The Butterfly Lovers, The Cultural Revolution and the Arts in China BAM

Note the fist raised....

Xiaomei Chen UC  Davis

  Liberating Western Ballet under Socialism:  Native Adaptation, National Mobilization, and Post -Socialist reinvention. 


Chen declaims and assumes a revolutionary posture, herself, exclaiming that the West should not view the dancers as victims of the Cultural revolution; it gave them a stage for their talents which they had never had in another time.  She emphasizes the creative role in war mobilization efforts which spread modern dance to broader audiences and a ballet performance entitled "Peace Dove" (Heping Ge) in 1950, following the founding of the PRC in 1949, which had a clear anti-US Imperialist theme to promote in a socialist nationalism in China in the  cold war era.  She sees the Golden Age being during the Cultural  revolution when two ballet performances became "model theater" for the masses to serve the common people, and for the artists to follow.... and then she concludes with the 1990s when a market economy challenged post socialist theater and restaging of model ballets created new waves of nostalgia for the "red classics". One example is the conversion of the white swan in Swan Lake, to a red swan who embraces the revolution.  She is proud of the fact which she stresses is that no other nation puts its revolution on the stage....I am not quite sure she is accurate there!  She continues the  Maoist line, in saying that the memory
of the Maoist period, now considered "more equal", whatever is meant by that-- than post Mao society, led to the form's renewed popularity and to commercial success.  "Model ballets' have survived political turmoil, economic reform, ideological transformation from socialism to capitalism, and have kept their crown status as a brilliant achievement of Chinese ballet "

THE BUTTERFLY LOVERS
"For more than three decaes, the Shanghai Ballet has dazzled international audiences with its unique repertoire of folk -infused Chinese ballet and classical Western masterworks.  The "Romeo and Juliet" of --a poignant love story dating to the Tang Dynasty -- follows a young couple's ill fated romance through elegant choreography, splendid costumes and evocative sets; in the first act, bamboo; in the second, willows, and in the third, maples and in the last act, snow.  Both the natural and supernatural worlds are represented in this bittersweet tragic story with expressive hand gestures, theatrical pantomime and classical technique.   I saw this ballet more than one time in China, and once in Shanghai with this ballet company.  It is a lovely lyrical work. The typical conflict occurs: her love cannot marry her, because he can not present the family with the required riches of cloths, pearls and so on, and when he visit her, she is already engaged to a man of prominent and acceptable family.  The servants of both families beat and torture the young lover, and kill him;  when the young heroine is on her way in the palanquin to her new husband's family, a terrible storm arises... and her palanquin is broken, and when she tumbles out, she sees her lover's grave.  She hits her head against the stone and falls into the grave, joining him in death, if not in life, in love.  

Emily Wilcox, Univ of Michigan, Ann Arbor "Chinese in Content and Socialist in Form:  Chinese Ballet and the Cultural Revolution's Reversal of a National Cultural Movement.  

Her synopsis reads:  "In the early years of the Peoples Republic of China, one of the most ubiquitous official slogans guiding artistic creation was the so-called "national culture" policy, stipulating that art should be "socialist in content and national in form"   This policy was intended to protect distinctively Chinese artistic styles and techniques, while allowing for the insertion of new socialist characters and stories.  During the Cultural Revolution, this policy was significantly altered, leading to the abandonment of many indigenous aesthetic approaches.  Chinese ballet - or the use of ballet technique to convey Chinese stories - can be seen as a post -cultural revolution reversal of the "national culture" policy, one which drives continued debate in the contemporary Chinese art community today.  This presentation will provide context for and description of "the Butterfly Lovers", which is handled more fully by Xin Lili, Artistic Director of the Shanghai Ballet, in translation.