Dance team coach, choreographer and members shared how they had striven to bring a much-celebrated intangible cultural heritage -- Yingge dance to the stage of the 2025 Spring Festival Gala, a grand celebration presented by China Media Group (CMG) on Tuesday.
The Yingge dance is a form of folk dance popular in south China's Guangdong Province that merges opera, dance, and martial arts.
During the performance in the Spring Festival gala, dancers from Puning Nanshan Yingge Dance Team and Puning Fumei Youth Yingge Dance Team from Jieyang, Guangdong, presented a stunning display of the traditional Chinese folk culture.
In an interview with CMG, the team coaches and choreographers said that the biggest challenge was to preserve the Yingge dance tradition while making audience see the folk dance's beauty and dancers' passion. Therefore, they reconstructed the Yingge dance movements and formations.
"We used to dance with the music of gongs and drums. This time we combined it with pop music. At first, no one got used to it. Then choreographers re-arranged the choreography for us. In this version, we can show our strength, and match dance steps with music beats. It also includes elements of the intangible cultural heritage -- ensuring our original and authentic ingredients were there," said Li Junhao, coach of Puning Fumei Youth Yingge Dance Team. "In fact, all sides have overcome the difficulties they face, in order to achieve one goal, which is to bring traditional culture to the stage and at the same time protect our traditional culture," said Lu Shuaining, dance director of 2025 Spring Festival Gala.
In order to present the perfect performance to audience, dancers from the two teams trained in Beijing for more than a month.
Until just before the performance, the dance moves were still being adjusted and the music was being improved in order to elevate the show to perfection.
"Every night when we went back (to the hotel), we had to take an exam. Everyone had to do the movements twice. We had to do the program we were preparing for the Spring Festival Gala twice in a row. Only if you successfully did it twice in a row, it would be considered presentable. Even if you paused just for a little while, it would not work," said Chen Hengren, a member of Puning Nanshan Yingge Dance Team.
"The most memorable thing for me was the first version we prepared when we came for the rehearsal. We couldn’t match dance steps with music beats. We wanted to show the best of ourselves. So one day when we went back to the hotel, as we couldn’t find a venue, all the team members, including those from the Nanshan team, trained outdoors for two hours in freezing cold. We were very hardworking. This is the spirit of Yingge dance," said Li.
Behind-the-scene stories of Yingge dance in Spring Festival Gala
