In July 2024, the dance drama "Thunderstorm" produced by Shanghai Oriental Art Center premiered on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the release of the play "Thunderstorm" script. This year, after undergoing further refinement, the drama embarked on a national tour. The plot narrative and character relationships of the play "Thunderstorm" have long been well-known to the public. As an adaptation of this classic work, the dance drama "Thunderstorm" still reveals many new ideas. The novelty of this drama lies primarily in the vivid portrayal of the main characters in the original work. The dance drama is created in the form of a full text and full characters, with delicate and in-depth depictions of the characters through their solo dances and hymns, guiding viewers to appreciate the emotional characteristics of each character. The steady posture of Zhou Puyuan and his constant focus on sinking are externalizations of his authoritarianism and hypocrisy as a feudal patriarch. He faced the collapse of his family with a solo dance segment that hinted at the characters' inner struggles through continuous spinning movements. Fan Yi's curled up "cat like" body language gives the character a dual tension of repression and rebellion. The intertwined hand movements of Zhou Ping reflect his life situation of being trapped like an animal and unable to break free from the shackles... Each character takes themselves as the knot point, while also intruding into each other's emotional space, playing the symphony of fate together. In addition to the eight main characters, "Icarus" runs through the entire play. Icarus is a character in ancient Greek mythology, with a pair of wax sealed wings. He fell into the water and died when the wax on his wings melted by the sun while soaring proudly. The setting of this character echoes what Cao Yu mentioned in the preface of "Thunderstorm": "Behind this struggle, there may be a ruler who uses its jurisdiction. This ruler is praised by Hebrew prophets as' God ', Greek playwrights as' fate', and modern people abandon these vague concepts and directly call it 'the laws of nature'. This character is set up in the dance drama to build a bridge for dialogue between Chinese and Western tragic aesthetics. Structurally, the dance drama 'Thunderstorm' has two 'new' elements. One is to lead the entire drama from the perspective of 'Shi Ping', connecting the intertwined fates of eight characters. Unlike the previous focus on the character Fan Yi, the dance drama "Thunderstorm" has pushed Lu Shiping to the center of the stage. At the beginning of the prologue, Lu Shiping sat alone on the balance beam. As each character stepped onto the stage, the seesaw began to sway and the balance of fate began to tilt. Eight main characters dance together on stage, their seemingly random physical interactions hiding deep order, causing the web of fate to quietly manifest in chaos until everyone falls one by one. It was in this immense sorrow that Shiping stood alone, gazing into a distant memory... At the end of the dance drama, the "Shiping's gaze" in the prologue was once again performed, and this echoing look back movement constructed a cycle of destiny. In fact, Shi Ping is the most turbulent and emotionally rich female character in "Thunderstorm", and her body is full of female perseverance. To play such a role well, actors not only need to have profound emotions and strong expressive power, but also need rich life experience and stage experience. The actor Shan Chong uses blank space in his performance to strip away the resentment and hatred that Lu Shiping carries layer by layer. Her gaze movement was full of restraint and restraint, precisely fitting the fate of Lu Shiping's life. The second is to promote the process of emotional relationships, contradictions, conflicts, and tragic fates in narrative through dance. The whole play is led by Shi Ping's emotions and consists of eight scenes. The strong drama in the play complements the dance segments of solo, duet, triple, quadruple, and group dances, showcasing the characters' irresistible fate and complex inner passion. This kind of creation replaces externalized dramatic conflicts with an inward stacking tension in emotional expression, achieving a perfect fusion of dramatic climax, emotional climax, and dance climax, full of poetic quality. In addition, the dance drama "Thunderstorm" also constructs a scenario through highly expressive visual design, creating a three-dimensional and composite "visual landscape" of dancers' bodies, stage installations, colors, and light and shadow. Based on the core visual vocabulary of a giant, deep circular staircase in the back area of the stage, the stage forms three spaces: one is the facade stage composed of the circular staircase, which is like a "window lattice" that imprisons the body, an entrance to the abyss, and a window for Icarus to scrutinize everyone; The second is a sloping wall with a hollowed out lower part, filled with various abandoned furniture from the Zhou Mansion, each piece seeming to hide a dusty past; The third is the realistic space squeezed by sloping walls and stairs, which suppresses the tragic atmosphere of the characters' fate. The seesaw "is another core visual vocabulary in the dance drama. When the eight main characters sit on it one by one, the seesaw is sometimes balanced and sometimes tilted, reflecting the ups and downs of their emotions and the ups and downs of their destinies. When the position of a character changes, it indicates the intensification of contradictions and the escalation of conflicts, presenting the character's powerlessness and struggle in the face of fate. In addition, the clothing colors of the eight characters also create different emotional tones for the audience. At the beginning, "Thunderstorm Blue" is used as a metaphor for the occurrence of tragedy. Afterwards, the "exclusive colors" of different characters not only indicate their personalities and relationships, but also imply their psychology and fate. Shiping is a gentle white, Puyuan is a majestic black, Fanyi is a charming green, Zhouping is a passionate red, Sifeng is a delicate yellow, Zhouchong is a youthful pink, the sea is a simple orange, and Lugui is a dark gray; The finale uses the metaphor of "nude pink" to symbolize the "return to authenticity" of various characters. From the dynamic images of characters to the plot structure, and then to the metaphorical narrative and visual presentation of emotions, the dance drama "Thunderstorm" successfully brings new brilliance to the classic in a new form. (New Society)