Lion Dancing



Waist-Drum Dancing




Dragon Dancing


 

Tibet dancing




Dances of Dai nationality

Just like the Chinese language, Chinese dance has its own unique vocabulary, semantics, and syntactic structure that enable a dancer on stage to fully express his thoughts and feelings with ease and grace. Chinese dance was divided into two types, civilian and military, during the Shang and Zhou periods of the first millennium B.C. In civilian dance, dancers held feather banners in their hands, symbolizing the distribution of the fruits of the day's hunting or fishing. This gradually developed into the dance used in the emperor's periodic sacrificial rituals held outside the city, and other religious rituals. In the large group military dance, on the other hand, the dancers carried weapons in their hands, and moved forward and backward in coordinated group motion. This later evolved into the movements used in military exercises. Chinese used choreographic movements of the hands and feet to express their veneration of the spirits of heaven and earth, to act out aspects of their everyday life, and to give expression to shared feelings of joy and delight. Dance was also a performing art that brought pleasure to both the performers and the audience.

Chinese Dance History Chinese dance dates back nearly 5000 years. As in most cultures, Chinese dance is closely linked to and reflective of life experiences and concerns. Thus the dances can be divided into (1) CEREMONIAL; for praying to the gods for bountiful harvests, (2) DRAMATIC; for reporting and commemorating historical events, (3) MARTIAL; for demonstrating fighting techniques, and (4) AGRICULTURAL; for celebrating nature and work. In old China, dancers belonged to the slave class and their chief function was to perform in the courts for royalty and the nobles. During the Tang Dynasty (618-906 A.D.) the famous Silk Road was often travelled by Indians, Persians and others who came to trade silk. Buddhism thus found its way into China and had an enormous impact on Chinese culture. The Flying Apsara, a minor deity, plays music and is pictured in many murals from this period. The unique poses of the dancers represented on these murals influenced Chinese classical dance.