Traditional values prove to be a winning combination

TV station finds the past is a good way to attract future viewers, Chen Nan reports.

By Chen Nan | China Daily
Updated: Nov 13, 2021
The Paper Fan Scholars uses AR technology to present their dance in front of Songyue Temple Pagoda.[Photo provided China Daily]

While most TV stations and video-streaming platforms try to attract viewers by producing star-studded reality shows, regional broadcaster Henan TV has gone viral by promoting traditional culture through Chinese dance.

At the beginning of the year, a dance piece titled A Tang Dynasty Banquet, which is less than six minutes long and produced by Henan TV, was staged during a gala aired on the TV station on Feb 13, marking Spring Festival. With a combination of live dance an technology like 5G and augmented reality, which supported the display of national treasures, such as Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk by Tang Dynasty (618-907) painter Zhang Xuan and a bone flute with a history of over 8,000 years, the dance piece has since gone viral on social media, viewed more than 500 million times.

Since then, Henan TV has produced seven dance pieces highlighting traditional culture for traditional festivals, such as Rhapsody on the Luo River Goddess, a two-minute underwater dance for the Dragon Boat Festival. Guardian Warriors of Longmen, another dance piece supported by AR technology against the backdrop of the Longmen Grottoes, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Luoyang, Henan province, was released during the Qixi Festival, often known as Chinese Valentine's Day.

"The total views of the seven dance pieces have achieved nearly 30 billion hits on social media platforms," says Yao Wei, vice-director of Henan TV, who is also the director of the TV station's Innovation Center. "It's a huge success for Henan TV."

On Nov 1, Yao participated in a three-day forum launched by the Beijing Dance Academy, centering on the research of Chinese dance, which gathered more than 200 experts. Yao was invited to talk about how the TV station had produced those hit dance pieces by relying on Chinese culture and tradition.

Those pieces made an emotional connection with the audience, most of whom are Gen Z, who are broadly defined as people born after the mid-1990s, Yao says.

The Paper Fan Scholars, a dance piece by Beijing Dance Academy and Henan TV.[Photo provided China Daily]

"It's been over four decades since the country's reform and opening-up and the younger generations grew up with open minds. With abundant resources and opportunities, they embrace Chinese culture and feel proud about it," says Yao. "What we need to do is to bring Chinese culture and tradition through interesting ways for those young people."

Yao adds that Henan TV Station has been producing shows highlighting traditional culture, such as traditional operas, martial arts and antiques, for nearly three decades.

"Appealing to the younger audiences, we are also changing our shows. One of the keys is to produce content with strong visual creativity," Yao says. "For example, the latest technology and unconventional stage setting, like underwater scenes, have become our new ways of telling stories about traditional Chinese culture, rather than simple narrating history with traditional video content."

Another key to successfully reach the younger audiences is by using social media platforms to promote their shows.

"Social media is being shaped and driven by young people. It's a powerful form of communication. When they take a quick scroll through their phones, they easily become interested in an eye-catching video," Yao says.

"Though those dance videos are short, we spent a very long time working on the choreography and dancers had to dance more than 30 times, repeating the moves over and over again in front of multiple cameras, which capture their movements through different angles," adds Li Yongming, who is the dance director of Henan TV's series of dance pieces based on traditional Chinese holidays. Li is also the vice-president of Henan Dancers Association.

Dancers from Beijing Dance Academy perform a dance piece, Xiang He Ge, in combination with cinematography techniques.[Photo provided China Daily]

One of the hit dance pieces by Henan TV is titled The Paper Fan Scholars, choreographed by Hu Yan, a professor of Beijing Dance Academy. Premiered in 2018, the dance piece is performed by 12 male dancers of the Beijing Dance Academy.

The version broadcast by Henan TV saw the dancers perform outdoor. Within a week-long shoot, dancers performed at different locations in Henan province, including Songyue Temple Pagoda, located at the south foot of Songshan Mountain, Shaolin Temple, and Zhongyue Temple.

"With the combination of traditional Chinese dance and those ancient temples, audiences get a fresh visual experience and have a direct involvement with Chinese history and culture," says Qian Linlin, director of the dance piece. "I've read many messages left by the viewers, saying that they want to come to Henan and visit those temples by themselves."

According to Hu Yan, choreographer of the dance piece, paper fans are used by all of the male dancers throughout the dance piece, which is a symbolic element for traditional Chinese dance. The dancers, who play the role of ancient scholars, read poems, drink wine and dance with fans, expressing amusement and joy.

The change of stage set from indoor theater to outdoor is challenging for dancers, he says. For example, when dancers performed among the trees of Shaolin Temple, the ground was wet, which led to a reflection of the dancers.

"The special design was created to appeal to a beautiful visual effect on the screen, which needed the dancers to control their balance while dancing," says Hu. "We are still learning about how to present dance moves through short videos, which is a new thing for us."

The Paper Fan Scholars is presented on-site on top of Laojun Mountain.[Photo provided China Daily]

A new show, titled Dancing Through the Millennium, which is coproduced by Henan TV and Chinese video platform Bilibili, premiered on Bilibili on Nov 6.

Thirteen dance groups from top troupes are featured in the show, including the China National Opera & Dance Drama Theater, the National Ballet of China, and Beijing Dance Academy. Each episode displays one classic dance piece performed by dancers from different troupes. Those dance pieces have been produced and presented with cinematography techniques. Chinese history and culture related to each dance piece is narrated in the show.

In the first episode, a group of female dancers of the Beijing Dance Academy performed Xiang He Ge, choreographed by Sun Ying from Beijing Dance Academy. The female dancers, wearing costumes of the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220), chant poems and dance on and off drums, creating rhythms with their feet. Premiered in 2009, the dance piece is an excerpt of Sun's dance drama, titled Dancing Girl of Tongque Platform.

In the show, the dance piece was presented through cinematography techniques, which allows audiences to enjoy the dance movements with a close distance, says Zhang Xing, a professor of Beijing Dance Academy.

"Poem, dance and music are three important elements of traditional Chinese culture, which are all featured in one dance piece," Zhang adds.

The first episode of the new show was viewed more than 8 million times within 24 hours.

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