Taiwan’s box office in 2010 and which was screened at the Berlin film festival, portrays a brotherhood of five boys and touches on gang violence and bullying.
Another eye-catching film of 2011, Night Market Hero, depicts street vendors standing up against ruthless developers with the true story of a struggling gymnast-turned-coach.
Tu said he also found that the styles of emerging young directors have become more lighthearted. As an example, he cited director Chen Junlin’s 2010 film Au Revoir, a comedy in which characters sometimes break into song.
Tu’s comments were supported by Kim Ji-seok, the executive programmer of the Pusan International Film Festival, a major international event for actors, directors and movie producers.
“Taiwanese filmmakers have established their own creative style, which is totally different from that of any other Asian country or region, and even around the world,” Kim said.
“They talk about personal experience – the personal history of their protagonists.”
Kim attributed the trend to Taiwan’s mix of ethnic and linguistic groups, including a Taiwanese-speaking aboriginal underclass mired in poverty and alcoholism, a distinct society of Hakka people with their own language and a Chinese-speaking majority.
That cultural diversity inspires many of the young directors.
He said concern over aboriginal society has become a major theme, citing Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale, as an example, another hit film by Wei Desheng. The film was well received at last year’s Venice Film Festival.
The $25 million epic film from Taiwan is about a rebellion by the island’s aboriginal tribes against the Japanese occupation. It is based on a historical event in 1930, little known even among most Taiwanese, when Seediq tribal leaders launched a revolt during Japanese colonial rule. Japan’s occupation began in 1895 and extended 50 years until Japan’s defeat in World War II.
That Taiwanese films are getting so much attention is no accident: the island’s young directors are telling the stories that viewers want to see.
By Han Manman
Last year’s biggest surprise in the Taiwanese film market was the teen romance You Are the Apple of My Eye, which topped box offices in Taiwan and Hong Kong and generated a buzz on the mainland.
While credited with propelling Taiwanese cinema back to popularity, the movie is only part of a larger trend.
After a decade-long slump, Taiwan’s films are sweeping box offices both at home and abroad and winning awards at film festivals. The success is thanks to a new generation of filmmakers who are bringing hope to the ailing industry.
You Are the Apple of My Eye is a small-budget film and was a surprising success in many Asian film markets.
You Are the Apple of My Eye
You Are the Apple of My Eye contained an array of romantic elements needed to make viewers relive their sweet high school memories when it premiered on the mainland last month.
The film, based on a semi-autobiographical novel by Taiwanese author Giddens Ko, was Ko’s directorial debut.
Apple of My Eye tells the story of five guys. Giddens’ character, played by Ke Zhendong, is a prankster and a mischievous student who strives to win the heart of Shen Jiayi, an honors student who is popular with all the boys in her class.
The film is split into three parts and follows their relationship through high school, university and into adulthood.
The small-budget film was a surprising success in many Asian film markets and has already become Taiwan and Hong Kong’s highest-grossing Chinese film.
“The film turns its lens on youthful confusion, rebellion and first love. It’s more like a bittersweet romance than a coming-of-age comedy,” said Chen Xing, a mainland viewer who also called it “pop cinema at its finest.”
But Apple of My Eye is just one among many small-budget productions finding success abroad. Many critics are pointing to the sudden boom as a sign that Taiwan’s film slump is over.
By Charles Zhu
Anyone who sees the group of coal-faced miners stepping out of the pits and into sunshine will be shocked as much by the work’s artistic perfection as by its respectful message.
Like many of Li Shinan’s paintings, the freehand, luxuriant splashes of ink continue the artist’s free-wheeling, symbolic use of ink and red and blue color.
Li Shinan’s appropriately-titled The Men Who Tap the Light is being kept by the National Gallery of Art for its artistic achievement.
The 72-year-old artist, a research fellow at the Chinese National Academy of Arts, had more than 40 such pieces from different periods of his artistic career exhibited at the Mi Le Jing She Studio at Liulichang in 2011. Critics say his art smacks of the peace and ease of mind of genteel scholars of the Wei (220-265) and Jin (265-420) periods in Chinese history.
Li, born in Shanghai in 1940, began copying colorful paintings of women by the Qing-era artists Fei Xiaolou and Gai Qi. His fine brush work and close attention were cultivated by Shi Lu, his teacher, one of the important painters of the mid-20th century noted for his outlook on art and life.
Throughout his career, Li has focused on figure painting. His paintings of women, usually dressed or semi-nude, follow a style that combines traditional and modern ink brushwork and purposefully avoids realism. In Li’s work, each deformation is symbolic and has abstract connotations
Despite assimilating the best of traditional painting, folk art and European styles, Li’s work remains unusually free of conventional form and obliterates the distinctions between portraits of figures and those of flowers and birds.
In 1956, Li went to Xi’an, Shaanxi Province to pursue his craft for 19 years. The humble beginning did not daunt his iron will to cultivate a unique style. While in Shaanxi, he went to live in the desolate Ma Jun Chai, a hamlet on the capital’s west side where he copied frescoes from the walls of the tomb of a Tang Dynasty prince.
“These two and a half years were the most difficult period for the painter. However, it was during this time that he learned to read the immense book of life and came to execute change,” said Jia Pingwa, one of China’s leading contemporary writers and a Shaanxi native.
“Every stroke and every dab of color in the paintings he drew were imbued with a profound wealth of emotional shock.”
Li’s freehand brushwork carries a message of historical profundity and personal grandeur. His rejection of formalism caught the attention of the artistic world of the early 1980s and had tremendous influence on younger generations of artists.
In 1985, he went further to subvert traditional technicality and form with his refusal to accept classic finesse and control in his series of paintings of Guizhou, a rocky and mountainous province. He hid himself in the province’s southwestern mountains to seek artistic inspiration from the area’s rustic life.
However, his success represented more than a rustic approach. His paintings, such as “Tiao Yue,” incorporated his understanding of modern art in the European tradition. The result resembled the sculptures of the Northern Wei Dynasty (386-534) and carried obvious influences from such painters as Christiaan Karel Appel and Willem de Kooning.
Critics declared that Li’s modernity was no longer something that seemed artificially pasted on, and that his new language of ink-brush work was neither symbolic nor abstract, as in the Chinese tradition, nor realist as in the European tradition.
The series of paintings on huge reams of paper that he brought back shocked his peers with their grand structure and powerful, bold and unconstrained strokes. The splashes of ink on the white paper that bespoke rusticity, primitiveness and mysticism overwhelmed one of his friends, Pi Daojian, who declared, “The former Li Shinan is gone,” and “it smashes the style of the genteel paintings just like smashing an elegant ancient china vase.”
His later series of works also covered lights, white houses, lone travelers and the portraits of Daoist and Buddhist monks and historical calligraphers. His picture-story book Li Shizhen, An Herbalist won a national prize and was selected for a national exhibition of masterpieces from the last hundred years.
Li continues to explore the meeting point between tradition and modernity. Art critics say that to see Li’s paintings is just like “drinking fine wine or bathing in gentle breeze, making one feel grandeur and peace of mind.”
By Charles Zhu
Anyone who sees the group of coal-faced miners stepping out of the pits and into sunshine will be shocked as much by the work’s artistic perfection as by its respectful message.
