The 2025 Spring Festival Gala, the grand live show celebrating the Chinese New Year, presented dances of pure beauty and elegance to viewers worldwide, with high-tech effects helping bring two classic Chinese artworks to life on Tuesday night.
The grand television show has integrated traditional culture with innovative means to entertain audiences on the eve of the Chinese New Year, with a series of dances embodying Chinese traditional aesthetics being among the many memorable on-stage performances during the hours-long variety show broadcast live on Tuesday.
For one performance built on classic Chinese dance styles, the gala stage was transformed into the scene of a Song Dynasty (960-1279) water painting through special lighting effects and digital technology, creating the sense of performers "dancing in the painting." The dancers made graceful moves to express the themes depicted in the classic painting, which shows a magpie on a treetop.
In Chinese culture, magpies are perceived as messengers of good news, and the gala performance sought to send the auspicious message that "good fortune has arrived" on the joyful occasion of the Chinese New Year.
In another poetic dance, ballet performers tiptoed on the surface of an on-stage "water pond" created by visual effects, conveying the line of an ancient Chinese poem "beyond the stream, there she would be."
The annual gala, also known as "Chunwan," was first broadcast in 1983 and is seen as a major cultural symbol for Spring Festival celebrations in China.
Recognized by the Guinness World Records as the world's most-watched annual TV program, the hours-long television extravaganza attracts over a billion views every year.
The 2025 Spring Festival, or the Chinese New Year, falls on Wednesday this year, usher in the Year of the Snake.
Elegant dance performances bring classic artworks to life at Spring Festival Gala
