In a snowy village hung with red lanterns and early plum blossoms, women in colorful dress dance with fans and long silk ribbons, red and green lions leap, and a dragon weaves on poles. Drummers beat red drums as crowds line the way.
The performing art whose language is the moving body: from the hand-in-hand dancers on a Majiayao pottery basin through Zhou ritual dance and Han-Tang court dance to yangge, dragon and lion dances, the dances of China's many peoples, and twentieth-century classical dance and dance drama.
3000 BCE · OriginA Majiayao painted basin from Shangsunjiazhai in Datong, Qinghai, shows three groups of dancers holding hands on its inner wall, one of the earliest images of dance in China.1040 BCE · EvolutionThe Western Zhou set out the Six Dynastic Dances; civil and martial dances such as the Dawu served in sacrifices, and the number of dance rows marked rank.718 · EvolutionIn the Kaiyuan years Emperor Xuanzong created the Rainbow Raiment suite, a court suite of song and dance that marks the peak of Tang dance.1946 · ImpactAround 1946 in Chongqing, Dai Ailian presented works such as Tibetan Spring and Lolo Love Song based on Tibetan, Yi and other dances, opening modern Chinese ethnic dance choreography.
Dance was first bound up with group life. The dancers on the Majiayao basin form three groups of five, with wavy lines like water under their feet, as if they were stamping and singing together beside a pond. Such group dances may have served sacrifices, celebrations or gatherings around the hunt, and they made the whole group move to one beat.
Once states arose, dance became part of ritual music. Zhou civil dancers held a flute and pheasant feathers, martial dancers a shield and axe, and the number of rows followed rank. Han palaces and aristocratic banquets favoured long-sleeve dances and plate-and-drum dances, and carved stones show dancers flinging their sleeves and stepping on drums. The Tang court kept ten ensembles that took in music and dance from Kucha, Xiliang, India and elsewhere; dances were divided into soft, graceful dances and vigorous ones, and the Rainbow Raiment and the Sogdian whirl were famous.
After the Song, the great court suites faded and dance moved into opera and folk festivals. The shehuo, yangge, stilt walking, waist-drum, dragon and lion dances of the first lunar month joined dance to prayers for good fortune and to fun. The peoples of China each have their own dances, such as the Tibetan guozhuang and xianzi, the Dai peacock dance, the Uyghur sanam and the Korean long-drum dance.
In the 1940s, Dai Ailian and other dancers went to the borderlands and villages to learn ethnic dances and made new works from them. From the 1950s, dance schools and professional companies were founded, Chinese classical dance, built on opera movement, became a system, and dance drama became a major stage form.
Chinese dance is the performing art whose language is the moving body. The earliest evidence is a Majiayao painted basin about five thousand years old: a ring of dancers hold hands and step in the same direction. After it came the civil and martial dances of Zhou ritual music, the long-sleeve and plate-and-drum dances of the Han, Tang court suites that absorbed dances from the Western Regions, the shehuo, yangge, dragon and lion dances of town and village from the Song onward, and the distinctive dances of China's many peoples. In the twentieth century dancers collected ethnic and folk dance, built Chinese classical dance and developed dance drama.
The line begins with a Neolithic image. The Majiayao painted basin with dancing figures, found in 1973 at Shangsunjiazhai in Datong, Qinghai, shows fifteen dancers on its inner wall in groups of five, holding hands and facing the same way. It is one of the earliest pictures of dance in China. The Majiayao culture flourished on the upper Yellow River from about 3300 to 2000 BCE.
The Zhou arranged the dances of legendary past ages into the Six Dynastic Dances: Yunmen, Daxian, Dashao, Daxia, Dahuo and Dawu, the first four civil and the last two martial, used in sacrifices to Heaven, Earth and the ancestors. Zhou ritual allowed eight rows of dancers to the Son of Heaven, six to a lord, four to a high officer and two to a gentleman. At the end of the Spring and Autumn period Confucius compared the Shao and the Wu, a sign that dance had become a political and moral symbol. In the Warring States the shaman dances of Chu left their trace in the Nine Songs.
The Han set up the Music Bureau, the hundred entertainments flourished, and long-sleeve, scarf and plate-and-drum dances appear often at banquets and on carved stones. In the Wei, Jin and Southern and Northern Dynasties, much music and dance arrived from the Western Regions. The Sui and Tang courts kept seven, nine and then ten ensembles, many of them from Kucha, Kashgar, Gaochang and India. Around 718-720 Emperor Xuanzong created the Rainbow Raiment suite, whose dance Bai Juyi described in verse. After the An Lushan rebellion most great suites were scattered; Li Yu of the Southern Tang rebuilt the Rainbow Raiment from a fragmentary score, and the Song recovered only parts of it.
