A creative dance show, “The Golden Mask”, was aired at the 2022 CCTV Spring Festival Gala. Planned and directed by film director Yu Baimei, and choreographed by famous dancer Yang Liping, the dance show integrated traditional culture and modern technologies creatively, providing a visual feast for the audience worldwide.
Inspired by the Sanxingdui culture, part of the ancient kingdom of Shu, a civilization dating back at least 4,800 years in China, the dance show told a romantic story of a young woman who started time travel to the ancient Shu Kingdom and met with a young man in a golden face mask. Empowered by Extended Reality (XR), Computer Graphics (CG), and motion capture technologies, it presented the dancer’s interaction with the virtual bronze figure in front of a vivid virtual background, bringing alive the Sanxingdui cultural relics and recreating the lively images of the ancient Shu civilization.
Since last year, the concept of “metaverse” with XR as the core has gone viral. Including representative forms such as augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR), and virtual reality (VR), XR can achieve real-and-virtual combined scenes and human-machine interactions, bringing the audiences a splendid and immersive visual experience.
In addition to the IP of Sanxingdui, the XR version of Bing Dwen Dwen and Shuey Rhon Rhon, the mascots of the 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics, were also staged at the Gala. Besides, a series of virtual IPs in Guofeng style, meaning “traditional Chinese style” were created, including Su Xiaomei, a metaverse girl who loves traditional Chinese poetry and dance, and AI mascots acting as the host of the Henan TV, such as Hua Mulan. XR technology has injected freshness and inspiration into the traditional Spring Festival Gala.
In recent years, high tech brings all-round audio-visual pleasure to the audience. In particular, the Spring Festival Galas have displayed cutting-edge technologies while bringing out the best of Chinese culture with elements of the Chinese Lunar New Year.
Translated by 彭慧璇