前天看见一位美国舞蹈评论员莎拉．克夫曼（Sarah Kaufman）在10月31日于【华盛顿邮报】发表的一篇舞蹈评论，对象是于马里兰州大学园市演出《换日线》的美国玛格烈．珍科思舞蹈团和中国的广东现代舞团。评论中对美国的舞者们大加赞扬，却对中国舞者冷嘲热讽，认为他们在舞蹈中没有情感，缺乏个性的表达，甚至说道：“在集体主义的文化里，那些舞者根本无法跳出充满资本主义自恋色彩的现代舞”。

二十多年来带领中国的现代舞团出访欧美的经验里，总少不了面对一些对中国和中国艺术家们充满政治偏见的言论。这些言论不多，远不足以代表前来观赏节目观众的意见，可是这些言论往往通过艺术评论或观后感的形式，被刊登在几份美国主流报刊上，如【纽约时报】、【华盛顿邮报】、【新闻周刊】、【洛杉矶时报】和【今日美国报】等，总之是让我看后，气愤之余，恨不得找那些编辑和评论员来，好好跟他们理论一番。

记得广东实验现代舞团成立之初的1992年5月，请来不少中外记者和舞评人观看建团首演。美国【新闻周刊】的记者嗅到新闻价值，主动要求前来采访报道，我们当然欢迎。结果在【新闻周刊】的报导里，记者对舞团演出的作品和水平只字不提，却大肆强调中国政府如何压制艺术家，而广东团的出现，给那位记者的感觉，是像“惊奇地看见一条狗在说话，那条狗说什么不重要，重要的是竟然一条狗也可以开始说话了”。这样带有侮辱性的言论出现在一份国际性刊物的报导文章里，只能说是叹为观止。可能那位记者并未存心伤害中国的艺术家，可是在报导的过程里，被许多他个人对中国政治情势的看法影响，而没有办法公平和公正地从艺术角度去评价中国的现代舞，甚至使他的报导变得荒腔走板。许多人会觉得中国现存的媒体，受单一意识形态所控制，因此缺乏公信力，其实西方的许多媒体，也存在着同样的问题！

还有一次更离谱的，是在1998年10月，我带领广东实验现代舞团前赴美国，在华盛顿的肯尼迪表演艺术中心大剧院内演出，当晚也是中国的江泽民总书记和美国的克林顿总统在华盛顿白宫里，历史性第一次会晤。第二天【今日美国报】刊登了一篇对广东实验现代舞团节目演出的评论，当时广东舞团的演员阵容鼎盛，创作力量惊人，李捍忠、邢亮、桑吉加、杨云涛、施璇、刘琦、马波、龙云娜、周念念、侯莹等一个赛一个，评论家们可真是对演员无可挑剔，对作品也只能是在某些处理手法上提出意见而已。

可是【今日美国报】的舞蹈评论中，却语不惊人死不休，第一句便说：“昨天晚上伴随着江泽民总书记前去白宫探访的，除了夹道群众的示威行动外，更有来自广东省的舞蹈家在肯尼迪中心的舞台上，展示他们对中国现政权的不满”。然后在评论中以完全带着政治色彩的眼镜解读舞台上的每一个作品：邢亮和李捍忠跳的一段男子双人舞被认为是同性恋者对中国威权的反抗，藏族舞者桑吉加的一段独舞又被解读为争取本民族独立之舞。

尽管整篇评论对舞团的‘大义凛然’赞不绝口，可却把跟我们同行出访的广东省文化厅副厅长吓了个半死，当然我连忙向【今日美国报】的编辑部、舞评人和中国驻美国大使馆都发了一封信，内中逐点驳斥那篇舞蹈评论中种种硬栽滥接的观点。【今日美国报】的编辑部没有回应，反倒是中国驻美国大使馆的高级秘书前来跟我说，他们完全了解外国人喜欢煽风点火的心态，美国人不了解中国，只能用美国的观点硬套在中国人头上，我们可以放心继续我们的演出，不用理会别人的闲言闲语。我当时真的很感慨，说美国人很开放吗？在政治上的盲点，可能比中国人更多。

这次广东现代舞团赴美演出，一路上收集了不少报刊上的评论，评论里当然都带有评论者或多或少的主观意见，无论是喜欢的，不喜欢的，只要评论者能够自圆其说，我都乐意阅读，甚至跟评论者展开就艺术观点上的讨论。一般来说，舞蹈评论员们都是知识份子，又对艺术有浓厚兴趣，所以在讨论中，往往能够达到更深入的交流，并扩宽彼此的思路，对双方的眼光境界都有所裨益。

