In the 2024 Henan Spring Festival Gala, Yang Liping's dance "Phoenix Singing Chaoyang" amazed everyone, dancing a different kind of romance in China, phoenix dance for nine days, and every dance step has a unique spirituality. As an auspicious symbol in Chinese culture, the phoenix is a mythical bird in ancient Chinese legends, the mysterious king of birds, symbolizing hope and beauty. 
The leading role of the dance work "Fengming Chaoyang" fragment "Fengming Chaoyang" Phoenix is Yang Liping's apprentice Cheng Peiying. She is dressed in a gorgeous dance costume and uses a dance posture full of tension to create an image of a phoenix with oriental aesthetics, like an elf. There is a scene in the performance where a phoenix sipping by the river, and the dancer's body is light and agile, which is breathtaking. 
The fragment of the dance work "Phoenix Singing and Rising Sun" is using his own life to express his response to another beautiful life, every movement has a sense of divine beauty, and the dancer and the phoenix are integrated, noble and tenacious. At the end of the dance, the phoenix nirvana, the myth of rebirth from the ashes is perfectly reproduced. Behind the beautiful dance, there is endless dedication. The actors were filming in a studio with a temperature below zero, wearing a layer of gauze clothing, and the post-production team also discussed the creative ...... with Yang Liping at 4 o'clock in the morning
The dance work "Fengming Chaoyang" fragment "Fengming Chaoyang" touched many people, including Hua Chunying, assistant to the minister, who promoted Yang Liping's dance work "Fengming Chaoyang" to the world on her social platform. Yang Liping said: "Through this work, we are all phoenixes reborn from the fire, flying towards the light. Many netizens imitated and challenged the body movements of the phoenix, and then Yang Liping invited Cheng Peiying, the star of "Phoenix Singing Chaoyang", to explain the dance movements in detail for everyone. On a social platform, a dance teacher imitated this dance, but he didn't want to be appreciated by Yang Liping and left a message asking about the basic situation, and some netizens jokingly said that "it was the first time I saw Boss Zhipin with my own eyes". 
Yang Liping's creation has evolved from decades ago, polished to the present, and finally tempered into a colorful body. 
In addition to the fragment of the dance work "Phoenix Singing Chaoyang", the original dance work "Dragon Dance" choreographed and directed by Yang Liping is also very shocking, shaping the majesty of God, treacherous, and the mystery of looking down on all beings. Some netizens said, "It's really profitable to invite Teacher Yang Liping." 
The stilts and social fire in the dance performance of the dance work "Dragon Dance" are still such customs in many folk places, whether it is the five-meter stilts in Miluo, Hunan, or the social fire performance in Xining, Qinghai, which are all traditional Chinese arts. Yang Liping excavated the actors in "Dragon Dance" from the folk, and she wanted to restore the original ecological breath of life. They put on costumes of more than 20 pounds, recorded for more than ten hours, and one shot required dozens of rehearsal ......
Yang Liping and the actors rehearsed the five-meter stilts from Miluo, Hunan Province, which is a folk art that has been handed down since ancient times. The dragon dance team from Chongqing is also very challenging, and many places still maintain this traditional culture. These folk artists, they have their own professions, and they gather together every festival to pass on the folk culture from generation to generation, which is ancient and precious. 
Yang Liping, a fragment of the dance work "Dragon Dance", once said: "Dance is the need of my life, just like eating and breathing. I can dance anywhere, under a tree, in a wheat field, for birds, for a river, in my heart and soul. Now I've brought dancing back to its original meaning, and that's good. As an artist, Yang Liping is not repeating herself. 
It is no accident that Yang Liping has become a legend in today's dance world. Her place of origin is the Bai tribe in Dali, a place full of living beings. The Bai people advocate nature, singing and dancing in the fields is the daily life of the local ethnic minorities, there are harvest songs and dances when the harvest is harvested, and there are songs of rice planting when the rice is planted. Yang Liping danced with the adults to worship the gods, she lay by the river, observing how the water flowed and how the clouds fluttered. Her dance is inspired by nature, which is the most essential thing in life. This, in a way, nourishes her aura.