Like many of Li Shinan’s paintings, the freehand, luxuriant splashes of ink continue the artist’s free-wheeling, symbolic use of ink and red and blue color.
Li Shinan’s appropriately-titled The Men Who Tap the Light is being kept by the National Gallery of Art for its artistic achievement.
Li Shinan in painting
The 72-year-old artist, a research fellow at the Chinese National Academy of Arts, had more than 40 such pieces from different periods of his artistic career exhibited at the Mi Le Jing She Studio at Liulichang in 2011. Critics say his art smacks of the peace and ease of mind of genteel scholars of the Wei (220-265) and Jin (265-420) periods in Chinese history.
Li, born in Shanghai in 1940, began copying colorful paintings of women by the Qing-era artists Fei Xiaolou and Gai Qi. His fine brush work and close attention were cultivated by Shi Lu, his teacher, one of the important painters of the mid-20th century noted for his outlook on art and life.
Li Shinan's self portrait
Throughout his career, Li has focused on figure painting. His paintings of women, usually dressed or semi-nude, follow a style that combines traditional and modern ink brushwork and purposefully avoids realism. In Li’s work, each deformation is symbolic and has abstract connotations
Despite assimilating the best of traditional painting, folk art and European styles, Li’s work remains unusually free of conventional form and obliterates the distinctions between portraits of figures and those of flowers and birds.
In 1956, Li went to Xi’an, Shaanxi Province to pursue his craft for 19 years. The humble beginning did not daunt his iron will to cultivate a unique style. While in Shaanxi, he went to live in the desolate Ma Jun Chai, a hamlet on the capital’s west side where he copied frescoes from the walls of the tomb of a Tang Dynasty prince.
“These two and a half years were the most difficult period for the painter. However, it was during this time that he learned to read the immense book of life and came to execute change,” said Jia Pingwa, one of China’s leading contemporary writers and a Shaanxi native.
“Every stroke and every dab of color in the paintings he drew were imbued with a profound wealth of emotional shock.”
Li’s freehand brushwork carries a message of historical profundity and personal grandeur. His rejection of formalism caught the attention of the artistic world of the early 1980s and had tremendous influence on younger generations of artists.
By He Jianwei
In 2007, the three-year program “Germany and China – Moving Ahead Together” began a tour of six Chinese cities to promote economic, technological and cultural aspects of the European country in China.
Last April, a yearlong project called “The Enlightenment of the Art” opened at the National Museum of China, which helped artists and scholars from the two countries share ideas about the Enlightenment and its effects on cross-cultural communication.
But German-Chinese cultural communication has not been unilateral.
The Year of Chinese Culture begins in Germany in February. During this exchange, Chinese artists and scholars will work to help Germany understand the modern country through 150 presentations of music, opera, dance, literature, drama and fine arts.
Yu Long looked tired last Thursday afternoon when he appeared at the press conference.
As the artistic director and chief conductor of China Philharmonic Orchestra, he and the orchestra had been practicing day and night. On January 30, he will lead the orchestra in a concert at the Konzerthaus on Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin to open the Year of Chinese Culture in Germany.
“Germany is the home of classical music. I feel both excited and worried. I’m trying to prepare a performance so impressive we’ll knock the audience dead,” Yu said.
“We decided to perform works by both German and Chinese musicians. It is a great opportunity to pay my respect.”
The concert will open with the overture from Richard Wagner’s Tannhouser. Following will be Butterfly Lovers’ Violin Concerto, composed by Chen Gang and He Zhanhao in 1958. The piece is based on a Chinese tragedy about Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, often likened to Romeo and Juliet.
The finale will be The Drunken Beauty, a Peking opera with an orchestra accompaniment.
“People are familiar with Peking opera. We have revised it into an orchestral version. I hope people will see music as a way to communicate with the past and with different cultures,” Yu said.
Born in Shanghai in 1964 to a family of musicians, Yu received his early music education from his grandfather Ding Shande, a composer and China’s first pianist to hold a piano recital and record albums.
His formal music education began at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and concluded at Hochshule der Kunst in Berlin. “I admire German classical music. But this time, I hope I want bring more works composed by Chinese musicians,” he said.
As the music director of the Year of Chinese Culture in Germany, Yu will return in the summer to lead more Chinese orchestras at Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, where China will be the guest of honor.
Many Chinese composers have found international fame during the past decade. It was difficult for Yu to choose whose work will be performed this year.
“Not all well-known composers made my list, for example Tan Dun and Wang Yi. The works I chose were those which bridged the gap between Europe and China,” he said.
Among the Chinese pieces he selected was Chen Qigang’s Wu Xing (The Five Elements), which was created for a grand orchestra and performed by the French National Orchestra in 1999. “In this piece, Chen blends Claude Debussy, Olivier Messiaen, Frederick Delius and Peking opera. It is unbelievable that such different musical genres appear in one piece,” Yu said.
Another is Ye Xiaogang’s The Song of the Earth, recomposed after Gustav Mahler’s piece of the same title. From 1908 to 1909, Mahler composed this piece based on seven Tang Dynasty (618-907) poems. In 1908, Mahler read The Chinese Flute, the publication of Hans Bethge’s volume of ancient Chinese poetry rendered into German. Mahler was attracted by the vision of earthly beauty expressed in the verses and chose seven to set to music.
In 2005, 98 years after the initial performance of Mahler’s version, Yu and China Philharmonic Orchestra invited Ye to recreate The Song of the Earth using the same texts.
“We asked the professors at Peking University to translate Mahler’s texts into Chinese. It took a long time for them to figure out which poems appeared in Mahler’s music. Ye created his version based on the original poems,” Yu said. “Ye uses many Chinese percussion instruments in his piece. If Mahler’s version is six oil paintings, Ye’s is six wash paintings.”
There are more than 1,500 artists and scholars attending the events at the Year of Chinese Culture in Germany. In addition to musical events, the public forums give more open and direct communication between Chinese and Germans.
One project, “China! China? China…,” will be held as a cultural event in the town squares of six German cities. It will bring together Chinese artists and scholars to talk about poetry, music, dance, movie, fashion and philosophy in a pavilion made of bamboo.
“In the project of ‘Germany and China – Moving Ahead Together’ (2007-2010), we built a pavilion in the squares of Chinese cities and invited the scholars to talk about German culture. Many Chinese people learned more about us,” said Michael Kahn Ackermann, former president of Goethe-Institut China and consultant for the Year of Chinese Culture in Germany. “I hope this time our Germans can learn more about Chinese culture – not just its traditions, but the new and modern country.”
Ackermann said the name of the project came from a speech delivered by the former Chancellor of West Germany Kurt Georg Kiesinger in 1969.
“The Chancellor said ‘China’ three times to call the congress’ attention to the importance of China. But in the past decades, we had many misunderstandings about modern China. The project is just a thread to connect people in the two countries. Misunderstandings are never bad when they motivate one to learn.”
By He Jianwei
In 2007, the three-year program “Germany and China – Moving Ahead Together” began a tour of six Chinese cities to promote economic, technological and cultural aspects of the European country in China.
Last April, a yearlong project called “The Enlightenment of the Art” opened at the National Museum of China, which helped artists and scholars from the two countries share ideas about the Enlightenment and its effects on cross-cultural communication.
But German-Chinese cultural communication has not been unilateral.