    可是在10月31日【华盛顿邮报】的评论员莎拉．科夫曼Sarah Kaufman的一篇评论，充满美国式冷战思维模式。这种模式的格局，永远是首先认定来自非民主选举国家的艺术都是受国家控制，一定是非‘人性’的；如果发现作品里有大把大把‘人性’，则这些艺术便一定是反政府的。评论员从这种思维模式出发，严重影响对艺术作品和艺术家的判断，甚至觉得一切试图脱离他们祖国、投奔西方阵营的艺术家，如俄罗斯的纽瑞耶夫（Rudolf Nureyev）、巴里殊尼科夫（Mikhail Baryshnikov），或离开家乡、选择在纽约工作的艺术家，如中国的沈伟、谭盾等，才是好艺术家；而愿意留在祖国家乡进行创作演出的艺术家，都是‘次一等’的。

    在评论这些‘次一等’的艺术家作品时，这些充满冷战思维的评论员总要刻意挑毛病。如果真是作品中的毛病，我倒乐意跟他们探讨一番，可是往往他们所持的理由，是这些毛病都是由非民主社会或集体主义建制所带来的，要改好这些艺术家或艺术品吗？只能改变生活方式，跟着美国式的“资本主义自恋色彩”走。这就变成了政治话题，没有留下什么可以在艺术上对话的空间。

    10月31日【华盛顿邮报】对广东现代舞团的评论，便足称典型。评论员科夫曼其实注意到广东现代舞团的舞者和玛格烈珍科思舞蹈团的舞者们，在处理舞蹈艺术上的分别：广东的舞者们是“安静而注意细节”（Quiet, detail-oriented），而珍科思舞团的舞者则“土气而自由奔放”（Earthy，free-spirited），本来这是艺术家们对他们艺术的基础态度不同，并无优劣之分。在艺术的发展历史里，我们往往把前者称为典雅主义（Classicism），而后者称为浪漫主义（Romantisicm）。无论在那个社会、那个时代里，都会出现着这两种不同类型的艺术家。

    可是这位【华盛顿邮报】的评论员，把“安静而注意细节”的展现说成中国舞者“缺乏感情”（Lack of emotion），而她需要看见作品中“象征性的血”（Blood, metaphorically），才叫艺术。美国舞者们“土气而自由奔放”，因此在舞台上展现了许多许多“象征性的血”，而中国舞者们在评论员的眼中，便显得苍白。当然评论员可以有自己主观的理由去喜欢“血”，正如别人可以有别人的理由去喜欢不沾“血”的纯净。而我甚至认为，中国舞者们在面对“缺乏感情”的批评时，可以认真检讨一下自己的表现，是否真的不够投入。

    吊诡的是，【华盛顿邮报】的评论笔锋一转，竟然大段引述美国“个人主义”与中国“集体主义”的对抗，更花上大量篇幅描绘纽瑞耶夫和巴里殊尼科夫投奔西方，让美国人自豪的历史，和沈伟在中国广东实验现代舞团工作时的不愉快经历。在那位评论者的想象中，世界还停留在六、七十年代美苏争霸冷战局面，而中国也跟八十年代末、九十年代初的改革步履蹒跚时期没有什么两样。评论者想当然地认为，中国舞者们“缺乏感情”，完全是因为生活在“集体主义的文化”中，最后结论是：中国人要跳现代舞嘛，首先要放弃“集体主义的文化”，学习美国的“资本主义自恋色彩”才行。

下面转载了10月31日【华盛顿邮报】的评论原文，有兴趣的朋友，可以一读：

         ‘Suns' revolves around hope for a changing China

                                                      By Sarah Kaufman

                                                         Washington Post Staff Writer

                                                         Saturday, October 31, 2009

The Margaret Jenkins Dance Company revels in motion. Once it gets cooking in its new work, "Other Suns (A Trilogy)," you feel that adrenaline high build and build, the dancers blurring in a froth of activity, yanking one another through space, erupting in air like fireworks or swirling in place like human hurricanes. Their vitality gives you shivers.

Part of the pleasure of "Other Suns," a collaboration between Jenkins's San Francisco-based troupe and China's Guangdong Modern Dance Company, performed Thursday and Friday at the University of Maryland, was experiencing this transference of energy. Part of it was the visual spectacle, a rich brew of duos, trios and group dancing going on simultaneously on the Clarice Smith Center stage, starlit by Alexander V. Nichols's dangling array of light bulbs. They dotted the void overhead somewhat ominously -- the firmament's descent, perhaps. It's a fitting image for a work full of voguish vibrations of melting-planet environmentalism and we're-all-in-this-mess-together-ness.

But when "Other Suns" began to cool, dragging in the second section and only fitfully heating up again in the third, a new area of interest materialized, at least for me. I became fascinated by the differences between the American and the Chinese dancers. The time I spent watching them Thursday night turned into a study of the fundamentals of modern dance -- for starters, the value of individual expression_r_r_r_r_r -- and the challenges of teasing capitalist narcissism out of a culture of collectivism. Challenges How about impossibility.