Young Yang Liping In 1971, Yang Liping was selected from the village to the Xishuangbanna Song and Dance Troupe by virtue of her talent, and nine years later she was transferred to the ** National Song and Dance Troupe. When she was young, Yang Liping was clearly distinguished from the people around her. She is always dressed in a black suit, with a big single braid, and long dark hair hanging down, walking on the streets of Beijing in the seventies and eighties, she is very attractive and can always attract people's attention.
Photography: Xiao QuanAt that time, everyone was the same, and Yang Liping was very special. This kind of special has also caused her a lot of trouble. In 1980, 22-year-old Yang Liping was transferred to the ** National Song and Dance Troupe. After joining the troupe, each actor had to undergo ballet training, which she thought was too patterned, suppressed the spirituality of the dance, and too far away from her feelings and life, so she refused to participate in the group rehearsal. In those days, it would be quite difficult to be different from others. Yang Liping was excluded from the regiment and often couldn't get practice clothes and subsidies, but she didn't care.
Photography: Xiao Quan: Everyone has never seen any special dance style, and Yang Liping was already thinking about her own dance form at that time. When no one was around at night, she would go to the rehearsal room alone and dance in her own way, often dancing all night. Relying on the memories and imagination inherited from her childhood, she choreographed the solo dance "Spirit of the Sparrow".
Gifted people will not be buried. In 1986, 28-year-old Yang Liping won the first prize in the performance and choreography of the National Dance Competition with "Spirit of the Sparrow", which caused a sensation. In the dance world, this is known as a "twisted arm over thigh" victory.
In 1986, two years after Yang Liping danced the image of "Spirit of the Sparrow", Yang Liping performed this dance, dancing gracefully and flexibly, showing her soft waist, stunning everyone, and letting the general public see her peacock dance for the first time. This year, Yang Liping was 30 years old. When asked by a reporter why she was able to win, she said, "Because I have no opponent." ”
Yang Liping is not the kind of person who yearns for another place, and although she knows that staying in Beijing will lead to better development, she still chooses to return to a place she is familiar with. At the turn of the millennium, Yang Liping returned to her hometown of Yunnan. In the face of fame and fortune, Yang Liping chose to leave the high-profile stage in Beijing, and she had more important things to do. She traveled to the villages of various ethnic minorities in Yunnan, selected young people in the countryside one by one in the depths of the mountains, wiped the dust off their bodies, and established a song and dance troupe.
Yang Liping moved folk instruments to the stage and let the villagers perform in their own way. This is the large-scale dance performance "Yunnan Reflection". In her heart, dance is not a cognition, but a feeling. The impression of Yunnan in Yang Liping's eyes is that she collected from the people, representing the breath of different ethnic groups, and "Yunnan Reflection" has become a "phenomenal" work in China, which is the exploration and expression of the body, and she hopes that her dance will have vitality.
Yang Liping took her actors to rehearse Yang Liping paid the price for her choice. In 2003, "Yunnan Reflection" went through three years from the initial preparation to the official performance. The investor thought that this primitive dance performance was too earthy and refused to invest, so Yang Liping relied on herself to support the dance troupe and sell her house to pay the actors' salaries. The friends around me felt that Yang Liping was bankrupt, and it was not easy. She only knows that this is her own responsibility, she is not a person who likes to complain, she can only save herself.
Photo: Xiao Quan.
She even went to shoot a commercial, and a friend helped Yang Liping contact several Zhejiang bosses to shoot commercials. At the bar, the owners felt that the lights were too dim to see whether her face looked good or not. At that time, her friend was very angry and wanted to drive these people away, but Yang Liping stopped: "More than 60 people are waiting for dinner, they want to make money, what is it to shoot advertisements, it means that I can make money." "Finally, when it was time for the premiere, SARS came, and all venues with more than 40 people were closed to gatherings, and "Yunnan Image" became a video with no audience and only three cameras.
At the end of the premiere, everyone went to the Kunming Hotel for dinner, Yang Liping choked up and cried with the microphone, this was the first time she showed her vulnerability in public. She is constantly overcoming her fragile self. SARS soon ended, and the actors returned from the village to dance together. After the performance of "Yunnan Reflection", the response was particularly good, and it had a good interaction with contemporary art and society, and the box office and reputation were good.
