Gong Maofa

01 · Lineage & Regional School

Gong Maofa, Male, Han, from Shaowu, Fujian, is a fourth-batch national representative bearer of Nuo Dance (Ⅲ-7). The tradition is documented in Shaowu, Fujian. Within the regional tradition and school record of Nuo Dance in Shaowu, Fujian: The nuo dance is widely transmitted throughout the country, and is distributed most densely in Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Hunan, Jiangxi and Anhui in the Yangtze River basin, and in Shanxi, Shaanxi, Gansu and Hebei in the Yellow River basin. Locally the name 'nuo dance' is not used; it is called instead by specific programme names such as 'tiao fanseng', jumping the foreign monk, and 'tiao baman', jumping the eight barbarians. According to legend, in the Zhou dynasty there were already the terms 'great nuo' and 'villagers' nuo'; after the Han dynasty nuo gradually became an important component of the state's orthodox system of ritual law. According to a stone stele dating to the fifteenth year of the Daoguang reign of the Qing dynasty, 1835, left at the Qian Shanping natural village of Kanxia Village in Heping Town, the Shaowu nuo dance began in the Song dynasty and has a history of more than a thousand years.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

Male, Han ethnicity, born in August 1936, a native of Shaowu City, Fujian Province. Steeped from childhood in local custom, he developed a keen interest in nuo dance and later studied its performance technique under the veteran artist Gong Qingshan, gaining a good command of core skills such as Tiao Fanseng (the Monk Dance) and Tiao Baman (the Eight Barbarians Dance). He is especially skilled in the role of Maitreya Buddha, now crouching to strike the wooden fish, now stroking his belly in a guileless laugh, bringing out to the full the charmingly naive figure of the god. He has long been devoted to transmitting and promoting the Shaowu nuo dance, carefully collecting and collating related material and providing a documentary basis for the study of nuo dance. At the same time he has organized the village's veteran artists to teach nuo dance technique to the younger generation without charge, and the young people he has trained have now become a solid reserve force for the Shaowu nuo dance. Within the documented technical tradition of Nuo Dance in Shaowu, Fujian: The nuo dance is a primitive dance of a sacrificial-ritual nature in traditional society, and has a long history. The nuo dance takes driving out plague and pestilence and praying for peace and safety as its principal aim, and involves a very strong degree of mass participation. In performance the dancers wear masks, shout as they drive things away, and attract a large crowd of followers and onlookers, so the scene is very lively. Among the many ethnic minorities of the southwestern region there also survive numerous nuo rituals and nuo dances of diverse form and complex function, with strong ethnic character. The Shaowu nuo dance is an ancient dance form in Shaowu City, Fujian Province, and is popular in the townships of Dabugang, Heping, Xiaojiafang, Guilin, Jinkeng and elsewhere in Shaowu. The times at which the various villages perform nuo and the deities to whom they present their vows are not the same. The Shaowu nuo dance preserves the original image of driving out nuo in sacrificial music and dance; it has neither plot nor recitation, and in masks, costume and dance movements it clearly retains the lingering flavour of ancient nuo. Besides retaining the original Central Plains content of driving out pestilence and ghosts, the Shaowu nuo dance also adds content such as praying for health and peace, for children and new births, and for success in study. In performance the dancers wear masks with a piece of red cloth hanging behind the head, and move forward and back, leaping and threading their way to the rhythm of drums and music, singing, dancing and calling out on the open plain; the dance movements are complex and display a plain, rugged quality. Meanwhile, the increasingly varied and colourful modern cultural life has also dealt this ancient culture a heavy blow. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Tiao fan seng (dancing the foreign monks)": One of the local names for Shaowu's Nuo dance, which villagers call by specific item names rather than by the word Nuo. "Tiao ba man (dancing the eight barbarians)": Another principal item of Shaowu Nuo dance, and with the foreign monks one of the core skills every local performer must master. "The stone stele of 1835": A stele preserved in a hamlet of Heping township records that Shaowu's Nuo dance began in the Song, giving it a history of some thousand years. "The masks and the red cloth at the back of the head": Dancers wear masks with a strip of red cloth hanging at the back of the head, darting and leaping to the drums and calling out in the open air.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

National representative bearer of Nuo Dance (Shaowu Nuo Dance), a fourth-batch national intangible cultural heritage project.

04 · Associated Heritage Item Dossier

05 · Fellow National Bearers Lineage

National representative bearers recorded under the same item code, ordered from the first to the sixth batch. Batch order is not a teacher–student relationship.

06 · Archival Sources & Bibliography

1. Gong Maofa · National Representative Bearer Archive