From the history of dance development, we know that all kinds of dances come from the need to reflect () and express different social life contents; With the development of the times, due to the continuous expansion of dance in the field of performance themes, dance forms have also developed and changed, which will inevitably produce new dance genres and new dance varieties. Therefore, we study the types of dance in order to have a deeper understanding of the characteristics and development law of dance art, and to be familiar with and master various styles and methods of dance art reflecting and expressing social life. This is for us to dance.
Dance creation, dance appreciation and dance criticism are of great significance.
The first section is the historical formation and development of dance types in China.
We now have the earliest dance image data in China, which is a pottery basin with dance patterns unearthed from Shangsunjiazhai Cemetery in Datong County, Qinghai Province in autumn of 1973. According to textual research, it is the product of about 5000 years ago, which is equivalent to the Neolithic Age of primitive society. On the inner wall of this pottery basin, near the mouth of the basin, there are four parallel stripes with three groups of dancers, five in each group, with their faces and bodies slightly sideways. Two people next to each group drew two lines on their outer arms, which may indicate the way their arms swing. Hand in hand, they walked in the same direction and danced neatly together.
Secondly, about 2000 years ago, in the Western Han Dynasty, the pattern of the copper shell container cover (unearthed in Shizhai Mountain, Jinning, Yunnan) was engraved with the feather dance pattern of Yunnan people, with a total of 23 people. Among the other 22 people, 8 people held the feather in their right hand and 14 people held the feather in their left hand. They are all wearing feather hats, decorated with bird beaks, topless, with skirts with feather edges around their waists, and their tails hanging down and exposed. ①
As can be seen from the above two legends, these dances are all mass collective dance scenes, and the dancers are following a unified rhythm and doing the same dance movements. The dress of the latter, which simulates the movements and shapes of birds and beasts, is a reflection of the hunting life of ancient people. These dances may be collective dances of the masses, expressing the joy and joy of labor after victory and harvest.
Ge Zhile, recorded in the ancient books Lu Chunqiu and China Ancient Music, shows that only others fuck the ox's tail and devote themselves to singing eight songs: one is to carry the people, the other is to sing birds, the third is to enjoy the exotic grass for four days, the fifth is to respect the heaven, the sixth is to achieve the emperor's merits, the seventh is to rely on the heaven, and the eighth is the extreme of animals. Then we know that this is a dance with three people holding oxtails as dancing tools. They are singing and dancing together. Judging from the contents of the eight songs, it mainly shows that people wish the people prosperity, lush vegetation and abundant crops, and pay tribute to their ancestors and heaven.
To pay tribute to the kindness given by the emperor and the earth, the general purpose is to pray for a large number of livestock and poultry to reproduce.
Judging from the content related to work and life reflected by this dance and the people it represents
From the perspective of ideal desire, it is obviously superior to the above-mentioned dance that expresses single emotion.
It is richer.
Besides, Da Wu, a famous music and dance in the Zhou Dynasty, praised Wu Wang's military action.
It is divided into six parts:
"The first paragraph: the beginning is a long drum, which is probably the prelude to the dance. The dance team has assembled and is ready to go on stage. Then, the dancers came out from the north, holding weapons in their hands, holding their heads high and singing slowly and long, showing the determination of the king of Wu to cut the seal and waiting for the arrival of the princes. "
"The second paragraph: The dance turned into a fiery fighting atmosphere, and it was' vigorous', showing the vanguard troops of Zhou Jun led by Jiang Taigong, singing directly at the merchants. At this time, people on both sides of the dance team were vibrating the priest to convey military orders. The dance team immediately divided into two lines, made a fierce stab, and jumped forward, indicating that the business was ruined. "
"The third paragraph: it means to return to the south after the triumph. The dance team may only do a' passing' return action. "
"The fourth paragraph: it means that the small countries in the south surrendered to Zhou, and southern Xinjiang became stable. The dance team may show the momentum of all nations coming to the DPRK with a grand, symmetrical and stable composition. "
"The fifth paragraph: The dance team is divided into two lines, indicating that the Duke of Zhou is on the left and Zhao Gong is on the right, helping the King of Zhou to rule. Then change all kinds of complex formations in an orderly way. At this time, the rhythm is accelerated and the music enters the' chaotic' section. Then, form a neat team, all the dancers sit down and make a low-key appearance. It means that the country has been well governed, the country is rich and strong, and the country is safe. "
"Paragraph 6: The dance team regrouped and arranged neatly to solemnly show their respect for Zhou Wang. The whole dance is over. ',②
From these six dances, we can see that although it is still a mass group dance, it summarizes and symbolically expresses some plot contents, thus having the elements of narrative dance.
