Axi Moon Dance

Introduction

Called gasibi, the joyful jump, in the Axi language; men play the sanxian while women dance to the beat

The Axi moon dance is the best-known folk dance of the Axi branch of the Yi people in Mile, Yunnan, and in the Axi language it is called gasibi, meaning the joyful jump. It began in the Western Hills of Mile in the Honghe prefecture and is also widely danced in Luxi and Luliang. One story says it began when a man named Mudeng first made fire by drilling fir wood and people danced around the blaze; another says farmers clearing land by burning had to hop across fields still smouldering under their bare feet. The accompaniment uses home-made instruments such as the large and small sanxian lutes, bamboo flutes, the sanhu fiddle, the yueqin and the suona, and only the men play the sanxian while the women dance to its beat. The music is in the gong mode and moves in a five-beat metre. In 2008 the dance entered the second national list of intangible cultural heritage as the Yi sanxian dance.