Lotus Dance

Introduction

Dai Ailian's group dance drawn from a Longdong folk lantern dance, a prize-winner at the 1953 World Youth Festival

Lotus Dance is a women's group dance created by the dancer Dai Ailian, with music by Liu Chi. Its source is a folk dance of the Qingyang area in Gansu, known locally as yunduozi or the running lantern, which Liu Zhiren reworked in the 1940s with dancers standing in lotus frames and holding lotus lanterns. After 1949 Dai saw the dance while collecting material in northern Shaanxi and eastern Gansu, and back in Beijing she removed the hand-held lanterns, enlarged the arm movements and refined the poses. Liu Chi set it to the Qingyang folk tune Yang Yanmai, and the Central Song and Dance Ensemble gave the first performance. The dance won a prize at the World Festival of Youth and Students in Bucharest in 1953 and was later named a classic of twentieth-century Chinese dance.

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