Nuo Dance
01 · Historical Records
According to legend, in the Zhou dynasty there were already the terms 'great nuo' and 'villagers' nuo'; after the Han dynasty nuo gradually became an important component of the state's orthodox system of ritual law. According to a stone stele dating to the fifteenth year of the Daoguang reign of the Qing dynasty, 1835, left at the Qian Shanping natural village of Kanxia Village in Heping Town, the Shaowu nuo dance began in the Song dynasty and has a history of more than a thousand years.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The nuo dance is a primitive dance of a sacrificial-ritual nature in traditional society, and has a long history. The nuo dance takes driving out plague and pestilence and praying for peace and safety as its principal aim, and involves a very strong degree of mass participation. In performance the dancers wear masks, shout as they drive things away, and attract a large crowd of followers and onlookers, so the scene is very lively. Among the many ethnic minorities of the southwestern region there also survive numerous nuo rituals and nuo dances of diverse form and complex function, with strong ethnic character. The Shaowu nuo dance is an ancient dance form in Shaowu City, Fujian Province, and is popular in the townships of Dabugang, Heping, Xiaojiafang, Guilin, Jinkeng and elsewhere in Shaowu. The times at which the various villages perform nuo and the deities to whom they present their vows are not the same. The Shaowu nuo dance preserves the original image of driving out nuo in sacrificial music and dance; it has neither plot nor recitation, and in masks, costume and dance movements it clearly retains the lingering flavour of ancient nuo. Besides retaining the original Central Plains content of driving out pestilence and ghosts, the Shaowu nuo dance also adds content such as praying for health and peace, for children and new births, and for success in study. In performance the dancers wear masks with a piece of red cloth hanging behind the head, and move forward and back, leaping and threading their way to the rhythm of drums and music, singing, dancing and calling out on the open plain; the dance movements are complex and display a plain, rugged quality. Meanwhile, the increasingly varied and colourful modern cultural life has also dealt this ancient culture a heavy blow.
Tiao fan seng (dancing the foreign monks)
One of the local names for Shaowu's Nuo dance, which villagers call by specific item names rather than by the word Nuo.
Tiao ba man (dancing the eight barbarians)
Another principal item of Shaowu Nuo dance, and with the foreign monks one of the core skills every local performer must master.
The stone stele of 1835
A stele preserved in a hamlet of Heping township records that Shaowu's Nuo dance began in the Song, giving it a history of some thousand years.
The masks and the red cloth at the back of the head
Dancers wear masks with a strip of red cloth hanging at the back of the head, darting and leaping to the drums and calling out in the open air.
The five townships of Shaowu
The dance is found across five townships of Shaowu, each village keeping its own season and its own vowed deity.
Gong Maofa as Maitreya
Born in 1936, Gong Maofa learned from the master Gong Qingshan and mastered the core items; his Maitreya, squatting to strike the wooden fish or patting his belly in laughter, is unsurpassed.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The nuo dance is widely transmitted throughout the country, and is distributed most densely in Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Hunan, Jiangxi and Anhui in the Yangtze River basin, and in Shanxi, Shaanxi, Gansu and Hebei in the Yellow River basin. Locally the name 'nuo dance' is not used; it is called instead by specific programme names such as 'tiao fanseng', jumping the foreign monk, and 'tiao baman', jumping the eight barbarians.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Nuo Dance · Nuo Dance · Nuo Dance · Nuo Dance · Nuo Dance · Nuo Dance · Nuo Dance · Nuo Dance · Nuo Dance · Nuo Dance · Nuo Dance.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
The Shaowu nuo dance is the product of the meeting of Central Plains culture, Chu culture and ancient Yue culture; it integrates Buddhist, Daoist, Confucian and folk belief into one and is rich in content, standing in a class of its own among the various local nuo cultures of the country, and it has research value in historical culture, religion, folklore and art. In recent years the original nuo troupes have increasingly declined, with old artists passing away one after another or growing old, and the succession of inheritors is lacking. Gong Maofa (recorded in the official archive of associated inheritors): male, Han Chinese, born in August 1936, a native of Shaowu City, Fujian Province. Deeply influenced by local customs from childhood and strongly interested in the nuo dance, he later studied nuo dance performance skills under the old artist Gong Qingshan and well mastered the core skills such as jumping the foreign monk and jumping the eight barbarians. He is especially good at performing Maitreya, sometimes squatting to strike the wooden fish and sometimes patting his belly and laughing merrily, expressing the simple and endearing image of Maitreya most vividly. He has long been devoted to the transmission and promotion of the Shaowu nuo dance, carefully collecting and organising material related to the nuo dance and providing a documentary basis for its study. He has also organised the old artists of the village to teach nuo dance performance skills free of charge to the younger generation of the village; the young people trained by him have now become a solid succeeding force for the Shaowu nuo dance. Representative inheritor of the fourth national-level intangible cultural heritage project Nuo Dance (Shaowu Nuo Dance).
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Luo Huiwu 02-0353
- Hu Zhenkun 02-0354
- Chengzhangqing 03-0911
- Peng Yingfang 03-0912
- Yu Yangfu 03-0913
- Fan Tinglu 03-0914
- Han Fulin 04-1557
- Wang Xuanzhi 04-1558
- Gong Maofa 04-1559
- Cheng Jinsheng 04-1560
- Wang Shunqing 05-2210
- Zhou Guoping 05-2211
- Yulinji 05-2212
- Banyongming
- Xiao Yiping
- Peng Qiusheng
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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