Nanfeng Nuo Dance

Introduction

Danced in 180 Nanfeng villages, with 180 kinds of mask and 82 surviving dances

The Nanfeng Nuo dance is performed in 180 villages of Nanfeng county in Jiangxi. An account quoted by Fu Taihui in the early Qing, in his essay on the Nuo gods of the Song lineage of Jinsha, holds that Nuo dancing was already known around Nanfeng in the Han. In the Ming and Qing it took in techniques from opera, puppetry, lanterns and martial arts and grew more secular and entertaining. Its masks come in 180 kinds, from plague-dispelling deities, folk gods and Buddhist and Daoist figures to legendary heroes, animal spirits and ordinary people. Eighty-two dances survive, among them the solos Opening the Mountain and Zhong Kui, the group dances Leaping Judges and Old Man and Old Woman Nuo, the skill piece Guanyin on the Lotus and a dance drama on Journey to the West. In 2006 it entered the first national list of intangible cultural heritage, with Luo Huiwu as a representative bearer.