With the progress and development of social life, the content and form of dance are constantly enriched and developed. For example, in the Han Dynasty, there were works that showed a story and created people with different personality characteristics. Miscellaneous Notes on Xijing The drama Huang Gong in the East China Sea in the Han Dynasty is a story performed by two people, which mainly shows the struggle between man and tiger by actions: "There is Huang Gong in the East China Sea, and when you are young, you can make snakes resist tigers, wear golden knives, stand in the clouds and sit in the mountains and rivers. However, aging, exhaustion of strength and excessive drinking can not restore its operation. At the end of the Qin Dynasty, a white tiger was found in the East China Sea, and Huang Gong hated its red knife. Because the operation was not good, it was killed by a tiger. "
In the Tang Dynasty, the embryonic form of musical which combined dance, singing and drama to express some characters and stories appeared. For example, stepping on a ballad is a famous masterpiece. According to Jiao Fangji, there was a surname Su in the Northern Qi Dynasty. He is not an official, but a doctor himself; Indulge in drinking and hitting his wife every time he gets drunk. A wife was very sad and complained to her neighbor. When people do this. Husband wears women's clothes and walks in to sing; Each stack, others chorus and cloud,' step on a rumor, come on! "Come on!" Because it steps and sings, it is called' stepping on rumors'; It is called injustice, so it is bitter. When her husband arrived, he had a fight and thought he was laughing. "
In the Song Dynasty, due to the unprecedented development of industry and commerce, many prosperous big cities appeared. With the prosperity of urban economy, folk dance and other performing arts have also developed greatly. In order to express richer life content, portray diverse characters and express complicated and tortuous story, simple dance or song and dance performances can no longer meet the requirements of artistic performances. Therefore, on the basis of inheriting various performing art forms of the previous generation, we skillfully combined songs, dances and dramas to produce our national musical drama-traditional Chinese opera art.
From the above brief review of some dance works in the history of the development of ancient dance art in China, we can see that in the development of social life, in order to meet the needs of reflecting and expressing different contents, different kinds of dances have emerged. Generally speaking, in the lower stage of social development, the types and genres of dance are relatively single, and with the continuous enrichment and development of social life, new dance art varieties will be born, new dance genres will appear, and the evolution and development of dance forms will be more complex and diverse. Especially after China entered the middle of the 20th century, due to the more rapid social development, with the arrival of the climax of economic construction and the improvement of people's material and cultural life, China's dance art has also achieved unprecedented prosperity and development. Due to the continuous expansion of the theme of dance performance and the strengthening of the breadth and depth of dance reflecting social life, it will inevitably promote the emergence, evolution and development of different types and schools of dance. Among them, it not only inherited and developed the original varieties of Chinese folk dance tradition, but also widely absorbed and borrowed some foreign dance art forms, and closely combined with Chinese folk dance tradition, and created many new dance art forms and new dance varieties according to the needs of expressing the new life content of China people, which made China dance art present a magnificent scene of blooming.
