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Shang Xiaoyun
Peking opera dan performer trained first in martial roles, founder of the Shang school and of the Rongchun She training troupe
Mural of the event “Four Great Dan”, which this person took part in.
In the late Qing and early Republic Peking opera flourished in Beijing, Shanghai and beyond, and actors of the dan, the female roles, moved to the centre of the stage. In the 1920s a theatre column in the Beijing newspaper Shuntian Shibao proposed Mei Lanfang, Shang Xiaoyun, Cheng Yanqiu and Xun Huisheng as the Four Great Dan, and the title then caught on. Each of the four created new plays and refined singing and movement, founding the Mei, Cheng, Shang and Xun schools of dan acting. Mei led the tours abroad, with Qi Rushan and others writing plays and helping to plan the journeys: in 1930 he took his company to the United States, and from 21 February to 21 April 1935 he led it to the Soviet Union at its invitation and performed in Moscow and Leningrad.
Also known as Born Dequan · Zi Qixia
- Roles
- Stage Performers
Shang Xiaoyun, born Shang Dequan with the courtesy name Qixia, traced his family to Nangong in Hebei and was born in Beijing in January 1900. He began in martial male roles before switching to the qingyi female role under Sun Yiyun, with guidance from Wang Yaoqing. His ringing voice and command of the sword-and-horse dan roles, in plays such as Zhaojun Goes Beyond the Pass, Liang Hongyu, Qin Liangyu and Second Entry into the Palace, became the Shang school. A 1927 poll by the Beijing paper Shuntian shibao named him one of the Four Great Dan with Mei Lanfang, Cheng Yanqiu and Xun Huisheng. In 1937 he founded the Rongchun She training troupe in Beiping, which took in more than two hundred pupils before closing in 1948. From 1957 he served as artistic director of the Shaanxi Provincial Opera School, later settled in Xi'an, and died there in April 1976.
Life and times
Dates 1900 CE–1976 CE
- 1927Four Great DanTook partage 27
- 1927Four Great Dan Named in Beijingage 27