The Year of Chinese Culture begins in Germany in February. During this exchange, Chinese artists and scholars will work to help Germany understand the modern country through 150 presentations of music, opera, dance, literature, drama and fine arts.
The China Philharmonic Orchestra will perform in Berlin to open the Year of Chinese Culture in Germany on January 30. Photos provided by organizer
Yu Long looked tired last Thursday afternoon when he appeared at the press conference.
As the artistic director and chief conductor of China Philharmonic Orchestra, he and the orchestra had been practicing day and night. On January 30, he will lead the orchestra in a concert at the Konzerthaus on Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin to open the Year of Chinese Culture in Germany.
“Germany is the home of classical music. I feel both excited and worried. I’m trying to prepare a performance so impressive we’ll knock the audience dead,” Yu said.
“We decided to perform works by both German and Chinese musicians. It is a great opportunity to pay my respect.”
The concert will open with the overture from Richard Wagner’s Tannhouser. Following will be Butterfly Lovers’ Violin Concerto, composed by Chen Gang and He Zhanhao in 1958. The piece is based on a Chinese tragedy about Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, often likened to Romeo and Juliet.
By He Jianwei
The 4th Asia Art Expo, one of Beijing’s largest art fairs, ended this past Sunday at the China World Trade Center. More than 700 galleries and individuals from Japan, South Korea, Iran, Pakistan, Hong Kong and the mainland attended the four-day show.
But this year, the attention was less on the art than disputes.
Sixteen Chinese artists withdrew from the expo because some of their works were rejected. In protest, they held a three-day exhibition at 798 Art District showing the works that were declared “unwelcome” by expo organizers.
While many saw the dispute as one about freedom of creation, some accused the artists of pulling a publicity stunt.
Cold winds whistled through the alleys of 798 Art District last Friday, but the atmosphere was burning hot.
Artists, critics and media groups gathered to hear what the 16 artists who walked out on the Asian Art Expo during its first day would present.
“This was an unexpected exhibition. It seems more like a cultural event than a simple showing,” said Liang Kegang, one of the curators of the exhibition. “Although the exhibition was curated just 64 hours before opening, the 16 participating artists have been preparing for it for months.”
On November 12, expo curator Wen Wenwu made a phone call to one of the artists, Shao Yinong, and asked him to invite some artists to attend this year’s expo.
“Wen said he has long admired my works and writings, and he agreed with the way I choose to create. He said he hoped contemporary artists who appreciated the roots of Chinese culture could also attend the expo,” Shao said.
Shao and his wife Mu Chen are a famous team, taking pictures to illuminate how a conservative agricultural society has been propelled in only a few decades into an economic superpower. In their series “Assembly Hall,” they show the ancestral halls that were used as public meeting places several decades ago, and which are today being left to ruin.
The next day, Wen met Shao and 15 other artists at G-Dot Art Space in Songzhuang, discussing which works to show at the expo. One week later, they met again and decided on a list of the artists and their works.
Everything went smoothly until January 1.
On that morning, Wen’s assistant Li Zhigang called Shao’s assistant Shi Rulan. On the phone, Li told Shi that the works by Ren Zhitian and Ji Zhou could not be exhibited at the expo, but refused to state a reason for the rejection.
Among Ren’s rejected installations was a big red star made up of five wooden dowels. Although he is a contemporary artist, Ren prefers to use traditional materials in his creations, especially ink. He believed that it is not necessary to translate Chinese concepts into a foreign art language, and that artists should express themselves directly through Chinese concepts of art.
Ji Zhou’s work in the exhibition is a photo from his “Mirror Image” series. Ji’s understanding of photography never remains as an individual narration of reality or the depiction of public and social landscapes. What he is more interested in is the appreciation of visual perspectives and to challenge the observational abilities of the audience.
Li also told Shi the pieces submitted by five other artists were not appropriate to transport: specifically, the pieces by Wu Junyong and Guo Gong were too large, the ones by Ji Huai and Wu Daxin were too heavy and the one by Wang Guangle was too fragile.
“Shi told the expo’s decision to Shao and me. Both of us believed they gave us an unreasonably short time to replace the works,” Guo said. “We thought if these nine artists could not attend the expo, it was meaningless for us to show up.”
Seven artists withdrew their own approved works as a gesture of solidarity.
On the afternoon of January 1, Shi received an email from Li. “The Asian Art Expo is regretful that these 16 artists made a decision to withdraw from the expo,” the announcement said.
“It is rude that the expo made such an announcement and gave no room to maneuver,” Guo said. “On January 2, we went to the expo to see the curator Wen, but we were told that the decision had already been finalized and could not be changed, so we decided to start our own exhibition.”
The exhibition opened on January 2 and ended with the Asia Art Expo, whose organizers accused the angered artists of hijacking the event’s name for self-promotion.
“We totally disagree with the expo’s decision, which brought us great shame. We were forced to withdraw by the expo. No artist can create a new, good installation in only two days. I called the curator dozens of times, but he always gave me the same answer: ‘I cannot do anything about it.’ It was the organizer’s indifference that angered us,” Shao said.
Renowned curator Gu Zhenqing supported the artists and became one of the curators of their exhibition. “After 30 years of social transition and cultural change, individual artists have developed great creative energy and more opportunities,” Gu said. “The expo’s arrogant announcement is indefensible. We created this exhibition to exhibit those 16 artists who were thrown out of the pack. The exhibition itself is a responsefor the sake of art.”
By He Jianwei
The 4th Asia Art Expo, one of Beijing’s largest art fairs, ended this past Sunday at the China World Trade Center. More than 700 galleries and individuals from Japan, South Korea, Iran, Pakistan, Hong Kong and the mainland attended the four-day show.
But this year, the attention was less on the art than disputes.
Sixteen Chinese artists withdrew from the expo because some of their works were rejected. In protest, they held a three-day exhibition at 798 Art District showing the works that were declared “unwelcome” by expo organizers.
While many saw the dispute as one about freedom of creation, some accused the artists of pulling a publicity stunt.
The 4th Asia Art Expo ended this past Sunday. CFP Photo
Curator Gu Zhenqing (second from left) and art collector Uli Sigg (third from right) at 798 Space./Photos provided by Li Space
Cold winds whistled through the alleys of 798 Art District last Friday, but the atmosphere was burning hot.
Artists, critics and media groups gathered to hear what the 16 artists who walked out on the Asian Art Expo during its first day would present.
“This was an unexpected exhibition. It seems more like a cultural event than a simple showing,” said Liang Kegang, one of the curators of the exhibition. “Although the exhibition was curated just 64 hours before opening, the 16 participating artists have been preparing for it for months.”
On November 12, expo curator Wen Wenwu made a phone call to one of the artists, Shao Yinong, and asked him to invite some artists to attend this year’s expo.
“Wen said he has long admired my works and writings, and he agreed with the way I choose to create. He said he hoped contemporary artists who appreciated the roots of Chinese culture could also attend the expo,” Shao said.
By He Jianwei
The ballet gala has been a perennial feature of the National Center for Performing Arts (NCPA) since 2009. Each year, the center invites the world’s foremost ballet troupes to present their most popular works.
For ballet fans, it is a rare chance to see the bewitching glamor, flexible movements, deft leaps and breathtaking swirls of classical and modern ballet.
But this year, the NCPA is planning a second gala that would give Chinese classical, folk and contemporary dancers a chance to shine.
