Dance drama dives deep to honor marine heroes

Chinese dance drama, 10,909, premiered at the Grand Theater in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, on Wednesday.

Presented by Wuxi Song and Dance Drama Theater, the dance drama pays tribute to the researchers of China's new deep-sea manned submersible Fendouzhe, or Striver, which set a national depth record of 10,909 meters on Nov 10, 2020, in the Challenger Deep, a 11,000-meter chasm located at the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean.

The creative team spent over a year interviewing researchers of the China Ship Scientific Research Center to learn their stories about developing the vehicle's technology and surveying the ocean as well as difficulties they dealt with for scientific research.

The scene of the mysterious deep ocean was also displayed in the dance drama.

"It's very touching to watch the dance drama, which is about our stories. We've been striving for the nation's development as a maritime power during the past 20 years. We are glad to share our stories with audience through a dance drama," says He Chunrong, director of the China Ship Scientific Research Center, which is the country's largest ship and ocean engineering research institute located in Wuxi.