1
Project Background
100 Villages, 100 Heritage Practitioners is a personal project initiated in 2022 by Bai dancer Dong Jilan. She hopes to search for the roots of Chinese folk and ethnic arts, and to use her own bodily experience and moving-image records to make visible again the art forms that are disappearing before our eyes.
She visits villages of different ethnic groups in Yunnan, meets intangible-heritage practitioners, and learns about the cultural sources and textures from which traditional music and dance emerge. In the process of studying music and dance with these practitioners, she also comes to understand anew her relation with land, nature, and herself.
2
Filming Method
The project unfolds from Dong Jilan's first-person perspective, using a form of auto-ethnographic narration. The camera does not observe folk art from far away. It follows her into villages and into the homes of heritage practitioners, where she eats and lives with them, listens to their lives and stories, and hears their thoughts and feelings about the art and culture of their communities.
For Dong Jilan, this is not a simple field-collection trip, nor merely a gathering of source material. It is a re-confirmation between body and land. The bodily meaning inside traditional music and dance, and the cross-media possibilities of dance film, gradually appear through these visits.
3
Current State
So far, the project has visited thirty intangible-heritage practitioners and produced more than ten short films in its early phase. New moving-image works will be created by bringing together these short films, organizing the voices and bodily experiences of different villages and practitioners.
This line of work also connects with Dong Jilan's later stage creations. Ba Wang Whip and A Yang Bai are not works detached from life. Their roots are in villages, mountains, elders, voices, and bodily memory.
4
Final Direction
She is now in the third year of this journey. With her own small strength, she hopes to let these art forms that are disappearing before our eyes be seen again, and to let those who see them begin to think.
The project ultimately hopes to form a group of dance films that combine field documentation and artistic expression. It preserves changing intangible-heritage sites while asking viewers to consider why tradition emerges, how it relates to people's lives, land, nature, and bodies, and how it can continue to be understood today.
