Dragon Dance

Ⅲ-4Traditional DanceJintan, JiangsuBatch 3 (2011)Extension Item

01 · Historical Records

The giant dragon is a form of dragon dancing transmitted around Jucun Village of Zhixi Town. It originated in Jucun, and because the dragon's body is especially long it is enormously large, hence the name "giant dragon". The giant dragon began in the Ming dynasty and has a history of more than six hundred years to the present.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

In its earliest form it was made of straw, about 15 to 30 metres in length, and was danced by seven or eight people or by close to twenty people. Over the following several centuries the making technique improved, and around the early years of the Republic it gradually began to be made of woven bamboo strips, with the frame sheathed in scale-patterned cloth skin and fitted with lanterns and the like. The body also grew steadily longer: each section of the giant dragon danced today measures 2 metres, the longest body has 100 sections, the whole length exceeds two hundred metres, and more than one hundred people are needed to perform it in coordination. The performance transitions of the giant dragon are ingenious, and the linkage and progression of its routines are extremely tight; there are dozens of traditional routines. Danced with life, danced in a circle, with truthful expression, many routines and fast speed, these are the principal artistic characteristics of the giant dragon. The sections of the Zhixi giant dragon are made into tubular frames of woven bamboo strips, sheathed outside in cloth skin painted with scales and threaded through the joints with cords, so that in performance the dragon has both an overall continuous course and a rising and falling motion section by section. The dancers take up the sections and hand them on in turn; when the formation turns, front and back answer each other and fast and slow balance one another, and only in this way can the form of the dragon remain complete and round even while it races along at high speed.

A two-hundred-metre dragon in one hundred sections

Once a straw dragon of fifteen to thirty metres, it was rebuilt in bamboo splints from the early Republic with scaled cloth skin and lights, now up to one hundred two-metre sections requiring over a hundred performers.

Five hallmarks of the great dragon

The principal artistic traits of the Zhixi great dragon, its transitions deft and its dozens of traditional routines tightly linked.

Raising, inviting and sending off the dragon

The fixed protocol around Jucun: incense and invocation before the lantern is raised, several days of village rounds, and a sending-off rite when it is put away.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

The Zhixi giant dragon takes Jucun Village of Zhixi Town, Jintan City, as its birthplace and core transmission area, and circulates among the townships at the junction of Jintan, Danyang and Liyang. Dragon dancing is generally organised jointly by the village clans and the villager groups; each household supplies both people and labour, rehearsals are held in the slack farming season, and the lanterns are sent out at New Year. Before the lanterns go out, incense is burned to offer sacrifice to the dragon in the ancestral hall or the local earth god temple and the dragon is invited out of the temple; after touring village by village for several days the lanterns are put away and the dragon is sent off. It is a landmark annual rite of village cooperation and clan identification in the locality. In Jucun the dragon-lantern association assigns the role of head household in rotation among the households and apportions the lamp oil and the cost of making the dragon, forming an endogenous organisational mechanism that does not rely on outside funding.

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

The props of the Zhixi giant dragon underwent an evolution from a straw dragon to a bamboo frame woven from bamboo strips, sheathed in scale-patterned cloth skin and fitted with lanterns, and the body itself lengthened from about fifteen metres at the beginning to more than two hundred metres, each section measuring two metres and the longest body reaching one hundred sections, requiring more than one hundred people to perform in coordination; that very process is material testimony to the changes in modern Jiangnan folk craftwork and in village organisation. The performance transitions of the giant dragon are ingenious and the linkage of its routines is tight, with dozens of traditional routines, but old performers who can give a complete account of the dragon-making process steps and the names of the routines have grown increasingly scarce.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

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

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

Dragon Dance (Jintan, Jiangsu) · China ICH Official Project Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗

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