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- Title
Cultural text, artistic narrative, and visual feast: Interpreting the spectacular in the opening ceremony of Beijing Olympics.
- Authors
Yuying Liang
- Abstract
The presentations with distinctive national features in the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics have worked together to render to the world a unique and splendorous visual show. Notably, every part of the performance involved in this discussion is characterized by the extensive employment of traditional Chinese cultural elements. To be specific, the performance of the body art is connected to the making of a Chinese landscape painting, which overtly gives prominence to the mediality of the human body in the creation of the traditional national cultural images such as sun, mountain, river, cloud and the like -- the very representative cultural symbols of Chinese nation. The famous Dunhuang dance in the section of the Silk Road is presented with a long green satin which is heavily vested with national cultural connotations. The pillars used as stage props are engraved with the images of loong -- a symbol of auspiciousness in Chinese culture, for the loong embodies courage. The invention of the movable-type printing significantly involves the wisdom of the Chinese people, and Tai Chi performance evokes the harmonious spirit that the Chinese nation and people greatly value. The rendering of these images through creative ways has casted the opening ceremony into a unique cultural text -- as narrated in well-designed artistic forms, it has presented the world with an extraordinary visual feast.
- Subjects
BODY art; CHINESE people; LANDSCAPE painting; OPENING ceremonies; SILK Road; CHINESE painting
- Publication
Agathos: An International Review of the Humanities & Social Sciences, 2024, Vol 15, Issue 1, p99
- ISSN
2069-1025
- Publication type
Article