After four years of fast development, the NCPA has become recognized by many international artists. Now it hopes to use that acclaim to promote the nation’s own dance superstars.
The number of famous dancers a gala can draw says much about a theater’s prominence. Each year, the world’s theaters vie for the top position.
Four years ago, drawing on the personal connections of Zhao Ruheng, the NCPA made a name for itself by bringing many international ballet stars to Beijing’s stage. Today, many theater companies are demanding the chance to perform on its stage.
This year’s international ballet gala will bring in 12 dancers from the American Ballet Theater, the Bayerische Staatsballett, Stuttgart Ballet, Aterballetto, Mikhailovsky Theater and the National Ballet of China to perform classics like Le Corsaire, La Dame Aux Camelias and Sleeping Beauty, as well as pioneering modern works.
Among ballet’s most celebrated dancers, Daniil Simkin from the American Ballet Theater is a new rising star. He is relatively small, has a light build and a youthful demeanor, but he is famous for his exceptional jumps, the speed and precision of his pirouettes and his instinctive communication with the audience.
Born in 1987 in Russia to a ballet family, Simkin and his parents left their home country in 1990. They first stayed in Austria and then in Wiesbaden, Germany, where Simkin spent the rest of his childhood and first appeared on the stage. From the age of six, he often danced beside his father.
Simkin has won first prize in several world-leading ballet competitions since his teens, including the gold medal at the 21st International Ballet Competition in Varna, Bulgaria in 2004, Grand Prix International Ballet Competition in Helsinki, Sweden in 2005 and Senior Gold Medal at the US International Ballet Competition in 2006.
Two years later, he became a touring soloist at the American Ballet Theater and a regular on the international ballet gala.
“Every important international theater will present a gala every year. The audience loves this kind of performance, not only because they can see the superstars, but also because they get to feast their eyes on the best of dance,” Zhao said.
“Maria Eichwald and Friedemann Vogel from Stuttgart Ballet will perform the pas de deux from La Dame Aux Camelias. The program is usually only performed in full, and never as part of a gala.”
But the international ballet gala is not the only thing the NCPA is planning for this season.
The center is inviting Chinese dancers to present masterpieces of Chinese classical, folk and contemporary dance, including familiar dance classics such as the solo dance of Dai ethnic group, but also award-winning pieces from the National Dance Competition and CCTV Television Dance Competition.
Yang Liping is the most famous of the dancers who has been confirmed as attending.
Born in Dali, Yunnan Province, Yang is a member of the Bai ethnic group. At the age of nine, she moved with her family to Xishuangbanna and grew up in the deep mountains. She loved to dance as a child, but she never attended dance school.
Yang joined the Xishuangbanna Song and Dance Troupe when she was 13 because of her extraordinary gifts. Her pure and mellow dance style is a result of her unique figure, intelligence and artistic inspirations from the city’s culture landscape.
She became famous for her performance in the Dai ethnic dance drama The Peacock Princess in 1979. Seven years later, she choreographed and performed The Soul of the Peacock, winning two first prizes at the second National Dance Competition – one for choreography and the other for performance.
She will perform the solo dance Moonlight, which bases its movements on the silhouettes of trees, birds and snakes against the backdrop of a moon.
The NCPA is also promoting younger talents such as Wang Yabin. The 27-year-old Wang trained in classical techniques at Beijing Dance Academy and has matured into one of foremost exponents of contemporary dance.
Wang, who began dancing at the age of eight, found fame overnight when she choreographed Zhang Yimou’s film House of Flying Daggers in 2003 and performed a traditional dance as the stand-in for lead actress Zhang Ziyi.
After collaborating with the director, she got opportunities in several TV dramas and became a popular actress in China. But she considers herself more of a dancer than an actress.
In 2010, she performed pas de deux at the opening ceremony of the Asian Games in Guangzhou.
She started the “Yabin and Her Friends” program as a choreographer, director and dancer to give young dancers an opportunity to show their talents and to bridge the dialogue between traditional and contemporary dance. The program has aired annually since 2009.
She will present Light Rain Overnight on the NCPA’s stage, which is a solo dance from the third episode “Expecting with Faith.”
2012 NCPA Chinese Star Dancers Gala
When: January 14-15, 7:30 pm
Admission: 160-600 yuan, 680 yuan for VIPs
2012 NCPA International Ballet Gala
When: January 19-20, 7:30 pm
Admission: 160-680 yuan, 780 yuan for VIPs
Where: Opera Hall of the National Center for the Performing Arts, 2 Xi Chang’an Jie, Xicheng District
Tel: 6436 8998
By He Jianwei
The ballet gala has been a perennial feature of the National Center for Performing Arts (NCPA) since 2009. Each year, the center invites the world’s foremost ballet troupes to present their most popular works.
For ballet fans, it is a rare chance to see the bewitching glamor, flexible movements, deft leaps and breathtaking swirls of classical and modern ballet.
But this year, the NCPA is planning a second gala that would give Chinese classical, folk and contemporary dancers a chance to shine.
After four years of fast development, the NCPA has become recognized by many international artists. Now it hopes to use that acclaim to promote the nation’s own dance superstars.
Moonlight by Yang Liping/Photos provided by tne NCPA
The number of famous dancers a gala can draw says much about a theater’s prominence. Each year, the world’s theaters vie for the top position.
Four years ago, drawing on the personal connections of Zhao Ruheng, the NCPA made a name for itself by bringing many international ballet stars to Beijing’s stage. Today, many theater companies are demanding the chance to perform on its stage.
This year’s international ballet gala will bring in 12 dancers from the American Ballet Theater, the Bayerische Staatsballett, Stuttgart Ballet, Aterballetto, Mikhailovsky Theater and the National Ballet of China to perform classics like Le Corsaire, La Dame Aux Camelias and Sleeping Beauty, as well as pioneering modern works.
Among ballet’s most celebrated dancers, Daniil Simkin from the American Ballet Theater is a new rising star. He is relatively small, has a light build and a youthful demeanor, but he is famous for his exceptional jumps, the speed and precision of his pirouettes and his instinctive communication with the audience.
Born in 1987 in Russia to a ballet family, Simkin and his parents left their home country in 1990. They first stayed in Austria and then in Wiesbaden, Germany, where Simkin spent the rest of his childhood and first appeared on the stage. From the age of six, he often danced beside his father.
Simkin has won first prize in several world-leading ballet competitions since his teens, including the gold medal at the 21st International Ballet Competition in Varna, Bulgaria in 2004, Grand Prix International Ballet Competition in Helsinki, Sweden in 2005 and Senior Gold Medal at the US International Ballet Competition in 2006.
By He Jianwei
The nation’s first digital art center, the China Millennium Monument Museum of Digital Arts (CmoDA), opened on December 17 with its new Creative Future project. The season-long effort aims to connect China’s digital artists with their peers abroad.
For the opening exhibition, the museum invited onedotzero, a moving image and digital art and design group from the UK, to provide workshops for Chinese artists and students. It also exhibited Chinese digital artists’ latest works and documentaries about digital art by the museum.
The China Millennium Monument was an iconic building in Beijing only 11 years ago. Today it serves as a yet another center for art.
