Yi Yanhe Dance
01 · Historical Records
The smoke-box dance of the Yi people of Shiping is also called “tiaoxian” or “longnong”. It is transmitted in the Yi villages of Shiping County, Honghe Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province; it took shape in the Yuan and Ming periods and reached its height in the Qing dynasty and the Republic of China.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Its dance forms include the two-person dance, the three-person dance and group dances. The dancers hold the round wooden smoke boxes that in former times held burning fireweed tobacco and, to the accompaniment of the four-stringed fiddle, strike the bottoms of the boxes against each other to keep time as they dance; the rhythm is brisk and the atmosphere is lively. The smoke-box dance of the Yi of Shiping is highly individual in character and varied in technique; well-known technical movements include “the immortal building the bridge”, “the ants moving house” and “the upside-down golden hook”. This distinctive folk dance is good for the body and gladdens the heart; its movements are flowing and free, it is artistically affecting, it is deeply loved by the people and it has spread through town and countryside, and it has now developed into a comprehensive dance art combining song, dance, music and competition. Its varied and numerous dance routines and its deep dance content show the outstanding creative talent and artistic comprehension of the Yi people. The routines of the smoke-box dance are mostly named after animals and incidents of everyday life; the technical movements such as “the immortal building the bridge”, “the ants moving house” and “the upside-down golden hook” require the dancer to combine the waist, the legs and the arms to bend backwards and to roll over in a series, which both tests the body and directly embodies the division between the two rhythms of the basin area and the mountain area. When the four-stringed fiddle sounds, everyone keeps time by clashing the bottoms of the smoke boxes, and the footwork varies with it.
Proper and miscellaneous strings
The dance divides into proper and miscellaneous strands across mountain and basin styles; of some 220 routines only 117 have been collected, 62 and 55 in each strand.
Immortal's bridge and other feats
The best-known feats of the Shiping dance, smooth in look yet very hard, showing its competitive as well as its spectacular side.
The round wooden tobacco box
Dancers carry the round wooden box once used for smoking herbs, striking its base as a percussion instrument to the four-string lute.
Smoking the fire herb
The old social custom on which the dance relied has vanished, leaving the dance stylistically flattened and thinner in meaning.
Backbends and linked rolls
Head, feet, body, hands and waist are used together; the high-difficulty backbends and linked rolls carry considerable artistic value.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
For its distinctive artistic charm the smoke-box dance is widely loved by the people of all ethnic groups locally, and it has become a platform for strengthening solidarity and increasing friendship between ethnic groups.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
The Yi smoke-box dance consists of the zhengxian (regular string) and the zaxian (mixed string) parts, forming two styles and a number of schools in the mountain area and the basin area. There are as many as 220 dance routines, of which only 117 have so far been collected and collated, of which 62 are zhengxian and 55 are zaxian. As the most distinctive form of dance among the Yi of southern Yunnan, the smoke-box dance displays the historical outlook, moral outlook, values and modes of thought of the Yi people through its unique dance vocabulary, and it is of high research value in the fields of ethnology, folklore and sociology. Through the ingenious use of the head, the feet, the body, the hands, the waist and other parts of the body, the smoke-box dance vividly expresses the distinctive aesthetic taste of the Yi people with its graceful dance postures; at the same time, technically demanding movements such as the backward bend with a series of rolls also have high artistic value. With the changes of the times the human environment of the smoke-box dance has altered enormously; the traditional custom of “smoking fireweed tobacco” has disappeared, the dance shows a trend toward monotonous style and shallow content, and the classic smoke-box routines, rich in traditional flavour, are on the verge of being lost and urgently need rescue. Shi Wanheng (as recorded in the official file of the associated inheritor): male, Yi, born in 1947, native of Honghe, Yunnan. Over many years he has transmitted the smoke-box dance in many townships, villages and primary schools of Shiping, making a great contribution to the transmission of the Yi smoke-box dance. Representative inheritor of the Yi smoke-box dance, second batch of national-level intangible cultural heritage projects.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Shi Wanheng 02-0397
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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