Hu Zhenkun

01 · Lineage & Regional School

Hu Zhenkun followed his father with the troupe from childhood; at fifteen he studied Nuo dancing under Hu Shulin and Hu Guishu, and after joining the village's demon-expelling Nuo troupe he served successively as its manager and its instructor. Within the regional tradition and school record of Nuo Dance in Wuyuan, Jiangxi: Nuo dance that survives today is distributed mainly in Jiangxi, Anhui, Guizhou, Guangxi, Shandong, Henan, Shaanxi, Hubei, Fujian, Yunnan and Guangdong; localities have their own regional names such as tiaonuo, guizhu (ghost dance) and wanxi (play for joy). Wuyuan nuo dance went to Beijing in 1953 to take part in the first national folk music and dance performance convention, and four programmes including Chancellor Directing Troops were selected for the Anthology of Chinese Folk Dances. In June 2005 it took part in the Chinese Jiangxi International Nuo Culture and Art Week exhibition of nuo art from China and abroad, winning the gold award and the award for outstanding performance.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

He is well versed in the various Nuo rituals and customs and commands the entire repertoire of the troupe, including Cheng Xiang Cao Bing (The Chancellor Drills His Troops), Meng Jiangnu Song Han Yi (Meng Jiangnu Brings Winter Clothes) and Tai Yang Yu Yue Liang (The Sun and the Moon), and he also plays percussion. In his performance of Meng Jiangnu Song Han Yi he preserves the ni xing bu (nun's walk) with its feminine character, and he carries on the Nuo rituals, colourful invocations and various ceremonies said to date from remote antiquity, when frames were erected in pursuit of the king, while maintaining a distinctive style that is rough, archaic, concise, exaggerated, vivid and expressive. Within the documented technical tradition of Nuo Dance in Wuyuan, Jiangxi: Nuo dance is a folk dance widespread in various localities that serves to expel ghosts and drive away epidemic disease and to make sacrifice; it is the dance portion of a nuo ceremony, and is generally performed from the first day of the first lunar month to the sixteenth day. Nuo dance has a long history; it took shape in the grand nuo rite of the court of the Zhou dynasty, and is explicitly recorded in the Zhouli (Rites of Zhou). In the course of historical development, nuo dance formed different styles in different regions, and occupies a different proportion within the nuo ceremony. In nuo dance performance one generally wears the mask of a particular character, including mythological figures as well as secular persons and historical celebrities, and these constitute a vast pantheon of nuo gods: remove the mask and it is a man, put on the mask and it is a god. The accompanying instruments of nuo dance are simple, generally drums, gongs and other percussion. The organisation that performs the nuo ceremony and nuo dance is called a nuoban (nuo troupe); its members generally number from eight to a dozen or more, and it usually has strict troupe rules. Nuo dance usually appears in the climactic part of the nuo ritual and during the repertoire performance stage; the nuo repertoire of each locality is rich and serves the dual purposes of sacrifice and entertainment. Through years of investigation, Wuyuan nuo dance is found to have more than one hundred programmes and more than two hundred nuo masks. Owing to social and historical circumstances, the exorcising nuo deity troupe of Changjing Village in Qiukou Town that survives today has nineteen performers and more than thirty masks, among them four original wooden-carved masks, and can perform twenty-four programmes. Wuyuan nuo dance has many programmes, including those reflecting myths and folk legends such as Creating Heaven and Earth, The Sun Shooting at the Moon and Meng Jiangnun Sending Winter Clothes; the performing forms include solo dance, duet, trio and group dance. The movements of Wuyuan nuo dance are very rich: the female-striding step (ni xing bu) that imitates women; the cleaving axe, the twisting axe and the grinding axe in Creating Heaven and Earth; the upper, middle and lower cross, the troop-drilling step, the single hand clap, the leg-slap across the river, the feather flourish, the flower dance and the staff wheeling in Chancellor Directing Troops; and the beard-touching point, the single beard touch and the double beard touch in The Sun Shooting at the Moon. Each is distinctive, retaining a unique manner that is archaic, rugged, concise, exaggerated, vivid and expressive. These movements mostly follow the beat of the same leg, bend the knees, sink downward, hold the chest in and thrust the belly out, and have the character of being heavy but never slack, and stiff but never rigid. The musical accompaniment consists of three parts — percussion, tune patterns and vocal styles — with its own special gong-and-drum notation and tune patterns, following the principle that when the dance stops the music ends. With its archaic dance style and numerous performing programmes, Wuyuan nuo dance carries rich traditional cultural content and deserves to be cherished. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "The Changjing village exorcism troupe": The surviving troupe at Changjing village in Qiukou township has nineteen performers, over thirty masks including four original wood carvings, and can stage twenty-four items. "The nii xing bu (maiden's step)": A step imitating a woman's gait, seen in Meng Jiangnu Sends Winter Clothes and notable for preserving a distinctly female carriage within the Nuo vocabulary. "The axe movements of Pangu Creates Heaven and Earth": A set of axe movements — splitting, wrenching, grinding — enacting the creation of the world, carried out in an archaic, rough, spare and exaggerated manner. "The drill movements of The Chancellor Musters Troops": The movement group of The Chancellor Musters Troops, built on the cross-frame stances, drilling steps and weapon handling; four items were included in the national dance compendium in 1953.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

Male, Han ethnicity, born in 1932 and died in 2007, a native of Wuyuan, Jiangxi. National representative bearer of Nuo Dance (Wuyuan Nuo Dance), a second-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. Hu Zhenkun · National Representative Bearer Archive