Dance "Yunnan Reflection" Yang Liping never hides her pursuit of high box office, she believes in the ancient Chinese truth, sow melons and get melons, and sow seeds will be harvested. But what she didn't expect was that many years later, because of the epidemic, the same story happened. With frequent cancellations and the company unable to survive, Yang Liping said helplessly: "We have lost the stage again. For more than two years, we have been holding on and do not want to give up. But there was no way to survive, so we disbanded the team again. Most of the actors have been with Yang Liping for nearly 20 years, and she sees them as her clansmen, who brought them from the fields to the stage, from farmers herding cattle and farming for a living, to dancers who make a living.
She has personally changed the lives of many people. There is a female dancer in the dance company who regards Yang Liping as a "matriarchal patriarch". At that time, she was still studying, Yang Liping paid for her tuition, and later she got married and had children, and Yang Liping also paid to help her raise children. The outside world thinks that Yang Liping seems to be a little ruthless, and people who are familiar with her have felt her human touch.
Yang Liping is a very special existence in this industry. She once said, "I may have been a peacock in my last life", and the peacock is a symbol of pride and perfection. Yang Liping, who has been performing on the stage for a long time, has her own strong opinions and requirements for various details such as scenery, lighting, and positioning, and she is meticulous in everything.
On stage, Yang Liping is the one who dominates everything, she is self-conscious and serious, and she constantly pursues perfection. Such a person who is extremely demanding of perfection will inevitably cause dissatisfaction among the people who work with him, and the team members will sometimes be puzzled and complain. When Yang Liping is not satisfied, she will also scold people and never hold back. In 2012, on the stage of the Spring Festival Gala in the Year of the Dragon, before Yang Liping performed "Love of Sparrows", during the rehearsal, she would let people perform on the stage for her, and she stood behind the camera, looking for the most expressive angles and scenes.
After many years, Yang Liping danced "Sparrow Love" again, and was considered by the public to be an ageless elf. This year, she was 54 years old. People were amazed that the movements of her shoulders, hands, and waist were still as accurate as they were twenty years ago, and it was completely impossible to tell that this was a person over half a hundred years old. Foreign ** comment: "She jumped up like an energetic young man, folded her slender torso, stretched out her arms, legs, and ten fingers, and was as light and free as a fairy of nature." ”
In fact, even if it is talented, it is no match for human aging. Yang Liping devotes more to dance training than young dancers, and her demand for perfection accompanies every performance in her life. Behind the talent in the eyes of the outside world is her hard training day after day and her willingness to give up some happiness. A true dancer is always accompanied by wounds.
In order to present each dance in the best condition, she strictly controls her diet and insists on not eating a grain of rice, and her "overeating" refers to changing from eating a piece of apple to an apple, and her fingernails are strictly controlled at 5 centimeters in length all year round. Because of her outstanding figure and profound dancing skills, Yang Liping was also invited to play Mei Chaofeng in "The Legend of the Condor Heroes". With the blessing of the original long nails, the fragment of her practicing the Nine Yin White Bone Claws is as powerful as a witch, her long hair fluttering in the wind, and her eyes are sharp.
Yang Liping as Mei Chaofeng Many viewers believe that Yang Liping's version of Mei Chaofeng is the most suitable for Jin Yong's original work. Yang Liping naturally integrates her ethereal dance into the role, she is not acting, she is expressing herself.
Yang Liping as Mei Chaofeng.
Yang Liping's personality is very distinct, both in the industry and in the current mainstream social context. In the past, the public's attitude towards Yang Liping was like a privilege for geniuses, and they regarded her as an unapproachable fine art.
Photography: Xiao QuanIn this era, people prefer people who are from the grassroots, and after being repeatedly eroded by fate, they try their best to stand up and survive in desperation; Or someone who comes from a good background and easily achieves success in the worldly sense. They can satisfy ordinary people to empathize with pain, embarrassment, and illusions of success. Obviously, Yang Liping doesn't belong, she has never been down-to-earth, and that famous speech is enough to see. "They have different objects of trust, and the object of my trust may be dance. Maybe a flower is also my daughter, and a tree is also my son, such a kind of family happiness. Some people's lives are for succession, some for enjoyment, some for experience, and some for spectators.
