Badang Dance
01 · Historical Records
The Badang dance, anciently called "Bo tao wu", originates in the "Mountain Sacrifice Festival" of the ancient Qiang people and is a traditional dance for the worship of the mountain god, popular in Zhongzhai town of Min County, Gansu Province. The Badang dance carries the cultural genes of Chinese civilisation and is a living fossil of the historical development, cultural blending and evolution of the ethnic groups on China's frontier.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
In the past, peasants of villages and hamlets such as Zhongzhai and Weixin in the northern part of Min County would dance the Badang every year in the first lunar month to perform the mountain god sacrifice, praying to the mountain god in song and dance for good weather and abundant harvests. The Badang dance consists mainly of three sections: 1. Anchang. Men of the village, under the direction of the "chunba", shake the long-handled "Badang drum" by hand and dance in a line, with nine passages of sung text set to nine kinds of dance steps; 2. Worshipping the mountain god. This is the most important part of the Badang dance; in this section the "chunba" lights the bonfire and leads all the dancers in the "worship of the five directions", and then they sing and dance to their hearts' content beneath the newly erected swing; this process has twelve passages of sung text; 3. Chejiele. All the dancers begin to eat, drink and taste tea, joining in a great collective chorus. (In all the above sections, all the songs are sung in Tibetan. )
Anchang: nine verses, nine steps
In the first section the village men, led by the Chunba, shake the long-handled Badang drum and dance in file through nine verses matched to nine steps.
Worshipping the mountain god
The central section: the Chunba lights a bonfire and leads the dancers in saluting the five directions before they dance beneath a newly raised swing through twelve verses.
Chejiele: feasting and chorus
The closing section, in which all the dancers eat, drink and take tea before joining a collective chorus, every song sung in Tibetan.
The Badang drum and the Chunba
The Chunba leads while shaking the long-handled drum, at once instrument and prop; Yang Jingyan, Chunba of seven villages, was trained strictly in the Tibetan notation of the dance.
The old name Bowu
Formerly called Bowu, the dance derives from the ancient Qiang mountain-offering gathering and survives around Zhongzhai town in Minxian, Gansu.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
At present the Badang dance is still transmitted in an orderly way locally, retaining a complete set of established procedures. The zone of transmission of the Badang dance is concentrated in villages and hamlets such as Zhongzhai and Weixin in the northern part of Min County, and it is held village by village according to the old custom of sacrificing to the mountain god in the first lunar month, with the "chunba" serving locally as the lead dancer. Yang Jingyan is not only the chunba of his own village but the head chunba of all seven villages of the zone; in recent years, by running training classes and holding an annual Badang dance competition, he has brought the sung texts and dance steps of the various villages under a unified Tibetan score. Min County lies at the junction of southern Gannan and central Longxi, where the Badang's Tibetan sung texts, its Han-style shehuo mode of organisation and the legacy of the ancient Qiang "Mountain Sacrifice Festival" overlap, forming the fixed sequence of three linked sections: Anchang, Worshipping the mountain god, and Chejiele.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
However, this traditional song and dance, which has high cultural, artistic and folklore-research value, now lacks successors in its transmission because of changes in people's way of life. Yang Jingyan (official archival record of the associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born in January 1951, from Min County, Gansu Province. At the age of seven he began studying the art with his grandfather, receiving strict training in the Tibetan-script Badang dance scores and thoroughly mastering the dance procedures, the vocal styles and the meaning of the Tibetan sung text. He actively collects and sorts out textual and pictorial materials on the Badang dance and cooperates with the county intangible cultural heritage centre in investigating it. In recent years he has also promoted the transmission and development of the Badang dance by running training classes and holding an annual Badang dance competition. Representative inheritor of the Badang dance, a national-level intangible cultural heritage project in the fourth national-level batch. As the chunba (lead dancer), he is not only the chunba of his own village but the head chunba of all seven villages of the zone, and every young chunba he has trained has become an excellent inheritor of the Badang dance.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Yang Jingyan 04-1588
- Yang Maochun
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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