Winners of highest government stage art award unveiled

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Ten stage plays won China’s top stage art award in Shanghai during the closing ceremony of the 12th China Arts Festival on Sunday.

The Wenhua Grand Award, presented at China's highest-level arts festival every three years, honors those plays that center on people, inherit the traditional culture and embody today's artistic achievement.

A photo showing a scene from the Wenhua Grand Award winner "The Eternal Wave" /Photo via Xinhua News Agency

This year, there are 38 candidates in four categories of traditional Chinese operas, opera, dance drama and play, in the competition. They have been staged in Shanghai theaters in more than 70 performances since May 15.

Dance drama 'Avenue to the Sky'

The laureate dance drama "Avenue to the Sky”, co-produced by National Center for the Performing Arts and Beijing Dance Drama and Opera, was inspired by the story behind the construction of the first railroad in the “roof of the world” – Tibet Autonomous Region.

A photo showing a scene from the Wenhua Grand Award winner "Avenue to the Sky" /VCG Photo

Qinghai-Tibet railway, which was constructed about half a century ago, is the world's highest and longest railway in the plateau. Its construction faces many problems, including a harsh natural environment of cold, oxygen shortage, and permafrost, as well as cultural differences between construction workers of Han people and local Tibetan herders in languages and ways of thinking.

To portray images of different character groups, strong and uniform contemporary dance and ethnic style of Tibetan dance are used in the drama.

Despite group dance, solo dance, duet dance and trio dance describe the delicate emotions of characters amid complex relationships, such as kinship, friendship and brotherhood, at the hilarious moments of reunion or sad time of departing.

A photo showing a scene from the Wenhua Grand Award winner "Avenue to the Sky" /VCG Photo

“Many comic and tragic dance pieces give audience dramatic emotional experience. You may find yourself are happy in this moment and instantly low in the next moment,” said Zhou Ge, the dance drama's director.

No matter joy or sorrow, to complete the Qinghai-Tibet railway is the common hope of all. As both a spiritual and material road, the railway directs Tibetan people a way to their belief and wealth, but at the cost of those who lost their lives during the construction, represented by every pillow wood and butter lamp.

Dance drama 'The Eternal Wave'

Based on a true story from the 1930s, the dance drama tells a member of Communist Party of China Li Bai who sent information via secret radiotelegraphy station from Shanghai to Yan'an, the Party's wartime stronghold, for more than a decade, but was discovered and cruelly murdered by the enemy just days before the victory.

A photo showing a scene from the Wenhua Grand Award winner "The Eternal Wave" /Photo via Xinhua News Agency

Thanks to the film and TV play of the same name, the story is well known to the public. But it is the first time for the spy story to be adapted into a dance drama by Shanghai Dance Theatre.

The drama uses 26 movable pieces of stage scenery and multimedia projector to present all scenes. Unlike traditional linear spatiotemporal narrative, it displays a comparative and comprehensive stage time and space through the usage of film method montage to create a suspenseful atmosphere.

The symbolic characters of old Shanghai appear in the drama, including traditional Shanghainese-style house gate (Shikumen), old alleyways (Longtang), newspaper office, and cheongsam tailor's shop.

A photo showing a scene from the Wenhua Grand Award winner "The Eternal Wave" /Photo via Xinhua News Agency

“‘The Eternal Wave' attracted many young audience. They see Shanghai culture, hear Shanghai voice, recall the memory of old Shanghai, and are deeply moved by the red culture,” Liu Guowen, vice-chairman of Shanghai Dramatists Association, told the Paper.

Other winners include dance drama “Heroic Little Sisters of the Grasslands”, plays “Gu Wenchang” and “Liu Qing”, Shaanxi Opera “Wang Gui and Li Xiangxiang,” Yu Opera “Chongdugou”, Su Opera “The Spirit of China Nation”，Hebei Clapper Opera “Li Baoguo,” and folk opera "Ma Xiangyang's Tour to the Countryside.”

(Top image: A stage photo of "Avenue to the Sky." /VCG Photo)