The monument’s involvement in the arts goes back to 2006, when it opened the World Art Museum to exhibit pieces from the Italian Renaissance. At the beginning of this year, it opened a new contemporary art center to focus on new media works from Chinese and Italian artists.
The newly opened digital art center follows this tradition and strives to connect China’s digital artists and art educators with their peers abroad.
“The fast development of technology has sped up the development of society, history and art. We foresee a bright future for digital art, which will become more relevant and accessible through technological advancement,” said Chen Caiyun, general manager of CMoDA, at the opening ceremony.
Two years ago, when Chen and her colleagues made documentaries about the creative industry, she realized that art was taking advantage of newer technologies. That experience inspired her to create a new center for digital works.
The six-episode Creative Future documentary series is showing at the opening of the exhibition to capture emerging creative forces and encourage new dialogue about China’s own creative future.
In the first episode “Social Media,” Chen and her colleagues visit the US, a leader in social media development and entrepreneurship, and talk with innovators in business and education.
In the second episode, they talk about online and mobile games, as well as video game consoles with game designers in New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo and Helsinki. For the third episode, they meet the staff at Pixar and Dreamworks in Hollywood, as well as the Gundam and Sunrise studios in Tokyo to point out the two directions of animation.
The fourth episode shows how design changes people’s daily life, and the fifth shows how technology can be used to combat environmental disaster. The final episode shows Chen and her colleagues returning to China to discuss the obstacles and challenges faced by local designers.
“What does it take to be creative? What role will China play? Will it be able to transform itself from a manufacture-based economy to a service and technology-based economy? How can China nurture its own creative class in order to become a leader of the future?” Chen said.
As virtual and augmented realities converge, avatars and new modes of expression are becoming an exploding phenomenon. The opening exhibition, called AV@AR, refers to these changes in digital production, expression and an advanced way of seeing the world through exhibition, film screenings, lectures and workshops.
When Chen made the Creative Future documentary series in London, she met Shane Walter, the co-founder and creative director of onedotzero. Founded in 1996, the organization is famous for its “onedotzero_adventures in motion festival,” a major yearly event for digital artists. Chen invited Walter to present the festival to Beijing.
Ondotzero selected 14 short films for the museum’s opening exhibition. Among these were Spetrum 1 and 2, a look back at the first decade of progressive digital filmmaking.
“It is a great way to celebrate onedotzero’s 15-year history of mapping the intersection of art, technology, design, entrainment and culture,” Walter said. “It is vital to have a mix of international and local Chinese work, to forge cultural as well as creative links, share experiences and knowledge exchange, and inspire what happens next.”
Besides the film screenings, the exhibition contains multimedia installations that forge a virtual world in the annular hall of the museum.
Joanie Lemercier, a French artist from the visual label AntiVJ, a team of European artists, presented the installation Eyjafjallajokull, inspired by the eruption of an Icelandic volcano, which disrupted European travel last April. Lemercier painted the volcano on a large wall and manipulated wire-frame scenery to reveal gentle lighting effects, accompanied with the sound of volcano eruption.
Another French duo, LAB212, displayed an interactive installation called Stop-iT, an audio-visual sequencer. The new musical creation tool makes sound more tangible. By sticking post-it notes on a surface, viewers can create a music a piece and mix animation. The color of a post-it determines the type of instrument, and its vertical position controls the pitch.
The exhibition is also presenting several works by Chinese digital artists and designers. Fei Jun, an associate professor from the Media Lab at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts, is fascinated with the intersection of virtual space and physical space.
His recent research has focused on creating local social media for public engagement. One of his project is 798 Talk Show, an interactive billboard project designed for 798 Art District.
Using text messaging, viewers are able to chat and control the emotional expressions of animated characters in a virtual 798 environment. It includes many major galleries and art centers in the backdrop. Major figures in Chinese art circles, such as artists, curators, collectors, gallery owners, have also been added to the character roster.
798 Talk Show attempted to establish a regional social media for people to speak, connect, perform and share in public space via a playful, casual and humorous approach.
The first exhibition of CMoDA ends on January 3.
“In the future, our museum will focus on presenting exhibitions, lectures and workshops in film, game, animation, design and multimedia creation,” Chen said.
By He Jianwei
The nation’s first digital art center, the China Millennium Monument Museum of Digital Arts (CmoDA), opened on December 17 with its new Creative Future project. The season-long effort aims to connect China’s digital artists with their peers abroad.
For the opening exhibition, the museum invited onedotzero, a moving image and digital art and design group from the UK, to provide workshops for Chinese artists and students. It also exhibited Chinese digital artists’ latest works and documentaries about digital art by the museum.
Baby I'm Yours by Irina Dakeva/Photos provided by CMoDA
Woos by Petpunk
The China Millennium Monument was an iconic building in Beijing only 11 years ago. Today it serves as a yet another center for art.
The monument’s involvement in the arts goes back to 2006, when it opened the World Art Museum to exhibit pieces from the Italian Renaissance. At the beginning of this year, it opened a new contemporary art center to focus on new media works from Chinese and Italian artists.
The newly opened digital art center follows this tradition and strives to connect China’s digital artists and art educators with their peers abroad.
“The fast development of technology has sped up the development of society, history and art. We foresee a bright future for digital art, which will become more relevant and accessible through technological advancement,” said Chen Caiyun, general manager of CMoDA, at the opening ceremony.
By He Jianwei
Located in southern Anhui Province, Huangshan has inspired millennia of poets and painters.
From the Tang (618-907) to Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, more than 20,000 poems were written about its majestic heights. During the Qing Dynasty, Huangshan actually became the namesake of a school of painting.
Many modern masters of Chinese ink, such as Huang Binhong, Zhang Daqian and Li Keran, continue to use its scenery as a frequent subject.
But contemporary artist Hong Ling breaks from the pack in his use of oil to paint the mountain. Hong has lived in Huangshan for 20 years, capturing the four seasons of its forests on his canvas.
A big chestnut tree at the foot of Huangshan forms a canopy over a traditional courtyard.
The lone tree produces more than 50 kilograms of chestnuts every year. The courtyard beneath it is a typical southern home with a mountain behind it and a river before it. It has pavilions, arch bridges and zigzagging corridors.
Two characters on its iron gate read “Hong’s House.”
From his home studio, Hong has a panoramic view of the Xin’an River and the forests of Huangshan, scenery that has been his muse for the past 20 years.
Last Sunday, Hong took viewers to the foot of Huangshan with his latest solo exhibition at the main hall of Today Art Museum.
Hong is regarded as the master of landscape painting since Huang Binhong (1865-1995). But as a contemporary artist, Hong has fused the essence of Chinese painting with the medium of oil. Finding a way to harmonize that combination was a 10-year project.
Born in Beijing in 1955, Hong graduated from the Art Department of Beijing Normal University in 1979 and finished a graduate program in the Oil Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts eight years later.
Hong started to paint with oils at the age of 16, when he saw a painter in a park near his home painting the trees and clouds.
In spite of his fascination with oil paints, Hong was sent to study Chinese ink painting at the age of 14. His mother hired Wang Guangxiu, a veteran painter, to train her son in traditional painting.
During this time, Hong took to reading the National Palace Museum Monthly of Chinese Art that his grandfather subscribed to in the 1970s. Although he could not identify the dynasties of each landscape, the experience made a great impact on his creative process.
