New dance era

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many dance companies to put shows on hold and postpone plans. However, it has generated new ideas for the troupes to experiment and move beyond virtual shows as a way to revive live performances.

Earlier this year, Gao Shan, a teacher of creative studies at the Beijing Dance Academy, came up with the idea of displaying dance videos of his students made during the pandemic. This has been developed into a larger event to showcase videos from Chinese dancers and choreographers, and international dance companies.

The Beijing International Dance Video Festival was launched on Tuesday, and it will be a part of the 12th Beijing International Film Festival, running from Aug 13 to 20.

With a theme of "more love", the Beijing International Dance Video Festival will feature six sections, showing audiences how dance has been combined with videos and how the language of dance has been interpreted through the videos.

"When I was a young student, I was deeply touched by dance works I watched on TV and in movies. With the development of technology, dance videos have been developed and become a new language to deliver dance works," says Gao, mentioning that two dance works he watched on TV impressed him the most as a young dancer: Spirit of the Peacock, an award-winning work choreographed by Yang Liping, which was inspired by the lithe and graceful hand movements of the bird-related dance of the ethnic Bai people from Yunnan province, and Pina, a dance movie by the iconic dancer-choreographer Pina Bausch and her longtime friend, filmmaker Wim Wenders.

"The impact of the pandemic is way beyond our imagination. It has heavily affected the performing arts industry. However, our artists are so creative that they used cameras to record and show dance works in a way which is very different from tradition," says Pan Yan, secretary-general of China Association of Performing Arts.

"We are very excited to see how artists try to dance though they cannot dance in theaters. They keep the dancing scene vibrant and keep the audiences engaged."

The festival has invited Chinese dancers and choreographers to submit their dance videos. From over 300 dance videos, the committee of the festival selected 91 that will be screened during the festival.

"We are surprised to watch those videos because of the creativity of the artists," says Willy Tsao, one of the pioneers who brought contemporary dance to China in the 1980s. "They have a wide vision about dance, which is traditionally staged indoors. They were inspired by their life changes during the pandemic and they reflected upon the relationship between dance and themselves."

In 1979, Tsao, who was born in Hong Kong, founded the City Contemporary Dance Company, the first modern dance troupe in Hong Kong. In 1991, he helped set up the Guangdong Modern Dance Company, the first professional company of the genre on the Chinese mainland. In 1999, he became artistic director of the Beijing Modern Dance Company, and in 2005, he founded Beijing Dance LDTX.

"When we watched the dance videos, we were inspired to gain a new understanding of dance and excited to find out that dance is given a new dimension through such videos. We hope that the audience will share the same sense of excitement and not only enjoy the visual pleasure but also feel the emotions delivered by the dance videos," says Tsao, who serves as the president of the festival committee.

A group of leading Chinese dancers and choreographers have joined the committee, including Cao Shuci, principal ballerina of the National Ballet of China, and Wang Yabin, a renowned dancer-choreographer.

According to Ou Jianping, a dance critic and researcher who is the honorary president of the Dance Research Institute at Chinese National Academy of Arts, dance videos, a way to expand dance audiences and inspire dancers and choreographers to create with new ideas, have developed fast in China.

In 1998, a weeklong event displaying French dance videos was held in Beijing. That was considered the first such event in the capital. In 2001, Guangdong ATV Vocational College for the Performing Arts launched a course on dance videos, which was one of the first of its kind in Chinese colleges. Since then, creating dance through videos has become an academic research subject at Chinese dance schools.

During the festival, in one of the sections, 13 groups of dancers and choreographers will livestream their dance at landmarks in six cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. Within 48 hours, videos will be made of their work and screened on Tencent Video, a popular video platform. Over Aug 5-31, 35 dance videos will be screened on the platform.

According to Wang, the videos to be shown have been categorized based on their contents, such as nature and traditional Chinese culture.

Videos of classic works will also be screened, including the 3D dance movie Pina, The Tango Lesson directed by Sally Potter and Finding Your Feet directed by Richard Loncraine and a re-edited version of the popular Chinese dance reality show Dancing Millennium, which was jointly produced by Henan TV and video platform Bilibili. Forums and workshops will also be held during the festival.

The event will conclude with a carnival on Aug 28 at Langyuan Vintage, a space that's home to bookshops, restaurants and coffee shops.