The Song court had troupe dances, the city wazi had whirling dances and comic masked dances, and village shehuo grew large. In the Yuan, Ming and Qing much dance passed into opera movement; yangge, flower-drum, dragon and lion dances spread at festivals everywhere, and ethnic minority dances were handed down in their own communities.
In the 1940s, Wu Xiaobang, Dai Ailian and others began modern Chinese dance choreography; around 1946 Dai Ailian staged Tibetan Spring, Lolo Love Song and other works in Chongqing. In the 1950s the Beijing Dance School was founded, Chinese classical dance became a teaching system, and dance dramas such as The Magic Lotus Lantern reached the stage. Today ethnic and folk dance, classical dance, dance drama and public square dancing all coexist, and many folk dances are on the national intangible heritage list.
Feathered-Robe Dance
The dancers with long trailing sleeves in the central courtyard are the clearest visual core of the Niyang dance scene.
Raised Music Ensemble
The ensemble of drums and strings on the raised right platform provides the accompaniment for the court dance.
Court Onlookers
The palace attendants watching from the left hall add the courtly layer of spectatorship.
Bridge Procession
The bannered figures crossing the bridge at right extend the performance into a ceremonial procession scene.
Dancers in cloud-and-feather robes glide across a moonlit palace courtyard before a lotus pond, their sleeves billowing like mist while a pavilion orchestra plays the Rainbow-Skirt melody. A monumental multimedia court suite synthesizing borderland and central visual styles.
Dance is like a book without words. The Majiayao dancers wrote "we are together" with linked hands, Zhou dancers wrote "martial merit" with shield and axe, and Tang dancers wrote the wind of distant lands with their spins.
You do not need to read characters to read this book, only to watch how the body moves. The same sleeve-fling and the same step have been rewritten again and again across the ages.
A dance teacher took her students to a museum and stopped in front of a painted pottery basin. Three groups of small figures were painted inside it, holding hands.
A student asked, "What dance are they doing?"
"No one knows its name. But look: they stand together hand in hand, and they seem to be moving as one."
"Did they have drumbeats then?"
The teacher smiled. "The basin doesn't show it. When we get back, let's practise northern Shaanxi yangge."
On the day of the yangge practice, dozens of students held hands in a ring and stepped forward and back to the gongs and drums. One student suddenly stopped and said, "Teacher, don't we look like the people in that basin?"
"Whether we do is for you to see. Hands joined, moving together: that much you can see on the basin."
The painted pottery basin of the Majiayao culture found at Shangsunjiazhai in Datong, Qinghai, shows three groups of dancers with joined hands on its inner wall, one of the earliest images of Chinese dance. The Western Zhou organised the Six Dynastic Dances, the Tang produced the Song of Rainbow Skirts and Feathered Robes, and the twentieth century added classical dance and dance drama. Yangge, dragon dance, lion dance and the dances of the many peoples are still performed in many places. (This is an illustrative story, not a historical account.)
Nuo Masked DanceMasked dances of village nuo troupes, danced to gongs and drums in the first month to drive out plague and evil
Han–Wei Music and DanceLong sleeves, plates and drums, and the Ba-Yu war dance at the banquets of the Han to Six Dynasties courts
Dragon DanceTeams raising a dragon on poles to chase a pearl, together with fish-lantern and rolling-lantern dances
Dances of the Southern PeoplesRitual and festival dances of the southwestern and south-central peoples, danced to reed pipes and bronze and wooden drums
Lion DanceDancers under a lion's head and pelt: northern lions show skill, southern lions show spirit
Tang Court Music and DanceTen ensembles, seated and standing troupes, the Rainbow Raiment and the Sogdian whirl
Tibetan DanceGuozhuang, xianzi, reba, duixie and monastery cham, with the dances of the Qiang, Tu and Monpa
Mongolian and Northern Peoples' DanceThe Mongolian andai and savardin, with Daur, Evenki, Xibe and other northern dances
Drum and Percussion DanceWaist drums on the hip, frame drums in hand: striking while dancing
Dai Peacock DanceThe Dai dance that imitates the peacock, known for its three-bend posture
Dances of Xinjiang's PeoplesImprovised song-dance of the Uyghur, Tajik and Kazakh to the frame drum
YanggeThe processional group dance of northern New Year festivals, danced to gongs, drums and suona
Huagudeng and Lantern Song-DanceThe Huai River duet of drum-boy and orchid-girl, with its lantern and tea-picking kin
Farmers' Dance of the Korean Ethnic GroupThe Korean farmers' song and dance of north-east China, opening with an offering to the land god and ending with spinning ribbon hats
Classical DanceThe dance system built in the twentieth century on the movement of Chinese opera
Chinese Dance DramaFull-length stage drama told in dance, from Magic Lotus Lantern to today