Twenty years ago a partnership like this would have been unthinkable. A decade ago it would have been unachievable. Yet modern dance in China has developed with astonishing speed. The Guangdong Modern Dance Company, China's first, took off in 1992 with support from the provincial cultural bureau. Five years later it made a respectable if uneven Kennedy Center debut, excelling in technique, though the choreography was less than memorable. The mainland now boasts a few full-time troupes, enjoying state funds to varying degrees. In Guangdong, for example, the dancers live and work in a state-supported compound with other artists. Government money is sooo nice.

But it can't buy ego. That's what was missing from the Chinese dancers in "Other Suns."

The first section, which sucked you into a gloriously rich, colorful, spinning world, was entirely the Jenkins dancers; Jenkins created it in California. Liu Qi, deputy director of the Guangdong troupe, created Part 2. The finale was shaped by both troupes and both directors during a residency in China, and the whole was massaged further still when both troupes got together before the work's September premiere in San Francisco.

It's crazy when you think about it -- the quiet, detail-oriented Chinese paired with the earthy, free-spirited Jenkins dancers. Jenkins, the tall, wild-haired matriarch of the West Coast contemporary dance scene, was one of Twyla Tharp's earliest dancers in the experimental 1960s. She has a lot of Tharp in her still -- the scattered focus onstage, the affinity for minimalist music (most of "Other Suns'" accompaniment was by her frequent musical partner Paul Dresher), and the way she pumps her dancers for movement ideas.

That's a pretty communal thing, come to think of it, but it didn't seem to be part of the Chinese process. When one woman bent to one side in the Guangdong section, then arched the other way with a great sweep of her leg, it was like a gust of wind rushing in. But I did not pick up a sense of emotional involvement. The dancers were lovely to look at, all long, elegant lines and terrific flexibility, evidence of ballet training (the predominant form of Western dance in China, far predating modern). But I wanted to see them move. To heck with the careful leg placement, the precise control of weight, the unison born of rigorous practice. I was out for blood, metaphorically speaking, and not a drop was spilled.

Individual expression_r_r_r_r_r is the heart of modern dance. Technique has its place, of course, but most dancers make their mark by setting free their personalities. The artistic interest is in what you can dredge up out of your insides and thrust into a leg extension; what feelings squeeze out from a contraction of the torso, what condition of the spirit you fold into a fall.

But expressiveness isn't easy in a society where individual freedoms are still dodgy. Just ask Shen Wei, one of the most exciting young choreographic talents in this country and a recipient of a MacArthur "genius" grant. A founding member of the Guangdong Modern Dance Company, he was spied on for making friends with Taiwanese dancers and kept home while Guangdong toured abroad. Perhaps China picked up such cat-and-mouse pointers from the Soviets; it was this kind of jerking around that drove Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov to flee to the West. Like them, Shen eventually left his homeland, and now runs his acclaimed Shen Wei Dance Arts in New York.

Modern dance as we have known it here for more than a century may never be a natural fit in China. There is a lot of cultural and political history to overcome. But as it gradually becomes all right to think independently and creatively, to indulge in a little confrontation, one hopes that deeper expressiveness will gain a foothold in Chinese modern dance

虽然美国主流媒体的评论员们往往带着冷战式的思维来看待中国，但美国还是一个资讯流通，并容许不同意见发表的地方，加上美国人的平均教育程度高，有见识眼光和能够独立思考的读者和观众不少，所以也常常看见一些美国人，愿意仗义执言，挑战某些主流媒体过于偏颇的言论。

10月31日【华盛顿邮报】刊登了莎拉．科夫曼（Sarah Kaufman）的舞蹈评论后，引来一些美国当地观众不以为然的意见。其中一位女士艾丽森．菲瑞德曼（Alison Freidman）写了一篇驳斥文章，投稿于【华盛顿邮报】，并把副本寄来给我。艾丽森．菲瑞德曼本人也是舞蹈家，曾在我离开后的北京现代舞团里工作过一段日子，后来离开北现，在中国各地游历，帮助不少中国年轻艺术家的发展，所以她对中国还是比较了解，甚至为自己取了个好听的中国名字方美昂。当然，回到美国之后，我还是称呼她为艾丽森．菲瑞德曼为好。

艾丽森反驳【华盛顿邮报】舞蹈评论，认为艺术家的作品，尤其是现代舞，只是代表艺术家自己，评论员不能以之来品评艺术家背后的整个国家民族和文化。艾丽森更举出许多例子，表明【华盛顿邮报】的评论员根本不了解今日中国的发展，早已经脱离“集体主义”时代——现在中国年轻人心目中最重要的事，是‘赚钱’，可以说比许多资本主义国家的人更来得“资本主义”。