When he first went to southern Anhui Province to paint in 1982, Hong recognized the scenes as a source of inspiration for ancient painters.
At that time, there were only dirt roads. He took the bus from Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province at 6 am and arrived at Huangshan at 11 pm.
“I had the urge to come to the mountain because I always believed it was the heaven of Chinese painters,” he said.
During the 1980s, Hong searched for his own artistic language. Many artists, caught up in the New Wave Movement of 1985, stared to create abstract works: Hong focused on landscapes in oil.
He finished his work, Wild Mountain, in 1988, and submitted it for the Exhibition of Chinese Oil painting at the Museum of Chinese History.
“If my 1988 piece marked the beginning of my journey to explore Chinese nature, the establishment of my studio in Wannan, the south side of Anhui Province, in 1992 confirmed my dedication to practicing art in nature,” Hong said.
In the early 1990s, he revisited Huangshan and decided to build a studio. It was a troubling process, and few of the plots available were suitable.
After considering seven to eight other lots, he finally found a place.
“Although I was not familiar with feng shui at that time, I was adamant that my studio should be on a mountain that was not too high. When I came here, there was a dirt road for the cars to transport canvas,” he said.
At first, he built a modern home, but soon reworked it into a courtyard. He grew bamboo in the garden, because it was a plant favored by the traditional literati.
“The image of bamboo is central to Chinese culture. There is no other plant that is so close to our daily and spiritual life – the chopsticks, the baskets in the markets, the rafts on the Xin’an River and the flute conveying a musician’s emotion when seeing endless crisp mountains and misty rain,” he said.
“The greatest work I have created in the last 20 years is my garden. It is consistent with my paintings’ shift from modern to traditional.”
In March, he saw his work Cold Snow, a painting created in the 1990s, hanging in his friend’s house. Under the moonlight, the water of a serene pond formed a mirror to reflect the forest. That was when he realized how much his life had changed in the past 20 years.
“I left the city, where I had lived for over 30 years to live on a mountain in Aihui Province. Twenty years passed and I continued to create art and live on the mountain,” he said.
“I’m searching for a sense of calm as I draw closer to nature. Surrounded by the mountains and waters, I feel a sense of spiritual enlightenment – like I have completed a journey of purification.”
Boundless Momentum – Hong Ling Solo Exhibition
Where: Today Art Museum, 32 Baiziwan Lu, Chaoyang District
When: Until December 26, 10 am – 5 pm
Admission: 20 yuan, 10 yuan for students
Tel: 5876 9804
By He Jianwei
Located in southern Anhui Province, Huangshan has inspired millennia of poets and painters.
From the Tang (618-907) to Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, more than 20,000 poems were written about its majestic heights. During the Qing Dynasty, Huangshan actually became the namesake of a school of painting.
Many modern masters of Chinese ink, such as Huang Binhong, Zhang Daqian and Li Keran, continue to use its scenery as a frequent subject.
But contemporary artist Hong Ling breaks from the pack in his use of oil to paint the mountain. Hong has lived in Huangshan for 20 years, capturing the four seasons of its forests on his canvas.
Hong Ling in his courtyard studio at the foot of Huangshan, Anhui Province/Photos provided by Soka Art
A big chestnut tree at the foot of Huangshan forms a canopy over a traditional courtyard.
The lone tree produces more than 50 kilograms of chestnuts every year. The courtyard beneath it is a typical southern home with a mountain behind it and a river before it. It has pavilions, arch bridges and zigzagging corridors.
Two characters on its iron gate read “Hong’s House.”
From his home studio, Hong has a panoramic view of the Xin’an River and the forests of Huangshan, scenery that has been his muse for the past 20 years.
Last Sunday, Hong took viewers to the foot of Huangshan with his latest solo exhibition at the main hall of Today Art Museum.
Autumn in Huangshan 2
Hong is regarded as the master of landscape painting since Huang Binhong (1865-1995). But as a contemporary artist, Hong has fused the essence of Chinese painting with the medium of oil. Finding a way to harmonize that combination was a 10-year project.
Born in Beijing in 1955, Hong graduated from the Art Department of Beijing Normal University in 1979 and finished a graduate program in the Oil Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts eight years later.
By He Jianwei
Artist, poet and playwright Kong Ning says “life” began in her 40s.
Her first 20 years were what she calls her unsettled period. From the ages of 20 to 30, she advocated for death row prisoners at a procuratorate. From 30 to 40, she worked as a lawyer to defend the rights of minorities.
For the last 13 years, she has devoted her time to painting, installation and performance art.”Art makes me find myself. Art has helped to cure my hurts in the past 40 years,” she says.
Kong looks like a soldier ready for combat at all times. She wears a black armored vest and a pair of black army boots – not because they suit her, but because they make her feel safe.
Her mother from Beijing met her father in Manzhouli and gave birth to her on the Inner Mongolian frontier in 1958.
It was there that Kong was raised to fear.
The Sino-Soviet split of the late 1950s and early 1960s resulted in tensions along the border between the two countries.
“I always saw Russian tanks on the border of my village,” Kong said at Gehua Building Sunday. Pointing to the skyscrapers outside the window, “Their tanks were about that far from our village, and the adults were anxious about the possibility of war.”
A greater shock came with her father’s suicide during the Cultural Revolution. In the wake of his death, her mother became her whole universe.
In 1971, her mother was ill and hospitalized in Shanghai. Hospital regulations prevented relatives from accompanying patients outside of visiting hours. To take care of her mother, Kong pleaded with the doctor to offer her a job in the hospital.
“Although I was only 13 years old, I was taller than 170 centimeters. I took the jobs no one else wanted – cleaning up excrement and carrying the dead to the morgue,” Kong said.
After the end of the Cultural Revolution, she and her mother returned to Beijing. Relatives helped her find a job at the procuratorate.
She received little education during her teenage years, but she was tall and strong enough to supervise death penalty cases. She soon became well known by her colleagues and public security officers.
Of note was one incident in 1983, when she was walking with four public security officers who were escorting a prisoner who had been sentenced to death. The police hustled the prisoner into the corridor of the court, and one of the officers kicked the prisoner down the stairs.
Kong, furious, responded by kicking the police officer down the stairs.
The policeman got up off the floor and rushed at her. Instinctively, Kong crouched and covered her head, expecting to be beaten. When the blows never came, she looked up to see an irritated policeman staring down at her. Kong looked up and scowled at him, and they glared at each other for several minutes.
The incident earned her a reputation as a tough woman, even though she was considered “timid” in comparison to her other colleagues.
“Besides following up on court hearings with prisoners, one of my jobs was to supervise executions,” she said. Her first day to witness an execution was in 1984: she fainted when she saw blood come splattering out of the bodies after hearing gunshots.
The scene haunted her.
“I’ve never been able to forget the 34 persons who were shot that day. I still keep 34 white shirts in my jeep. White represents purity, and I hope they went on to live in a pure world after their death,” she said.
When she began to paint in 2005, the number “1984” often appears on her canvas. In one of her paintings, Blackboard, she writes the numbers. “I called the piece Blackboard, because I did not want to record their memory – I wanted to erase it,” she said.
Kong resigned from the procuratorate in 1988 and became a lawyer, providing free legal aid to minorities. Because of her experience in the procuratorate, she accepted many cases to help people who had been sentenced to death to file an appeal.