Section II Principles and Methods of China Dance Classification
The classification of dance, like other art classifications, has always been a controversial issue. This is not only because everyone has different views and different classification methods, but more importantly, the composition of a work of art is often complicated, and its artistic characteristics are not so single, which often presents a staggered situation, which adds some difficulty to our dance classification work. Red silk dance, for example, is a kind of folk dance in terms of its style and characteristics. From the perspective of shaping artistic image and reflecting life characteristics, it is a lyric dance; Judging from the form of expression and the style of dance genre, it is group dance; From the dance form, it is a prop dance; Judging from the venue and purpose of the performance, it is a performance dance on the stage; Judging from the taste of dance, it is an elegant dance; From the perspective of national characteristics, it is Han dance; From the national point of view, it is China dance; Geographically, it is an oriental dance; Judging from the age of the performers, it is an adult dance; From the dancer's identity, is it professional dance or amateur dance ... We just randomly divide the red silk dance into more than a dozen categories, and then we can divide it down. Of course, if we classify every dance in this way, it seems a bit cumbersome and unnecessary. However, we give this example mainly to show that a dance category can be distinguished from various angles and ways. Secondly, it also shows that the classification of dance art can only be relative, not absolute.
The principles and methods of dividing dance types are chosen according to certain purposes. Since we want to have a deeper understanding of the characteristics of dance art, grasp the law of its artistic development, make dance creation develop more healthily, and play a greater positive role and influence in social life, we use the characteristics of various dances, such as their essential differences, unique ways of expressing content, different methods of shaping the image of dance art and different functions in social life to divide dance categories. At the same time, some usages that have been popular and established for a long time in China dance circles are also properly considered.
In order to let everyone have a clear, systematic and organized understanding of the types of dance, we have adopted the following classification methods.
According to its function and purpose, dance can be divided into two categories: life dance and artistic dance. Some people call life dance self-entertainment dance and artistic dance performance dance. According to the actual situation, life dance can include self-entertainment dance, but it is not completely self-entertainment, such as religion and sacrifice dance; Some life dances, such as custom dances, have certain performances, so this title is not appropriate. The so-called life dance is essentially a dance for one's own life needs, and artistic dance is a dance for others to see. )
Life dance includes six categories: custom dance, religious sacrifice dance, social dance, self-entertainment dance, sports dance and educational dance.
Artistic dance can be divided into the following three types:
First, according to the different styles and characteristics of dance, it can be divided into four categories: classical dance, folk dance, modern dance and new style dance.
Second, according to the genre and style characteristics of dance expressions, it can be divided into eight categories: solo dance, duet, threesome dance, group dance, song and dance, musical and dance drama.
Thirdly, according to the method of reflecting social real life and the characteristics of shaping dance image, it can be divided into three categories: lyric dance, narrative dance and drama dance.
Section III Artistic Features of Various Dances
First of all, the dance of life
Life dance generally refers to a wide range of mass dance activities that are directly and closely related to people's lives, with clear utilitarian purposes and everyone can participate.
The dance of life includes the following categories:
1. Custom Dance (Festival Dance Only)
Many ethnic groups in our country often hold various mass dance activities during festive festivals such as weddings, funerals, sowing and harvesting. In these dance activities, the customs, social features, cultural traditions and national personality characteristics of all ethnic groups are displayed. It is an indispensable part of the spiritual life of people of all ethnic groups.
For example, the wedding dance popular in Hunan is a farewell activity accompanied by the bride before marriage. It usually starts two nights before the wedding and ends at midnight. On the last night, we will sing and dance all night, until the next day, after the wedding dance, the bride gets on the sedan chair and sends her new mother to the groom's house. The wedding dance is composed of 12, such as Dancing with Lights, Riding, Fire Away, Changing Letters, Mothers Calling Women Back, Spinning Cotton, Rowing, Dancing with Water, Selling Wine, Grinding Meteors and Singing and Dancing. Dancers sing and dance, reflecting women's working life and rich thoughts and feelings.
