The court dance of the Song Dynasty formed its own unique form of dance performance. This new form of dance is called "team dance", which includes classic dances of the Tang Dynasty such as the "Cudgel Dance" and the "Sword Dance", and adds some newly created musical dances of the Song Dynasty.
It is mainly divided into "children's team" and "women's team" two teams, the performance of a large number of people, a large team dance can be up to hundreds of people.
There is a clear division of roles in the team dance, such as the "Flower Heart," which is the main actor, the "Jukanzi," which is similar to the host, the "Song and Dance Team," which is the main part, and the "Posterior Team," which accompanies the orchestra. The "backline" accompanied by the orchestra. The performance of team dance also has a relatively fixed program, which integrates singing, dancing, reciting, dialog and other forms into one, and various forms are interspersed with each other to form a new comprehensive performance form that is rich in content but very orderly.
And, in the Song Dynasty, a huge folk dance team called "social fire" appeared. This team will be music, dance, martial arts and acrobatics and other skills programs together, in the form of a parade to perform dance. These folk dance performances are usually held on New Year's Day, Lantern Festival, Ching Ming Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival and other days.
In this period, the city has appeared in the specialized performance place "hook rail", "tile house". Folk dances were usually performed in the "Goulan", "Washa" or squares.
In the folk dance activities, there are a lot of acrobatic, highly skilled programs, such as in several feet high on the pole on the horizontal wood, and in the horizontal wood on the smoke and fire, pretend to be a ghost, the effect is thrilling.
Then encountered the palace festival, folk dance artists, especially those who look good skills of female artists, often called into the palace performance. Famous folk dance programs of the Song Dynasty include "Village Field Music", "Holding the Gong" and "Dancing Bao Lao".
In the folk dance activities, each "social fire" team competing performances, race skills, race level, the dance program can last a whole day is not finished. During festivals, folk artists are organized into societies to perform, and they are disbanded after the festivals.
In addition, the Song dynasty court "Nuo ritual" is still retained, the Song dynasty court held annually as a rule, "Nuo ritual" activities, by the teaching workshop actor dressed as a god, generals, magistrates, Zhong Kui, Zaojun, landlord and other gods, wearing masks dance.
Some of the dances in the Song dynasty team dance also has a very important change, that is, it is no longer just a purely lyrical dance form, but adapted to add a narrative component.
For example, the sword dance of the Song Dynasty added the storyline of the Hongmen Banquet of the Han Dynasty, which is an important change from lyrical dance to narrative dance. However, due to various reasons, the development of performance dance to the critical moment of the Song Dynasty to the plotting of the transformation, and did not develop into a complete and mature form of dance drama, but turned to the aspect of the opera, and ultimately absorbed and submerged by the opera.
The miniaturization and programming of opera seemed to be more in line with people's appreciation of the taste of the Song Dynasty. With the disappearance of the Tang Dynasty, a large number of song and dance performers were displaced to the folklore, which objectively greatly contributed to the development of folk songs and dances in the Song Dynasty, so that some of the dances in the folklore can be continued to be preserved.
In addition, with the commercialization of the Song Dynasty, song and dance entertainment in the city also began to flourish, and even appeared like the "hook rail tile shop" such entertainment venues, so that the dance can be a commercial performance. Therefore, the folk dances of the Song Dynasty were very diverse and prosperous.
The Lion Dance is a famous dance of the Song Dynasty, and there are paintings of children playing with lions in the Song Dynasty. Therefore, although the elegant music of the Song court began to decline, the popular music of the people showed a flourishing appearance. Although the Southern Song dynasty can only side, but still "West Lake song and dance a few times off" a peaceful scene.
Song folk dance is very prosperous. Every New Year's Day, Lantern Festival, Qingming Festival, Tianning Festival, folk dance team is very active, it is said that a Lantern Festival dance team has 70 kinds of folk dance team can be seen how prosperous.
The dances in the hundred dramas of the Song Dynasty were often performed in the military. Song Dynasty soldiers disguised as masked and cloaked gods and ghosts, judges, etc., in the drums and flutes, fireworks, firecrackers, drinking and shouting, performing "hold the gong", "hard ghosts", "Dance Judge", "mime", "seven holy knife", "rest tent", "wipe stagger" and so on.
The performers range from one or two people to more than 100 people, some wearing masks, some with green, green, yellow and white colors painted face, gold eyes and different clothes, two by two fighting to hit the stab, set up a battle against. These played a variety of characters of the dance, each into a play, but also seems to have a certain theater plot connection.
Song dynasty court team dance and big song in the increase in theater factors, song dynasty big song also increased storytelling, such as "
FengZhenYin big song" in the "sword dance", including two contents, the first half of the performance of HongMenYan XiangZhuang dance sword in PeiGong story; the second half of the performance of zhangxu view GongSunDaNiang sword dance, cursive great progress of the story. These great compositions have a strong dramatic character.
From the beginning of the Northern Song Dynasty, after the miscellaneous operas, miscellaneous operas and dances have been developed in parallel for a long time, influencing and absorbing each other. Opera contains various elements of song and dance, martial arts and acrobatics, and ancient song and dance opera, military theater, song and dance theater, etc., have a lineage of connection.
In the late Northern Song Dynasty and the Southern Song Dynasty, the state was weak and the court was unable to maintain a large music and dance organization. Whenever the dynasty congratulates the great ceremony, it will temporarily go to the folk to hire artists to participate in the performance, called "and Gu". In the Southern Song dynasty during the Qiandao years, the Ministry of Music listed a variety of artists list, the number of temporary hired many.
Washe dance refers to the dance or dance programs performed in the washe, washe dance with a strong entertainment function. Song Dynasty Washi dance is not pure dance art, it is often mixed with acrobatics, martial arts, military formation and so on. Therefore, the Song Dynasty Washi dance can not be taken as an independent, pure dance art.
The "Dance Spinning" was a specialized dance performance, and its spinning movement was probably the most important technique in dance at that time, so the dance program was called "Dance Spinning".
The most famous dancer in the Northern Song Dynasty was called Zhang Zhennu. One of the more famous works is the "Dance Fan Music," a dance of the Fan tribe, which shows that there were frequent exchanges of dance art between the Han and ethnic minorities at that time.
In the Southern Song Dynasty, there were still dances and music performed in Lin'an City of the Southern Song Dynasty, and "Juggling Big Heads" and "Flower Drums" were folk dance programs that had been passed down for a long time. Juggling big head" is likely to be the predecessor of the later big head doll dance; flower drums is also a favorite dance. In the Southern Song Dynasty, the Dancing Sword and the Dancing Machete, both of which evolved from, or contained a large number of elements of, martial arts, were also popular dances.
In short, the development of the Song dance is to take over the dance of the Tang Dynasty, part of which, although to maintain a combination of song, dance, music form, but the nature of the pure dance was weakened, the number of performers to increase the tendency to the development of the group dance, with the addition of the recitation and the answer and other forms. The other part of the Song dynasty music and dance is obviously towards the development of miscellaneous drama, its character plot and set props and other factors are very clear.
These all show that the synthesis and melodrama is the development trend of Song dance, it and the same period of the development of the art of opera and mutual recognition, become the trend of the art of this period.