International Dance Day, an opportunity to share and express emotions
Every year, on April 29, the world celebrates the International Day of Dance, created in 1982 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to promote this art throughout the world.
The date coincides with the anniversary of the birth of French dancer Jean-Georges Noverre, considered the master and creator of modern ballet.
Today, dance is practiced by millions of people, and this special day is intended to draw the public’s attention to the art and culture of this genre, to encourage them to attend performances, and to promote this discipline.
Dance is known as the language of the body, an expression of emotions that communicates feelings through body movements.
For the celebration, the International Committee of the specialty chooses a personality to create a message, and this year it corresponds to the Chinese dancer and choreographer Yang Liping, a member of the Bai ethnic group of Dali, Yunnan Province, and vice president of the Association of Dancers of her country.
A lover of dance since childhood, she never received formal training in this artistic expression, but with her amazing natural talent, she has become a unique and distinguished dancer in China.
Her performances have won her a number of awards, including the Gold Award for Chinese Dance Classics of the 20th Century; top honors at the Osaka International Exchange Center; awards for best dance poetry, best female lead, choreography, costume design, and outstanding performance at the fourth annual Lotus Awards in her home country.
In 2011, Yang Liping appeared as one of the beauties of the Asian giant in the commercial China Image – People, aired in Times Square, New York. A versatile talent, she also wrote, directed and acted in the film Sunbird, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Montreal International Film Festival.
Dance as a way to communicate with the world
So begins the message of the award-winning Chinese dancer and choreographer, who emphasizes that body language is humanity’s most instinctive form of communication. As newborns, we can use our hands and feet to make dance gestures even before we have learned to pronounce a word. Dance is born out of this primitive language.
In the text, she emphasizes the relationship of dance to nature and life, for she came into the world to see how a flower blooms and withers, how clouds float and how dew condenses.
That is why all her creative inspiration comes from nature and life: the glow of the moonlight, the unfolding of the peacock’s feathers, the transformation of a butterfly from its cocoon, the dragonfly skimming the surface of the water, the caterpillar wriggling, the ants marching on the ground….
For Yang Liping, dancers and choreographers should listen more attentively to the joys and sorrows of the world, and use dance to complete the dialog we have had with nature and life for thousands of years.
The artist recalls the first choreography she danced: The spirit of the peacock, which, although it lives in our world, is a creature that symbolizes holiness and beauty in the Eastern world, as its appearance resembles that of the phoenix and some of its postures are comparable to those of the dragon. So she understood the spirit of the peacock.
My country also has a rich dance culture, which I am passionately passing on as a legacy, the text says. Liping has collected and staged some traditional primitive dances, including Dynamic Yunnan, Tibetan Mystery and Dynamic Pingtan. All these choreographies come from the countryside and have been handed down to us by our ancestors as a legacy. We should strive to preserve them and introduce them to the world.
As human beings, we must respect nature, learn from it, and harmonize with it, just like the earth, the mountains, and the sky.
Today, I will not only continue to share our dance culture with the world, but I hope to invite all dancers to join me on this journey,» the text says. Furthermore, the artist invites them to love dance and express their emotions through it, to use our art together to transmit our love and praise to heaven and earth.
Life never stops, dance never stops, concludes the message of Chinese dancer and choreographer Yang Liping.
Translated by Luis E. Amador Dominguez