Tujia funeral dance is a form of duet dance in Tujia funeral ceremonies in Hunan and Hubei. There is no limit to the number of dancers, and they can combine freely. Dancing in front of the mourning hall: the singer sings with drums, and the dancers dance with the rhythm of drums to mourn.
Spring cattle, which spread in Guangdong, Guangxi, Hunan, Yunnan and other places, are mostly held during the "beginning of spring" every year. Generally, two people put on bull-shaped props to perform various actions of plowing cattle, and the other person plays the role of a farmer, performing labor such as plowing, plowing and sowing, and singing while dancing. Most of the lyrics are about welcoming the spring, persuading farmers and praying for a bumper harvest.
Korean people living in Jilin, Liaoning, Heilongjiang and other provinces in China, after the harvest every autumn, people dance "farm music dance" in street squares. Generally, it consists of "small encouragement", "children's dance" and "elephant hat dance". When the dance reached its climax, all () dance teams and onlookers joined the dance floor to express their joy and joy after harvest. The Miao people living in Hunan and Guizhou provinces are also dancing in the harvest season. Four dancers stood around the drum, each holding a drum and dancing together. The main actions are: beating drums, combing hair, rounding hands, carrying swords, wiping body, turning over, plowing, harrowing fields, transplanting rice seedlings, pulling weeds, picking millet and collecting drums. The action range is large and the style is unrestrained, which shows the cheerful mood of Miao youth after the harvest. ③
2. Religious and sacrificial dances (including witch dances)
Religious dance is a kind of dance form to express, publicize and carry out religious activities. Religious dance is a vivid representation of supernatural and supernatural mysterious power-God, which makes the invisible God become a tangible body that can be perceived and a personification of mysterious power. This is an indispensable part of religious ceremonies. It is mainly used to pray for the protection of the gods, drive away disasters and diseases, turn evil into good, prosper people and animals, harvest crops, or thank the gods for their gifts. This kind of dance activity is found in religious ceremonies of many regions and nationalities in China. For example, folk witchcraft dance, teacher dance and curtain dance, Buddhism's "dressing up as a ghost" and Shamanism's "jumping to the gods" are all examples.
Sacrificial dance is a ritual dance form to sacrifice ancestors and gods. In the past, people used it to express their memory of their ancestors or hope that ancestors and gods would bless them. China Six Dances in Zhou Dynasty is a famous sacrificial dance. Six dances are: (1) Cloud Gate is used to worship the gods; (2) "Xianchi" is used to worship the land god; & lt3) The spoon is used to worship the four gods (the sun, the moon, the stars and the sea); (4) Heroes used it to worship Shan Chunchuan; (5) Zhong Da was used to worship the first batch (female ancestors); (6) Great martial arts are used to worship ancestors. Besides, the Qin dances in Jiangxi, Anhui, Hubei, Hunan, Guizhou, Guangxi and other places have been developed from the ritual dances in the ancient Qin Festival, and most of them still retain the main characteristics of "exorcising ghosts and eliminating epidemics".
3. ballroom dancing
Social dance is the most popular and mass dance activity in people's cultural life. It is a dance for people to communicate socially, enhance friendship and connect feelings. Generally, it refers to all kinds of ballroom dancing at the dance. In addition, many ethnic minorities in China, such as the Torch Festival of the Yi nationality, the Lusheng Festival of the Miao nationality, the March 3rd of the Li nationality, the June 6th of the Buyi nationality, the Bitterness Festival of the Hani nationality and the Water Splashing Festival of the Dai nationality, are mostly social activities in which young men and women interact with each other and choose their spouses freely.
