Dragon Dance

Ⅲ-4Traditional DanceLu, SichuanBatch 1 (2006)Newly Added Item

01 · Historical Records

Already in the oracle bone inscriptions of the Shang dynasty there appear characters recording groups of people performing collective dragon sacrifice to pray for rain; the Han-dynasty record in Dong Zhongshu’s Chunqiu Fanlu already contains explicit accounts of various kinds of dragon dancing to pray for rain; from that time on, poems and prose of successive dynasties recording dragon dancing at court or among the common people are frequently met with. Around the eighteenth year of the Guangxu reign of the Qing dynasty, local performers changed the existing “straw-bundle dragon” into a coloured dragon; by 1919 the first Yutan coloured dragon had appeared.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

The most basic expressive means of dragon dancing are the modelling of its props, the changes of composition, and the sequences of movements. According to the different materials used to build the dragon-shaped props, dragon dances are divided into cloth dragon, gauze dragon, paper dragon, straw dragon, coin dragon, bamboo dragon, palm-fibre dragon, bench dragon, Baiye dragon, lotus dragon, fire dragon, chicken-feather dragon, flesh dragon, and so on; northern dragon dances are generally tall, large and heavy in construction, with a simple, archaic and vigorous style; southern dragon dances are exquisite and finely detailed, lively and nimble. The composition and movements of dragon dancing generally have the characteristics of “round curvature”, “rolling”, “twining”, “interweaving” and “leaping about”. The traditional performance procedure of dragon dancing is generally: “inviting the dragon”, “bringing out the dragon”, “dancing the dragon” and “seeing off the dragon”. Among the people there is a saying: “at seven or eight one plays with the straw dragon, at fifteen or sixteen one plays the small dragon, and young men dance the big dragon”. Dragon dancing may involve as few as one person dancing two dragons, or as many as a hundred people dancing one big dragon. The dragon is the totem and the ancestor believed in by the Chinese nation; dragon dancing is a symbol of the spirit of Huaxia, embodying the spirit of unity and cohesion and of striving and pioneering of the Chinese nation, and containing the cultural connotation of harmony between heaven and humanity and of benefiting humankind. It is the most common form of entertainment for Chinese people at auspicious times and at times of blessing; the atmosphere is ardent and stirring to the spirit, and it is an extremely precious heritage of the Chinese nation. The Luzhou Yutan coloured dragon of Sichuan is praised as the “living dragon of the East” for its long history and its romantic dragon-dancing performance art. The performance of the Yutan coloured dragon concentrates on a single word, “alive”: the human and the dragon are one. In performance the dancer is “moved within and formed without”, “the heart has its temperament and the hands render the expression”, “the hands follow the eyes and the eyes follow the heart”. Accompanied by the percussion of Sichuan opera, the dragon interweaves intimately with the “treasure” and answers it closely, vividly depicting the individual character and the living manner of the dragon within the dragon dance. The Yutan coloured dragon advances and performs following an unbroken taiji pattern; its routines are unpredictable and its performance lively, agile and endlessly varied — it takes off its clothes, rolls over, sighs, scratches an itch — displaying the temperament of the dragon to the full. In this process the feelings of the dancer and the dragon merge into one. In long practice, the inheritors of the Yutan coloured dragon have continually renewed and enriched its performance content, forming a complete set of performance routines and classic movement shapes such as dragon emerging from the cave, dragon seizing the treasure, dragon taking off its clothes, dragon backing the sword, dragon sighing, dragon stacking a tower, dragon clasping the pillar, yellow dragon rolling, hanging upside down on a golden hook, and the crown prince riding the dragon, displaying to the fullest extent the people’s imagination of the dragon. The body of the dragon is built on a frame of split bamboo, divided into groups and sections, and can be made long or short. The whole body of the dragon is made of bamboo rings joined one to another, so that once the dragon skin is drawn over it, it becomes flexible and changeable. At the present time this inheritor system has greatly expanded: not only has a batch of young people joined, but people have also been sent from Chongqing, Tongliang, Chengdu and other places to learn the art, so that the area in which the Yutan coloured dragon circulates has been extended.

Classic routine group one

Part of the classic figures of the Yutan coloured dragon, which together with Dragon Sighs and Yellow Dragon Rolls form a complete repertoire of imagined dragon behaviour.

Classic routine group two

Figures that bring out the dragon's temperament, danced with inner feeling made outward and interwoven with the pearl to Sichuan opera percussion.

Classic routine group three

The most technically demanding figures, danced with the performer fused emotionally with the dragon and moving along an unbroken taiji pattern.

Dragon-head modelled on Longnao Bridge

The head follows the dragon sculptures of the nationally protected Longnao Bridge at Luxian, with high brow, short snout and movable eyes, while the tail takes a silver-carp shape.

Bamboo-splint frame and segmented skin

The craft of the Yutan dragon: a bamboo-splint frame grouped in segments of variable length, its rings linked in series and clad in a skin that makes it supple in motion.

The Luo brothers' transmission line

The transmission line headed by Luo Yinkun and his brothers, greatly expanded in recent times with young recruits and trainees from Chongqing, Tongliang and Chengdu.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

Dragon dancing, also called “dragon play”, is known among the people as “playing the dragon”, “playing the dragon lantern” or “dancing the dragon lantern”. It is widely distributed throughout the country and among all ethnic groups, and the diversity of its forms and varieties is beyond comparison with any other folk dance. By colour, dragon dancing can be divided into yellow, white, blue-green, red, black and so on, of which the yellow dragon is the most noble. Since then, on every festival or at weddings, funerals and betrothals, the local people have danced the coloured dragon. Its dragon tail also differs from the ordinary torch tail or snake-shaped tail, being shaped like a silver carp, which is full of charm.

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

Down to the present day, dragon dancing remains one of the dance forms commonly found in folk celebrations and on festival occasions. The dragon head of the Yutan coloured dragon is uniquely modelled, designed chiefly after the dragon head of Longnao Bridge in Luxian, a national key cultural relic protection unit; it has a high forehead, a short mouth, prominent movable eyes and a lower jaw that opens and closes freely, so that its image is both dignified and spirited and also simple and affable. With performers such as Luo Yinkun and the other Luo brothers forming its core, the inheritor system of the Yutan coloured dragon has been established. At present the Yutan coloured dragon likewise faces the challenges of the new era and urgently needs a protection and transmission mechanism to be set up. Luo Deshu (as recorded in the official archive of the associated inheritor): Male, Han nationality, born in 1949, native of Luxian, Sichuan. Luo Deshu began learning the art of dragon dancing from his father Luo Yinkun at the age of 14; over decades of dragon-dancing practice he mastered the dancing skills for playing the treasure, leading the dragon head and moving every part of the dragon, as well as the complete performance routines and classic movement shapes. In the performance of the Yutan coloured dragon he mainly leads the dragon head. He invests his own feelings in the dragon-dancing performance; under his leadership the “dragon” is danced with overwhelming momentum, both in form and in spirit. Over years of dragon-dancing practice he absorbed the essence of acrobatic arts and of dragon-dancing skills from other regions, and innovated and developed the routines and techniques of the Yutan coloured dragon. Representative inheritor of the second batch of national-level intangible cultural heritage projects, Dragon Dance (Luzhou Yutan coloured dragon).

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗

This static English edition is rendered at the edge for search engines, AI crawlers and readers without JavaScript; it mirrors the bilingual dossier. 阅读中文版，或返回英文名录。