She quickly became a successful lawyer, but abandoned her practice when her mother died in 2000. “My whole life was coming apart at the seams. I thought I would go crazy,” she said.
Five months later, she checked into a mental hospital and stayed for 24 hours. She left when her daughter came and urged her to do something with her mom’s home in Mentougou District.
She began to decorate the house by herself, sculpting thousands of red roses to line its interior and exterior walls. After four years, she finished the project and named it “Castle of the Rose.”
“Some friends who visited the house thought it was unreal and a little bit scary, because all the roses were made of cement. This is a palace for my mother,” she said.
In 2005, she began to vent her pain on canvas. She painted the face of her mother, her brother riding a horse in Inner Mongolia and the prisoners she saw die 20 years ago.
In Releasing, she painted a fearful death-row prisoner squatting on the right side of the painting. At the center are seven other prisoners overjoyed as they anticipate the release of death.
She has completed hundreds of oil paintings and more than 3,000 wash paintings during the past six years: few are shown to friends, and fewer still are exhibited.
Hong Kong director Tsui Hark is one of Kong’s fans and used 30 of her oil paintings in his latest movie Catching Monkey.
“I still don’t think of myself as a painter. Painting is my way of curing my past hurts. When I pick up the brush, I feel calm and pleasant. I have been reborn in the art world,” Kong said.
By He Jianwei
Artist, poet and playwright Kong Ning says “life” began in her 40s.
Her first 20 years were what she calls her unsettled period. From the ages of 20 to 30, she advocated for death row prisoners at a procuratorate. From 30 to 40, she worked as a lawyer to defend the rights of minorities.
For the last 13 years, she has devoted her time to painting, installation and performance art.”Art makes me find myself. Art has helped to cure my hurts in the past 40 years,” she says.
Crazy Nana/Photos provided by Kong Ning
Kong looks like a soldier ready for combat at all times. She wears a black armored vest and a pair of black army boots – not because they suit her, but because they make her feel safe.
Her mother from Beijing met her father in Manzhouli and gave birth to her on the Inner Mongolian frontier in 1958.
It was there that Kong was raised to fear.
1984
The Sino-Soviet split of the late 1950s and early 1960s resulted in tensions along the border between the two countries.
“I always saw Russian tanks on the border of my village,” Kong said at Gehua Building Sunday. Pointing to the skyscrapers outside the window, “Their tanks were about that far from our village, and the adults were anxious about the possibility of war.”
A greater shock came with her father’s suicide during the Cultural Revolution. In the wake of his death, her mother became her whole universe.
In 1971, her mother was ill and hospitalized in Shanghai. Hospital regulations prevented relatives from accompanying patients outside of visiting hours. To take care of her mother, Kong pleaded with the doctor to offer her a job in the hospital.
By He Jianwei
Modern dance companies worldwide are suffering as countries slash their budgets, but the situation is especially bad in China.
Unlike the dance companies in Europe and the US, those in China are not allocated any money by the government. High rent and low returns have been slowing their development and causing many to close their doors.
But some dancers continue their dreams. Tao Ye, founder of the TAO Dance Theater, has turned his six-dancer company into a competitive force in the world’s dance market.
Tao’s studio in the northeastern 318 Art Zone is a 30-minute trip from the central business district.
The studio, larger than half a basketball court, includes a rehearsal hall and has been the group’s home since earlier this year. It spent the last three years on the move.
Tao, a graduate of Chongqing Dance School, began his career with the Shanghai Army Song and Dance Ensemble before joining the Jin Xing Dance Theater in 2003.
In 2004, he worked with a physical performance company in Shanghai on its first dance production Tongue’s Memory of Home, inspired by popular poems penned by Shanghai poets born in the 1980s.
He went on to perform with many major dance companies, including Beijing Modern Dance Company between 2006 and 2008.
But in March 2008, Tao, then 23, decided it was time to found his own theater.
He said it was restricting to dance for major companies, and that he wanted to create and develop his own language of dance. “Every time I wanted to leave a company, I felt like a pan of boiled water about to evaporate. I needed a place that could inspire my creativity,” Tao said.
Money was not the problem when he decided to run his own studio. Dancing at a major company was stable, but the pay was very low. “For Chinese dancers, working for a major company can never bring in enough to live on. Can you imagine living in Beijing on only 1,500 to 2,000 yuan each month?” he said.
He said his toughest time in Shanghai was when he left the Shanghai Army Song and Dance Ensemble: he had only 0.7 yuan – enough for a hard-boiled egg.
While he was worrying about his next meal, he suddenly landed a new job. “That was when I realized that God would not allow anybody to die of starvation,” he said.
In August, Duan Ni, who previously worked with the Akram Khan Dance Company in London, joined Tao’s theater.
Early on, they were unable to secure a rehearsal room and would practice in the basement of a friend’s home or after hours in a gallery.
They once rented a rehearsal room in Zhuozhou, Hebei Province. They spent about six hours on the road commuting each day. “We rented it because its floor was suitable for dancing, and more importantly it was cheap,” Tao said.
Most of his early works were presented in galleries: his TAO Dance Theater presented Do Beautify at Parcour Galerie in Nanluogu Xiang in April 2008.
Tao said the rent of a theater capable of seating 800 costs 10,000 yuan per hour. The price does not include the cost of lighting, stage designing and ticketing. Typically the theater and ticketing agent take 10 to 15 percent of the returns for each ticket.
In 2009, Tao and his dancers performed at Oriental Pioneer Theater, which admits fewer than 400 people. Tao participated in every process during the performance, from choreography to marketing.
They lost a small amount of money on the performances and ended up exhausted. “The future of our studio would have been bleak if we kept performing that way,” he said.
Instead, Tao began to focus on dance festivals.
“That helped us avoid money problems. If we are invited by international dance festivals, they provide us with a ticketing agent and accommodations. They also pay us to perform,” he said.
Since its founding, the studio has attended every dance festival on the mainland, including Beijing Modern Dance Week, which promotes communication between young domestic troupes and those in Europe and the Americas.
Last year, TAO Dance Theater performed in Amsterdam and Antwerp, Belgium. It has been invited to perform at next year’s American Dance Festival. The last company from the Chinese mainland to receive an invite was the Guangdong Modern Dance Company – 13 years ago.
Next year, it will also perform at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York.
“Some Chinese companies have performed at the center, but most of them rented the space on their own. We are the first dance troupe from the mainland to receive an invitation,” he said.
Besides creating and performing, Tao said one of the company’s targets was to promote modern dance among Chinese viewers. From March to December 2008, Tao hosted free dance workshops every Sunday at Penghao Theater and Fanxing Theater Village.
“I started the workshop when I founded my studio as a way to test the dance atmosphere in Beijing. To my surprise, more than 1,000 people have attended my workshop during the past four years,” he said. “Our aim is not to train professional modern dancers. We hope people will broaden their thinking through dance.”
Tao is optimistic about the future of his studio, but he is pessimistic about the situation of modern dance in China: only four years ago, it was much easier for a dancer to found a studio, he said.
“When I was penniless, I did not receive offers for commercial performances. The cost has skyrocketed in the past four years,” he said. “The new generation of young dancers will care more about their life and material temptations than we did.
“I do expect a bright future for modern dance in China, but the dancers will face a much tougher time.”
