Frozen on the shadow puppet stage
2021-11-26 11:39:47Source: People’s Daily Overseas Edition
“Ice and Snow Shadow Puppets” with the theme of the Winter Olympics.Photo courtesy of the interviewee
“Like mom, the Winter Olympics is coming. You are a sports expert. Tell us what sports are there?” On the shadow window, a naive penguin “dumb” milkyly Say. Before the words were over, the elephant mother next to him introduced: “There are so many events for the Winter Olympics, look! There are speed skating, as well as ski jumping, alpine skiing, cross-country skiing…” Along with its description, the shadow puppet character Performing a skiing action on a skateboard, holding a hockey stick to play the hockey, lifelike and vivid. Walking behind the shadow window, seven “string-taking” artists skillfully manipulated the bamboo sticks and controlled the shadow actors of different dresses and sizes to complete the performance.
This is the “Ice and Snow Games” fragment of a shadow puppet show “Looking for a Snow Girl” recently created by Beijing Longzaitian Shadow Art Theater. Not long ago, the “Ice and Snow Games” boarded the CCTV Opera Channel, and many Winter Olympics projects were presented to the audience in the form of shadow puppets, which was refreshing. The director of the theater Wang Xi said: “In the past, shadow puppets had fighting movements and ballets, but it was the first time that shadow puppets were used to represent the Winter Olympics. The actors gained a sense of accomplishment.”
With the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics approaching, people’s attention to ice and snow sports is gradually increasing. Beijing Longzaitian Shadow Puppet Art Theater explores how to combine the ancient intangible art of shadow puppetry with the theme of the Winter Olympics in the form of fairy tales Introduce the Winter Olympics so that more people can learn about the Winter Olympics and participate in ice and snow sports. “Looking for a Snow Girl” is their first Winter Olympic theme shadow puppet show.
The main images in “Searching for the Snow Girl” include characters such as the Ice Prince and Snow Girl, and animal images such as Elephant Mother, Elephant Brother Dundun and Penguin Benben. During the migration, the elephant’s brother Dundun met the ice prince who had lost his partner; when the little penguin was running away from home, he met the snow girl who had separated from the ice prince. With the help of the little animals, the ice prince and the snow girl finally met on the ice. It turned out that they were figure skaters in the Winter Olympics. In the laughter, the ice prince and the snow girl demonstrated ice hockey and curling skills to the animals, and finally performed figure skating.
Due to the involvement of multiple ice and snow sports, traditional shadow puppet performances do not have corresponding action programs. In the early stage of creation, the actors need to overcome the shortcomings of less understanding of the Winter Olympics sports. To this end, they watched a large number of video materials of the Winter Games, summarized the performance essentials of various actions, and filmed the effects of each performance, and constantly compared and improved them.
“When performing shadow puppets, every action that the shadow man completes on the screen, such as playing ice hockey, playing curling, figure skating, etc., requires the tacit cooperation of the backstage actors. When completing difficult actions such as throwing and jumping, each shadow man needs more At least two actors have to cooperate and manipulate to complete. After three months of rehearsal, the play was polished to its current appearance.” Wang Xi said.
In order to make the characters on the shadow puppet stage intimate and moving, and close to the young audience, “In Search of Snow Maiden” also specially designed elephants, penguins and other animal images, and included fairy tale plots in the narration, and staged a frozen relationship between people and animals. . “Ice hockey is like playing hockey on ice. Players are required to be able to skate and play hockey.” “Look, the curling they hold is like an elephant chess”… There is no shortage of such lively and popular performances. His lines stimulated the enthusiasm of the audience to approach the ice and snow sports.
In addition to the lively performance, the image of the filmmaker in “Looking for the Snow Maiden” is also remarkable. The shapes of the ice prince and snow girl in the works are inspired by the “double figure” skating costumes for ice sports. The costume pattern of the ice prince is decorated with “flame”, which means the sport is energetic and passionate; the costume of Snow Maiden is decorated with “snowflakes”, which means crystal clear, dynamic and soft. “These two patterns are also commonly used in traditional shadow puppet art. Thousand-year intangible cultural heritage and ice and snow sports are ingeniously integrated and complement each other.” Figure skating, ice hockey, curling and other 15 kinds of sports action characteristics, based on the Beijing shadow puppet modeling, developed 15’ice and snow shadow puppet sculpture works’, made into a series of ice and snow theme shadow puppet wall lamp “Ice Sword Butterfly Dance”. Hope Everyone can feel the modern vitality of traditional art through shadow puppets and these derivative artworks.” (Zhang Yujun and Zhang Pengyu)
“People’s Daily Overseas Edition” (November 26, 2021 Edition 07)
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