Elephant-foot drum dance, elephant-footdrumdance
Popular in Yunnan Province, Dai, Jingpo, Achang, De'ang, Brown and other ethnic minorities inhabited the area, is a kind of men's self-entertainment dance, because the dancers body sat on the elephant-foot drums and named. Elephant's foot drum with mango tree or cottonwood tree trunk hollow, covered with cowhide, shaped like an elephant's foot. In order to regulate its tone, the drum surface is covered with kneaded glutinous rice balls.
As the size of the elephant foot drum is different, the dance movements are also different. The drum is 0.7 meters long, unique to the Dai people in Xishuangbanna region, with flexible and jumping dance steps, and is mainly used in drum fights and drum races, with one pair or more pairs of fights. In order to finally catch each other's hats or heads for the win. The steps include swinging in place, rushing, walking, stepping, stomping, jumping and small limp feet, etc. The dance rhythms and the modeling characteristics of the dance are similar to those of the Dai dance.
The Elephant Foot Drum Dance must be accompanied by point cymbals, and when the Elephant Foot Drum Dance is danced, the person who plays the cymbals also participates in the dance, especially when the drums are rotated and the legs are tucked in for jumping, the cymbals are accompanied in front of the drums.
While the grand festival, Yunnan ethnic minority areas of the elephant foot drummers dressed in festive costumes, gathered in the square, they are both the leader, but also the dancers. Such as the Dai, Brown Water Festival, the dance ranks are led by the foot drummer; and in the Jingpo wood Naosong and Achang catching up on the street, but also perform the foot drum dance.
This is the Dai dance in the most widely circulated, the most colorful of a mass men's dance. It is called the Elephant Foot Drum Dance because it is danced on a drum shaped like an elephant's foot. The Elephant Foot Drum Dance occupies an important position in the cultural life of the Dai people. Whenever after work, festivals or drums event, the young man carrying the elephant-footed drum rushed from villages and villages, jumping up the robust, thick, flexible elephant-footed drum dance. Where there is the sound of the elephant foot drum. Where there is the sound of the elephant foot drum, there is a crowd of happy people.
Whenever the sun sets, the Dai people live in the border villages, will be "thud! Dang! Dang!" The sound of elephant foot drums resounded. The boys and girls in the Dai family's bamboo buildings go out of their homes, step on the rhythmic drums, come to the broad field, like a beautiful peacock, dancing.
The elephant foot drum is an ancient national instrument of the Dai people.