Series Outstanding Performances from China's National Art Troupes

Great Repertoire of National Art Ensembles 2011: Song & Dance The Painting of Four Beauties

Venue： Theatre

Dates： Sept. 14, 2011-Sept. 15, 2011

Duration： approximate 90 mins, no intermissions

Price： VIP/480/400/320/200/120 RMB 

About

The Four Great Beauties engraves on Chinese mind for more than a millennium and enriches Chinese descendants' boundless imagination. Why can they emerge as the symbol of delicacy and beauty[.] This is not only because they are endowed with admirable looking, but also distinctive and legendary experience: their fates are closely linked with those of their states. Beauty is more than static features, arched eyebrows, piercing eyes and cherry-shaped lips, but rather dynamic options and choices.

Born in trouble times, when the Four Beauties either entice the enemies into trouble or save their nation out of imminent perils, the individual affection and their lives are reduced into the meaningless vacancy. What they leave are traces of solicitude and attachment toward their motherland, which warm and inspire numerous later generations, and trigger our endless associations in mind.

The recall on beauties reveals the query and deliberation raised by modern people. Is beauty eternal[.] If it is not, we should cherish beauty rather than destroy it. The vanishing of beauty is irresistible, what can do is to cherish. Youth is beautiful, time is beautiful, friendship is beautiful, and trust is beautiful...

The beauty starts from elegance, which turns into grandeur, and then pathos, and finally pageantry. Li Yugang is the watcher of beauty, and even the watcher of love. Without this faithful watch, the four distinctive styles of beauty are hard to be unveiled. The sentiments of our watcher are unleashed through five interlinked modern poems.

Music dance works display the beauty of beauties, while the modern poems express the beauty of Li Yugang as a beauty watcher, which are integrated via screen and stage, shadow and form, with a view to uttering his query for beauty differentiated from others.

Artist: Li Yugang

Li Yugang Born in a common farmers' family in Gongzhuling City, Jilin Province in 1978, Li Yugang is a national-level Grade-A performer from China Opera and Dance Drama Theater, who is a member of the All-China Youth Federation. He develops an artistic school of her own, with impersonating women on stage with startling vividness, who blends Chinese folk songs, dance and traditional opera into an integrated form, and emerges as another legendary personality after the world-renown Peking Opera master Mei Lanfang. In July 2006, Li Yugang was catapulted to fame with his outstanding performance at CCTV's popular program Super Stars, thereby becoming the icon lionized by millions of audiences across China. Afterwards, he joined in China Opera and Dance Drama Theater as a special talent, setting the precedent for “grassroots star” in national-level artistic troupe. What is worth noting is that he achieves a great success in TV and film sector and plays important roles in The World Second, Migration Movement to the Northeast China II and At the Depths of Various flowers, which prove his remarkable performance potentials.

Performer: China National Opera and Dance Drama Theatre

China National Opera and Dance Drama Theatre converges Guo Lanying, Zhao Qing, Chen Ailian and other representative famous performance artists, from which many popular young artists have emerged in recent years. In the past fifty years, it performs and rehearses nearly 100 famous operas and dance dramas, such as operas The White-haired Girl, Injustice of Dou'Er and Wilderness, dance dramas Dream of Red Mansions, Dancing Girl of Tongque Platform, Shadow of Fence Wall and so on. In recent years, it has been committed to creating and performing musical plays, which rolls out a number of excellent plays such as Lady General Hua Mulan. It successfully fulfills creation and performance tasks for large-scale music and dance epic Oriental Red, the Asian Games, International Arts Festival, International Choral Festival and reception for foreign heads of state visiting China (such as former U.S. President Bill Clinton). And it organizes and independently sponsors many national-level large-scale variety shows. In addition, colorful singing and dancing works have been highly praised by the nationwide audiences.

China National Opera and Dance Drama Theatre also sends several delegations to perform in many countries across Europe, America, Asia, Africa and Latin America, which not only makes its own contributions to promoting international cultural exchange and friendship among Chinese people and foreign people, but also wins many honors for our motherland. Synopsis Wandered into the paintings, Li Yugang magically turns into the four beauties to respectively display their personalities, savor their sadness and happiness, understand worldly vicissitudes, experience homelessness in turmoil, think about the significance of beauty, and voice the aspiration for love...

One after another, what Li Yugang feels is tears or infinite regrets rather than the deserved happiness. He not only feels shocks for their beauty, but also sighs at their miseries. After taking off gorgeous costumes, he comes out from the last painting as a man. As he going off the stage, the beauties on the paintings gradually fade away and turn into four white strips falling from the height. All is nothingness...