Salute to life
- Source: Global Times
- [08:44 December 30 2010]
- Comments
Dancer-choreographer Yang Liping. Photo: CFP
By Jiang Yuxia
The cultural richness of Yunnan's ethnic minorities will once again be center-stage. The force behind it is none other than the celebrated dancer-choreographer, Yang Liping. Her original ethnic dance musicals - with deep roots in the traditions of Yunnan's ethnic groups and drawn from their everyday life - have won her both artistic acclaim and huge commercial success.
The fourth round of Dynamic Yunnan, a dance epic filled with songs and dances celebrating the sun, the moon and Yunnan's folk legends, will be staged with awe-inspiring effects in Beijing in mid-January.
Debuting in 2003, Dynamic Yunnan is the first of Yang's three original ethnic dance repertoires. This includes Tibetan Myth (2007), a unique interpretation of Tibetan culture and Buddhism, and Sounds from Yunnan (2009), which highlights the natural sounds and folk culture of over 20 minority ethnic groups in Yunnan.
With every movement and tune coming from real life, Yang's modern staging endowed them with new elements. With original period costumes, musical instruments and simple but enthusiastic performance, Yang captures the charm of ethnic groups that is often overlooked by professional dancers.
Named "bimo," the witch with the gift of dancing by her Bai ethnic fellows, Yang said that the dance dramas were created to deliver the ethnic people's aboriginal understanding of and attitude towards life, nature and the universe. "We, people of ethnic groups, dance without any utilitarian purpose. We dance to sing in praise of the sun and life, we dance to enjoy the nature," Yang told the Global Times.
Although her works do not show much pain and suffering that exist in real life, she said that they are embodied in the works, but shown in a different way. "It doesn't mean that there is no bitterness and illness in life, but we use our emotions to emphasize bitterness, which is natural as it indicates our understating and perception of life," she added.
