The 2023 Qingdao Grand Theatre Art Festival has recently concluded with Confucius, an outstanding dance drama, dubbed as the “encyclopedia” of Chinese national dance drama.

The 2023 Qingdao Grand Theatre Art Festival, which started in middle September and lasted 65 days, presented the audience with 35 wonderful performances, covering a broad range of art forms from musical play, concert, dance, stage play, children’s play, traditional opera, cross talk, acrobatics and lecture, which invited the attendance of more than 30,000 audiences to feel the charm of art.

Following “Four Generations under One Roof”, a classical stage play that inaugurated the art festival, multiple popular shows, including “Good Fellas in 15 Days”, a stage performance and “The Insanity”, a modern drama, were put on one after another. Several high-class concerts were held, including Vienna Orchestra Concert, China National Chorus Concert and Aapo H?kkinen Pipe Organ Concert. With the children’s play “Alice’s Fantasy Tour” and “Russian International Children Clown and Acrobatics Carnival” made the Qingdao Grand Theatre a popular destination for parent-child time.

It is worth mentioning that the just-concluded art festival has seen the comeback of performances in which Qingdao-born artists have featured. Yu Yi’s musical drama “Soul Ferry Man” made an amazing appearance in front of hoe crowd. All seats were occupied when the musical drama “Bringing in the Wine”, in which Zheng Yunlong acted as the role of art director for the first time, was performed. The Harmonia Chorus, conducted by Wu Lingfen, an educationist, sang frequently heard songs one after the other.

In this year’s Grand Theatre Art Festival, art shows have been expanded from the stage to the outdoor square. Zheng Yunlong personally introduced Li Bai’s personality in different periods in the musical drama to help audiences better understand the drama. Some audiences took selfies in a rickshaw that often appears in “Four Generation under One Roof”. Some came to sit around the table in “Bringing in the Wine”. Some even came to the “shop-window” of “444 Convenience Store” to buy the theatre’s cultural and creative products.

The poster of the musical play “Soul Ferry Man”.