Huagudeng
01 · Historical Records
Historical records show that the huagudeng originated no later than the Song dynasty. After developing through the Yuan, Ming, Qing and Republican periods, by the 1930s and 1940s it had formed a distribution area centred on Bengbu, Huainan and Fuyang in Anhui, radiating across more than twenty counties and cities in the four provinces of Henan, Anhui, Shandong and Jiangsu along the middle reaches of the Huai River.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Huagudeng is a folk dance form of the Han ethnic group that perfectly integrates dance, lantern songs and gong-and-drum music, narrative duets and trios, and expressive collective dances. Huagudeng is most often performed in the villages after the autumn harvest is finished and before the spring ploughing of the following year, reaching its height at temple fairs and spring gatherings. The male role in huagudeng is called the gujiazi (drum-frame performer), and the female role the lanhua (orchid, also called lahua); performances are usually given in open squares. A performance generally comprises four parts — dance, song, back-stage small plays and gong-and-drum playing — with the dance as its main body. The dance in turn includes sections such as the dahuachang (or dachang, great flower ground), the xiaohuachang (or xiaochang, small flower ground) and the pangu (plate drum). The dachang is a collective expression dance performed by several to a dozen or more people. The xiaochang is a duet or trio dance mainly depicting young men and women courting, playing and frolicking together; it comprises both set formulaic performance and improvised performance, with simple plots and character dances such as Snatching the Handkerchief (Qiang Shoujin) and Snatching the Bench (Qiang Bandeng), and it is the core of huagudeng dance. The pangu is a performance form that combines dance, martial arts and acrobatics while also possessing the features of plastic art. Back-stage small plays are miniature song-and-dance dramas combining singing and dancing, such as The Fourth Master Riding a Single-Shafted Sedan Chair, Pushing the Cart and The Little Peddler. Bengbu huagudeng brings together dance, lantern songs and gong-and-drum music, perfectly combining narrative duets and trios with expressive collective dance into a comparatively systematic and complete folk song-and-dance art form. It is the most representative folk dance of the Han ethnic group and the concentrated embodiment of Huai River culture in the sphere of dance. Huagudeng integrates technical artistry, performative skill and the professionalisation of the performers into a single whole, and is strongly rooted in folk custom and in the people's own self-entertainment. Over the centuries, the music, dance postures and rhythms of huagudeng have fairly completely preserved the memories of the Huai River people's life, labour, sentiments, temperament, customs and manners. It carries the history and the socio-economic culture of the Huai River basin in different periods, stores up memories of the Huai River people's distinctive cultural concepts, aesthetic tastes and changes in folk custom, and has been handed down to the present in living form. Bengbu huagudeng contains more than four hundred movement terms and over fifty basic steps; its dance movements are extraordinarily demanding, with large contrasts in timing and complex, changeable postures in an instant. Together these form a rich and systematic dance-language system, making huagudeng one of the outstanding folk dance forms that uses bodily language to express complicated narrative. Dance is the principal component of huagudeng, and the dance includes the dahuachang, the xiaohuachang and the pangu. The dahuachang is a collective expression dance, while the xiaohuachang is a lyrical duet or trio performed on the spot by the gujiazi and the lanhua, and constitutes the core of huagudeng dance. The pangu is a performance form that combines dance, martial arts and technique, and at the same time possesses the characteristics of plastic art. The dance postures and movements of huagudeng lay great stress on the skilful combination of extension and contraction and of movement and stillness; the movements are strongly rhythmic and highly varied. The Bengbu area produced a generation of celebrated huagudeng masters such as Feng Guopei, Chang Chunli, Zheng Jiuru, Shi Jingli and Yang Zaixian, together with influential repertoire such as Spring Outing (Youchun) and Snatching the Fan (Qiang Shanzi), creating a flourishing scene of "a thousand troupes of gongs and drums, a hundred troupes of lanterns".
The great flower field
The collective mood dance of huagudeng, performed by a handful to a dozen or more dancers who weave changing floor patterns — the counterpart of the small flower field.
Snatching the towel and snatching the bench
The two most representative small flower field pieces, danced by drum-rack and orchid as a pair or trio, depicting young men and women flirting and playing, with simple plots and character dancing.
Pan gu (the coiled drum)
A form combining dance, martial arts and acrobatic skill with sculptural posing, standing alongside the great and small flower fields in the dance's three divisions.