By He Jianwei
Modern dance companies worldwide are suffering as countries slash their budgets, but the situation is especially bad in China.
Unlike the dance companies in Europe and the US, those in China are not allocated any money by the government. High rent and low returns have been slowing their development and causing many to close their doors.
But some dancers continue their dreams. Tao Ye, founder of the TAO Dance Theater, has turned his six-dancer company into a competitive force in the world’s dance market.
Photo by Matthew G. Johnson
Photo provided by Tao Ye
Tao’s studio in the northeastern 318 Art Zone is a 30-minute trip from the central business district.
The studio, larger than half a basketball court, includes a rehearsal hall and has been the group’s home since earlier this year. It spent the last three years on the move.
Tao, a graduate of Chongqing Dance School, began his career with the Shanghai Army Song and Dance Ensemble before joining the Jin Xing Dance Theater in 2003.
In 2004, he worked with a physical performance company in Shanghai on its first dance production Tongue’s Memory of Home, inspired by popular poems penned by Shanghai poets born in the 1980s.
He went on to perform with many major dance companies, including Beijing Modern Dance Company between 2006 and 2008.
By He Jianwei
There were two legends about Germans in the hometown of acclaimed Chinese writer Mo Yan. One was that Germans have no knees, and if you push one down he can’t stand up. The other was that they had forked tongues, and the only way to learn German was to cut your tongue.
But racist misunderstandings did not run one-way. German paintings of Chinese people depicted them with peaked mouths, like birds, squatting in trees with their hair in a long braid.
While such imagery has thankfully been forgotten, other misunderstandings persist.
To enhance the communication between the two cultures, The Enlightenment of the Art opened in April at the National Museum of China. The yearlong project will help artists and scholars from Germany and China share their ideas about the Enlightenment and its effects on cross-cultural communication.
Rain caused temperatures in the capital to crash last Thursday, but the hall at the National Museum of China remained warm. Inside, professors were debating the European Enlightenment.
Gan Yang, head of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities at Sun Yat-sen University, said the Enlightenment had a profound effect on China, breaking down many superstitions between the end of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) and the May Fourth Movement of 1919.
But he cautioned against wholesale acceptance of Enlightenment thought as a new kind of superstition. “We should think rationally. It’s time for us to rethink how we view the Enlightenment,” he said.
Although both the audience and the German professors disagreed with his view, they praised the forum as a platform for an exchange of voices and ideas.
“The forum is an ideal platform for a joint debate of such differences, where we can talk in an open and honest manner rather than shrouded in confusion,.” said Wolf Lepenies, a professor from Free University of Berlin.
Lepenies cited French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss to emphasize the importance of differing opinions: “It is not the similarities which resemble one another but rather the differences.”
But the exhibition halls were comparatively desolate.
The exhibition is a collection of 600 paintings, sculptures, books, costumes and furniture from the Berlin State Museums, the Dresden State Art Collections and the Bavarian State Painting Collections in Munich.
It is divided into nine chapters that exemplify the ideas of the Enlightenment and demonstrate its influence on fine arts and it effects on history.
The joint exhibition, held at the National Museum of China, is financed by the German Foreign Office and was one of the most important German-Chinese cultural exchanges agreed upon in 2005.
The organizers chose Gottlieb Schick’s Portrait of Heinrike Dannecker as part of the exhibition. In the painting, a young woman sits on a bench in open air. It was drawn in 1802, the late years of Enlightenment in German literature.
Before the Enlightenment, European artists were raised and supported by the aristocracy. Drawings were made for the aristocracy and ordinary people rarely had the chance to ask painters to draw a portrait.
Dannecker was the wife of a Stuttgart court sculptor. Under the influence of the French Revolution, she wore a white blouse, red vest and blue dress, which alluded to the French colors of freedom.
“The portrait by Schick reflected values we ignored before the movement. We chose it because it illustrates the core of the exhibition,” said Michael Eissenhauer, general director of the Berlin State Museums.
He said the Enlightenment is really the eternal question of how to be a human.
Besides the European artists’ works, the exhibition also shows the influence of Chinese art during that time in the chapter “Far and Near.”
China was an exotic, idealized world that inspired many artists, writers and philosophers in Europe as a projection of an enlightened state. One philosophy book shows a German’s imaging of Confucian as having a long blond beard and papal cap and gown.
Most exhibits in this chapter show cultural communication between Europe and China in the 18th century. It includes porcelain fired in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province with Dutch patterns.
The most prominent work is the original etchings depicting the pacification of minorities in Xinjiang during the reign of the Emperor Qianlong (1711-1799), presented by the Berlin State Museum.
The 16 etchings record the fighting, surrender and celebration, and were made at the request of the Qianlong Emperor by Italian missionary and court painter Giuseppe Castiglione and French missionary Jean Denis Attiret.
They made the sketches in China and created etchings in Paris. It took 11 years to finish the project. In 1900, when military forces of the Eight-Nation Alliance occupied Beijing, they etchings were taken to Europe.
It is easy to define the Enlightenment in literature, but in terms of art, it is always divided into the styles of baroque, rococo, classical, neo-classic, romanticist and modern. “We selected the exhibits to suit the Englightenment, not as an exhibition of art history,” Eissenhauer said.
The last chapter, “The Revolution of Art,” concludes with the present day and investigates the legacy of enlightenment ideas in modern art, including the works by Joseph Beuys and Andy Warhol.
Chinese organizers proposed the idea of presenting contemporary artists’ works, but the Germans were reluctant. Organizers eventually persuaded them that the independent and free spirit of the Enlightenment never ended, and continues to influence contemporary artists.
“I do not think the Enlightenment will ever end,” said Chen Ping, an official from the Ministry of Culture. “In each era, we need the spirit of Enlightenment in art and form. China needs it. Even Europe needs it today.”
By He Jianwei
There were two legends about Germans in the hometown of acclaimed Chinese writer Mo Yan. One was that Germans have no knees, and if you push one down he can’t stand up. The other was that they had forked tongues, and the only way to learn German was to cut your tongue.
But racist misunderstandings did not run one-way. German paintings of Chinese people depicted them with peaked mouths, like birds, squatting in trees with their hair in a long braid.
While such imagery has thankfully been forgotten, other misunderstandings persist.
To enhance the communication between the two cultures, The Enlightenment of the Art opened in April at the National Museum of China. The yearlong project will help artists and scholars from Germany and China share their ideas about the Enlightenment and its effects on cross-cultural communication.
The fourth forum held last Thursday/Photo provided by Storymaker
CFP Photos
Rain caused temperatures in the capital to crash last Thursday, but the hall at the National Museum of China remained warm. Inside, professors were debating the European Enlightenment.
Gan Yang, head of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities at Sun Yat-sen University, said the Enlightenment had a profound effect on China, breaking down many superstitions between the end of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) and the May Fourth Movement of 1919.
But he cautioned against wholesale acceptance of Enlightenment thought as a new kind of superstition. “We should think rationally. It’s time for us to rethink how we view the Enlightenment,” he said.
Although both the audience and the German professors disagreed with his view, they praised the forum as a platform for an exchange of voices and ideas.
“The forum is an ideal platform for a joint debate of such differences, where we can talk in an open and honest manner rather than shrouded in confusion,.” said Wolf Lepenies, a professor from Free University of Berlin.