I am a spectator of life, and I came to this world to see how a tree grows, how a river flows, how white clouds float, and how nectar condenses. ”
Yang Liping is crazy. She feels like she is a part of nature, the embodiment of a peacock, which is her belief.
This kind of maverick attitude to life can't be done by people in the world, so he wanted to "pull her into the water" and push Yang Liping off the altar. In the summer of 2023, Yang Liping choreographed a new dance "The Rite of Spring", adding elements of "Yin and Yang Double Cultivation", and the movements were more intimate. The male actor is bare-chested, and the female actor is thinly dressed.
Yang Liping's dance "The Rite of Spring" This dance was criticized as "large-scale", which caused controversy on the Internet, and Yang Liping responded: "We all come naked, and we also walk naked." The peacock role played by the male actor finally sacrificed all the feathers of his body to gain the freedom of the female peacock, just like we don't have anything on our bodies after we are born. ”
People always like to talk about vulgarity in noble places and noble in vulgar places. Those who wantonly slandered Yang Liping, saying "This is not art, it is vulgar", after scolding the dance performance, they went to wipe the side and make a yellow voice in the comment area, they are the same group of people. Over the years, Yang Liping's undisciplined secular dogma will be used by the public to make a big fuss, and it will not be understood as her fate.
Photo: Xiao Quan.
The most uproar was a few years ago, when there was a turmoil about women's fertility. Yang Liping caused heated discussions because of a comment on her own life**, and some people thought that her "biggest failure is that she has no children, and the so-called life of herself is blind."
She was scolded for not having children, and it even became a topic of conversation.
A dancer who is over 60 years old is still active on the stage, but the public is most concerned about why she is a woman, why she does not get married and have children......It's sad. In response, Yang Liping responded: "People will always grow old and die, and no one can save you, but your spirit is young and your breath is beautiful." As long as you think you're doing well and haven't hurt anyone else, that's fine. I hope we can all be at ease, like me. ”
Marriage and family have never been her destination. In Yang Liping's world, a little ant is her child, and the dance works are also her daughter, "My mission in this world is not to pass on the ancestry, I am not in such a state." Yang Liping had the experience of marriage, she married a Beijing educated youth in the countryside of Yunnan in her early years, and later married a businessman, and eventually separated. She had a stage where she was full of fantasies about love, and she also had sweet moments, but later, Yang Liping felt that things that were too sweet were too greasy and not suitable for her. After divorcing her second husband, Yang Liping no longer has any unrealistic illusions about men and love.
Yang Liping's choice not to have children is not all about the sacrifice made for dance, she is not that kind of victim, she just knows how to enjoy. In her view, marriage is a relationship, not belonging. "Love and marriage are not a life that people like me have to experience, why do we have to possess it? "A lot of life is worth loving, not necessarily a sense of belonging. In Yang Liping's heart, she hopes that she won't struggle too much and go straight to the ultimate best.
Yang Liping, got rid of the possibility of mediocrity. Becoming an ageless dancer is not an easy task. Compared with herself who danced "Peacock" in her twenties, Yang Liping feels that her personality is becoming more and more perfect, her feelings are becoming more and more sincere, and she is detached from standing on the ground. Gao Chengming, an old friend who has known Yang Liping for more than 40 years, knows her best, and he uses one word "true" to describe Yang Liping: "Only real people can make real art." Yang Liping has many admirers, including Xiao Quan, a famous portrait photographer in the 80s.
In the spring of 1992, Yang Liping and Xiao Quan climbed the Mutianyu Great Wall. There, Xiao Quan photographed Yang Liping's most beautiful **. On that day, the sun was shining in Beijing, and there were no crowds on the Great Wall. Yang Liping was wrapped in a long white cloth and danced solo, her expression was indifferent, and she couldn't take her eyes off it.
Photography: Xiao Quan At that moment, Xiao Quan was moved, he pressed the shutter, and was forced to breathe by the scene in front of him. He felt that Yang Liping was going home, and the spiritual world had reached the highest experience. Life is short, the stage is also short, Yang Liping is a spectator of life. She is determined, at ease, fearless, and ready to resist the impermanence of the world.