The after-scene playlets
Short song-and-dance playlets that, with dancing, singing and percussion, complete the four parts of a huagudeng performance, usually on comic everyday themes.
Feng Guopei's slanting pagoda, pheasant slip, great turn and wild goose alighting on sand
A group of movements created by Feng Guopei, stage name Little Golden Lotus, who also argued for replacing the old male-to-female impersonation with women dancers in the orchid role.
Zheng Jiuru and the willow in the wind
Zheng Jiuru of Huaiyuan excelled in song and dance, percussion and playlets; his varied fan flowers and willow-in-the-wind poses won audiences, and his orchid teaching combinations were widely adopted.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The performing styles of huagudeng today fall mainly into three schools: the Yingshang area, whose tempo is relatively slow, with tightly structured dance and an archaic, plain style; the Fengtai area, which emphasises the portrayal of character emotion with delicate and graceful movement; and the Huaiyuan area, with light, brisk and vigorous movement and an easy, dashing bearing.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Huagudeng · Huagudeng.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
For a variety of reasons, however, Bengbu huagudeng in its original indigenous form is now on the verge of dying out. The most influential folk artists are already advanced in age, and the mechanism of folk transmission still has to be rebuilt, so effective protection is urgently needed. Feng Guopei (as recorded in the official file of the associated inheritor): Male, of Han ethnicity, born in 1914, native of Bengbu, Anhui. Feng Guopei learned huagudeng from his second and third uncles from childhood, playing the female role of lanhua, and was already famous at sixteen under the stage name Xiao Jinlian (Little Golden Lotus). The lanhua he performed was pretty and charming, dignified and graceful, lively and elegant, full of unspoken affection; his dance movements were expansive, easy and generous, agile and flowing. The series of dance movements created by Feng Guopei himself — the slanted tower (xie ta), the wild pheasant slither (yeji liu), the big turn (da guaiwan) and the wild goose landing on the sandbank (yan luo shatan) — are especially characterised by fiery abandon and strong expressive power. He also advocated changing the old huagudeng practice of men playing female roles, and promoting the use of female performers for the lanhua. With exquisitely distinctive performing art that established a school of its own, and an artistic talent skilled in drawing on others and ingeniously blending them, Feng Guopei devised and created a series of outstanding dance works, raising the performing art of huagudeng to a new stage. His representative works include the huagudeng song-and-dance plays Touching the Sedan Chair (Mo Huajiao) and The Lantern Bearers' Wedding, and the huagudeng dances Great Flower Ground (Dahuachang), Small Flower Ground (Xiaohuachang), A New Spring Outing (Xin Youchun) and Catching Butterflies (Pu Hudie). Feng Guopei Representative inheritor of Huagudeng (Bengbu Huagudeng), a national-level intangible cultural heritage project in the second batch. Zheng Jiuru (as recorded in the official file of the associated inheritor): Male, of Han ethnicity, born in 1920, native of Huaiyuan, Anhui. He could both sing and dance, and was equally skilled at huagudeng gong-and-drum playing and at the back-stage small plays. He was good at portraying the rural girl of a firm and haughty temperament. His movements were expansive and uninhibited, quick and clean-cut, and he won over audiences with his varied fan figures and the various forms of the wind-swayed willow (feng bai liu) posture. The lantern songs he sang had rich modal variety; the melodies were mellow and lingering, warm and moving, and his lyrics observed strict rhyme. In 1958 Zheng Jiuru joined the Huaiyuan County Cultural Troupe as a dance teacher, compiling his characteristic movements into a lanhua dance as a teaching combination, which was later widely adopted. Representative inheritor of Huagudeng (Bengbu Huagudeng), a national-level intangible cultural heritage project in the second batch. He was invited on several occasions to teach huagudeng dance to professional song-and-dance troupes both inside and outside the province.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Feng Guopei 02-0349
- Zheng Jiuru 02-0350
- Chen Jingzhi 02-0351
- Wang Chuanxian 02-0352
- Yang Zaixian 03-0908
- Deng Hong 03-0909
- Zhang Shigen 03-0910
- Shi Chuncai 04-1556
- Feng Guohao 05-2205
- Mei Lianshe 05-2206
- Jin Ming 05-2207
- Lou Lou 05-2208
- Chen Yuhua 05-2209
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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