Wang Fa

02-0336Yangge DanceTraditional DanceHaiyang, ShandongBatch 2 (2008)

Lineage & School of Heritage

At the age of thirteen Wang Fa became a pupil of Yan Shu, a celebrated yangge artist of the day, learning to play the female role of Wang Daniang.

Mastery, Signature Works & Repertoire

He was quick to grasp the art and willing to endure hardship, and through years of performance, reflection and innovation he developed a movement vocabulary characterised by twisting, lifting, stretching and turning, and eventually formed a school of his own. With such self-created dance idioms as the "great sunshade", the "great waist flash" and the "swallow sweeping the threshing floor", he shaped Wang Daniang into a wanton, spirited and alluring young married woman, unique in the locality, and was given the stage name Niu Duan Yao, "Twisting the Waist Apart". Many of his movement idioms, refined and elaborated by professional dancers, have been incorporated into the folk dance textbooks of art academies. In 1997 Wang Fa was invited to teach the students of the folk dance department of the Beijing Dance Academy, making an important contribution to the transmission and popularisation of Haiyang grand yangge.

Honors & Recognition

He was born in 1919 in Haiyang, Shandong, of Han ethnicity, and died in 2007. He was a national representative bearer of Yangge (Haiyang Grand Yangge), a second-batch national intangible cultural heritage project.

References & Archival Sources

Wang Fa · National Representative Bearer Archive

Representative Items of This Bearer

Profile

Representative item: Yangge Dance
Item code: Ⅲ-2
Category: Traditional Dance
Region: Haiyang, Shandong
Born: 1919.03
Batch: Batch 2 (2008)

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