Entertain oneself, dance
Self-entertainment dance is the simplest dance in people's dance activities. There is no other purpose than entertaining yourself. Not for dancing, nor for infecting or influencing others' feelings and thoughts. Only through dancing to express and vent their inner emotional impulses, in the process of expressing and venting emotions, get full satisfaction of aesthetic pleasure. Of course, sometimes this kind of dance will inevitably arouse the passionate reaction of onlookers or fellow dancers, and this objective reaction will naturally affect and stimulate the dancers' own emotions, thus further inspiring the dancers to improvise, making their dances exude unique brilliance and making them feel the joy and joy of greater dance aesthetic activities. For example, the China Han folk dance "Yangko" and some minority folk dances, as well as the western "disco" and "break dance" are all popular self-entertainment dances.
5. Sports dance
Sports dance, because dance is an art of human movements, has always played a sports role in fitness. More recently, people have further combined dance with sports to create a new variety of sports dance that exercises the body artistically and aesthetically and makes the body and mind develop in an all-round and healthy way. Such as various fitness dances, rhythmic gymnastics, discos for middle-aged and elderly people, ice dances, water dances and so on. In addition, in a broad sense, in China's national martial arts, elephant boxing, Wu Qin opera, swords and other symbols and simulations of the movements of various animals and specific figures can all belong to sports dance. In recent years, ballroom dancing, an international standard ballroom dance, is very popular in China, and various competitions are constantly taking place. Some sports departments classify it as sports dance and set up sports dance organizations. Of course, ballroom dancing can't be said to have no certain fitness function, but its main function is not to exercise, so this title is inaccurate. )
6. Educational dance
Educational dance refers to dance activities and dance courses offered by schools and kindergartens for aesthetic education. It is understood that schools in many European and American countries attach great importance to aesthetic education for students. In addition to music and art classes, they also offer dance classes for students to choose from. Some schools also have dance departments, which not only train professional dance talents, but also teach dance culture to dance lovers. Therefore, they formed a special educational dance discipline. Some colleges and universities in China generally pay insufficient attention to aesthetic education. Except for a few colleges and universities that offer dance classes, this course is generally not offered. Students who like dancing can only dance in amateur art groups. So the so-called educational dance in our country refers to children dance and children dance. In fact, our ancestors still attached great importance to the dance education of children. For example, about three thousand years ago, the Zhou Dynasty stipulated the learning content and course flow of music and dance education for aristocratic children. Zhou Li musician's note: "It refers to the dance I taught when I was young, but it says: thirteen scoops of dance, dancing like a child, and twenty dances of Daxia." Generally speaking, "dance spoon" refers to "small dance", which belongs to the category of literary dance, including six famous sacrificial dances in Zhou Dynasty: Zhuang dance, feather dance, emperor dance, Xi dance, dry dance and human dance. "Dancing elephant" belongs to the category of martial arts dance, "dancing like a thorn when using soldiers" and "may imitate the fighting action of broken elephant array. "Daxia" is one of the six dances, which is said to express and praise Yu Xia's great achievements in water control. It was used to worship mountains and rivers in the Zhou Dynasty. That is to say, at the age of thirteen, he learned to dance in literature, at the age of fifteen (when he was a child), and at the age of twenty, he learned to sing praises to clan leaders.
The reason why educational dance can't be widely popularized in China is that many people don't know enough about the function and function of aesthetic education, and some people lack the knowledge of dance culture. They don't understand that dance art is a national culture, which has an important influence on cultivating and beautifying people's emotional thoughts and moral sentiments, (1) cultivating people's unity and friendship, strengthening etiquette and improving physical and mental health. I believe that with the improvement of China people's cultural quality and the deeper understanding of the role of art aesthetic education, dance education will be paid more and more attention. Therefore, looking forward to the future, educational dance will have a broader development prospect.
Artistic dance refers to the artistic creation of professional and amateur dancers by observing, experiencing, analyzing, concentrating, summarizing and imagining social life, thus producing a dance work with distinctive theme, rich emotion, complete form and typical artistic image, which is performed by a few people on the stage or square for the masses to watch. According to their different artistic characteristics, they can be roughly divided into the following three categories.