DANCING TO A DIFFERENT TUNE
Contemporary dancer and choreographer, Wang Yuanyuan’s latest production breaks new ground with its combination of dance and dialogue. Chen Nan reports.
Contemporary dancer and choreographer, Wang Yuanyuan has lost her voice working on new dance pieces on two occasions.
The first time was four years ago when she was choreographing
Wild Grass, which took its inspiration from the renowned Chinese writer Lu Xun’s 1927 poem collection of the same name.
The second time was for her latest piece, A Leaf in the Storm, based on a war novel by Lin Yutang (1895-1976).
On June 6, five hours before the premiere of A Leaf in the Storm,
Wang returns to the Tianqiao Performing Arts in Beijing, where she spent most of the past 48 hours ensuring that all the detailed preparation work like rehearsals, stage setting and sound checks are all running smoothly.
“She has been rehearsing 12 hours a day for about half a month. She will go to hospital after the premiere,” says Han Jiang, Wang’s husband, who is a renowned lighting and stage set designer. “However, when the show is finally done, it will be clear that it has been worthwhile.”
There is little doubt that the intensive rehearsals have taken their toll on Wang’s health, especially as she is nervous about the new piece because it is the first production in which she has combined dance with dialogue.
“It took us two months to train the dancers,” explains Han. “They had to speak onstage like dramatic actors, which is very challenging.”
The idea to combine the two disciplines stems from her relationship with the Beijing Repertory Theater, which she co-founded in June 2017 with Han and set designer Tan Shaoyuan.
Last September, Wang made her directorial debut with a production of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s 1888 stage drama, The Lady From The Sea.
The experience of working with dramatic actors must have struck a chord of inspiration within the dance choreographer.
For Wang, the bold project will also mark the 10th anniversary of her company — the Beijing Dance Theater.
“We wanted to do something different,” she explains, her voice low and husky. “For the company, it was time to try something new. We wanted to combine contemporary dance with many other art forms, like musicals and opera.”
She continues, “The line between different art forms is quite blurred these days and audiences are open to them.” Wang first encountered A Leaf
in the Storm — which was published in 1941, and is about the lives of several characters in Beijing during the Japanese invasion — about ten years ago.
What drove her to adapt the novel into a piece of contemporary dance were the vivid characters like Yao Boya, a wealthy, married man who is facing a crisis in his relationship with a woman named Danni.
“The romance, hope, belief, madness and death portrayed in the novel continue to run wild in my imagination,” Wang croaks excitedly through her strained vocal chords. “It will still relate to a contemporary audience, even though the novel tells a story set during the 1940s.”
After its Beijing residency, A
Leaf in the Storm will tour around the country, as will the company’s 2015 production, Oscar Wilde’s
The Nightingale and the Rose, this year. Over the next five years, several productions by the Beijing Dance Theater, including Wild
Grass and Haze, will hit the road and visit theaters around China.
Born and raised in Beijing, Wang started learning Chinese dance at 10 years old and graduated from the Beijing Dance Academy in 1995, before she studied contemporary dance choreography.
From 2000 to 2002 she trained at the California Institute of Arts’ School of Dance in Los Angeles. She was named resident choreographer at the National Ballet of China and was invited to serve as guest choreographer at the New York City Ballet in 2003.
She is widely celebrated for choreographing the ballet Raise
the Red Lantern directed by Zhang Yimou, the dance scenes in director Feng Xiaogang’s movie,
The Banquet, and for her part in the production of the 2008 Beijing Olympics’ opening ceremony.
Since founding the company in 2008 with Han and Tan, she has choreographed 15 dance compositions and toured the world.
With no government support, the trio rely on grants, commissions and ticket sales.
Recalling her decision to start the Beijing Dance Theater, Wang says that it was out of pure idealism and admits she still has mixed feelings about it.
“Artists speak through their work. I want to create movement I’ve never seen. I want to move the body in new and different ways,” she says, adding that it’s the same reason why she founded the Beijing Repertory Theater, which enables her to explore a different way of self-expression.
“Unfortunately, I cannot just focus on the art. I have to also manage the company.”
In China, contemporary dance is still a minority interest and, as such, in the early years, getting funding was a struggle for Wang.
However, the turning point came in 2011 when she staged her controversial dance piece, The
Golden Lotus, a stage adaptation of the 16th-century novel, widely considered to be one of China’s most erotic works.
The dance piece was commissioned by the Hong Kong Arts Festival and premiered there, bringing Wang’s company a lot of exposure and opportunities despite the controversy surrounding it.
For Han, who married Wang eight years after they first met, the company reached its peak after that performance, garnering a lot of invitations to tour abroad.
“Our shows have been booked until 2020 and we are proud to still have an international audience after so many years of hard work,” he notes.
Han, who worked for the National Ballet of China for over a decade before he co-founded the Beijing Dance Theater in 2008, concludes: “It’s her dream to choreograph new works and my job is to fulfill her vision.”