艾丽森尤其反对舞蹈评论中说：“现代舞必须挑战集体主义，而建立于带有自恋型的资本主义的文化中”（ the challenges of teasing capitalist narcissism out of a culture of collectivism）。她认为：“自恋型的资本主义不能弄出好的现代舞，只有艺术家的经验和成熟，才能成就好的现代舞”（Capitalist narcissism does not make good modern dance, experience and maturity does）。艾丽森也认为在美国巡演的广东舞团演员们确实缺乏了一点经验和成熟度，可是她看过非常优秀的中国现代舞演员演出，如马康、邢亮、陶冶等，并没有受到“集体主义”的压抑，更没有受到“资本主义”的污染。

我个人也写了一封短信，发给【华盛顿邮报】的编辑部，就莎拉．科夫曼的舞蹈评论表达意见。不过这些跟【华盛顿邮报】政见不同的言论，能否登上【华盛顿邮报】的读者来信版，不可预知。幸亏现在的电子媒介发达，也不是主流传媒可以只手遮天的时代了。我今天先把艾丽森．菲瑞德曼（方美昂）的英文原件登在这里，明天再刊登我对【华盛顿邮报】的回应短文。大家可以一阅。

Kaufman’s review of “Other Suns”: Irresponsible and Inaccurate
                                                              Alison M. Friedman
                                                              October 31, 2009

Sarah Kaufman’s review of the performance “Other Suns” (‘Suns’ revolves around hopes for a changing China, Oct. 31 2009), a co-production between San Fransisco-based Margaret Jenkins Dance Company and China’s Guangdong Modern Dance Company, revealed a shallow understanding of Chinese culture and an irresponsible lack of research into its burgeoning modern dance world. Although her criticisms of the piece were valid, she made a fallacious leap from watching one piece by one Chinese modern dance company to extrapolating entire generalizations about Chinese culture and society as a whole.

I agree with Kaufman’s criticism of the Guangdong Modern Dance Company (GMDC) section of the trilogy, that it lacked emotional commitment and consisted mostly of pretty movement by nice technicians. However, what led Kaufman to assume that these flaws are indicative of anything except flaws in those six dancers She blames Chinese society for the dancers’ lack of expression_r_r_r, quipping “Expressiveness isn’t easy in a society where individual freedoms are still dodgy.”

The performers’ lack of depth in fact results not from China’s Great Oppressive Society -- a simplistic cliché that essentialist articles like Kaufman’s only help to promote -- but from the same immaturity found in young dancers in any country. The six GMDC dancers on the Clarice Smith Center stage last week are some of the company’s youngest. Due to the project’s limited budget, the full company was not able to participate in the US tour. Half of the company, in fact the more mature and experienced dancers, are currently performing other GMDC repertoire in Europe and Taiwan. This past July I watched the GMDC section of “Other Suns” performed with the full company in the annual Guangdong Modern Dance Festival. The piece had a much deeper level of commitment and energy than the version I saw last week. If Kaufman had read the dancers’ bios in the program, she would have seen that most of the six dancers had joined GMDC only in the last two years. Most of Margaret Jenkins’ dancers, on the other hand, are older and have many more years experience working with different choreographers as well as with each other. Had Kaufman researched footage, easily available on YouTube, of other GMDC works like “Upon Calligraphy” or works by other modern dance companies in China like the Beijing Modern Dance Company, she would have found performances of profound expressiveness and emotional depth by performers like Ma Kang, Xing Liang, Tao Ye, and many more.

Certainly, the rigors of Chinese dance training often produce technical masters who are emotionally vacant, but that is not representative of all dancers in the country, nor is this phenomenon unique to China. Young western dancers can be equally uninteresting to watch as they show off flashy technique before they have gained the depth of expression_r_r_r found in mature performers. GMDC choreographer Liu Qi, who has been with the company for over a decade, exhibited this artistic maturity in the final section of the trilogy. A moving duet she performed with one of the Jenkins dancers to me epitomized the connections and trust these artists from different countries were searching for through this project. Had GMDC’s “A-team” been on stage at the University of Maryland and not in Germany or Taiwan, we would have seen more of these moments from the Chinese side of the co-production.

Kaufman said the performance Thursday night made her consider “the challenges of teasing capitalist narcissism out of a culture of collectivism,” and that this was somehow a prerequisite for better modern dance in China. I wonder if Kaufman has read about the “Little Emperor” phenomenon among spoiled only-children born in the 1980s after the establishment of the one-child policy. When asked their goal in life, most young Chinese professionals from this generation will tell you point blank: “To make money.” China today is a culture of capitalist narcissists. This is not what was lacking on stage last week. Capitalist narcissism does not make good modern dance, experience and maturity does. To make such an unsubstantiated link does a disservice to both dance criticism and to American understanding of contemporary China.