Drum Dance

01 · Historical Records

The earliest record of the Wanrong flower drum is found in the Nanjing Village Foundation Stone stele erected in the eighth year of the Kangxi reign of the Qing dynasty (1669). The text of the stele lists the flower drum among the folk shehuo performances and records the division of labour: teams of seven, eight or nine people, with women holding hand gongs and men wearing waist drums. From this it can be seen that by the late seventeenth century at the latest, the flower drum around Nanjing Village was already a shehuo programme with a fixed number of performers, fixed roles and a complete set of tune patterns.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

According to the Nanjing Village Foundation Stone stele of the eighth year of the Kangxi reign of the Qing dynasty (1669): "The flower drum is a folk shehuo, made up of seven, eight or nine people; female performers hold hand gongs, with a phoenix head and snake body; male performers wear waist drums, with a snake body and dragon body; the tune patterns flow smoothly. " The Wanrong flower drum has three performance forms. The first is the low drum, worn at the waist. The second is the high drum, carried at the chest. The third is the multiple-drum form, in which drums are fastened to the dancer's head, chest, shoulders and between the legs, so that in the fullest case a single dancer may wear more than ten drums. There are many flower drum dance set pieces: Yidian You, Fengjiaoxue, Ganchaodou, Goushiyao and Fenghuang Sandiantou, together with such demanding movements as the two-beat, the tight three-beat, the four-beat, the five-beat, walking the round circle, the dragon swishing its tail, reaching to the waist, reaching to the leg, circling the knees, as well as "the lion rolling the embroidered ball", "Qin Qiong carrying a sword on his back" and "the phoenix spreading both wings". The three drum types of the flower drum correspond to different levels of technique. The low drum is tied to the waist and stresses stamping the ground and turning the body. The high drum hangs at the chest, allowing both hands to fly up and down. The multiple-drum form ties drums separately to the head, chest, shoulders and between the legs, and a single dancer can wear more than ten of them, striking different drumheads through simultaneous movements of different parts of the body. The set pieces also include such items as Yidian You, Fengjiaoxue, Ganchaodou, Goushiyao and Fenghuang Sandiantou, as well as the two-beat, the tight three-beat, the four-beat, the five-beat, walking the round circle, the dragon swishing its tail, reaching to the waist, reaching to the leg and circling the knees.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

The Wanrong flower drum is a traditional folk dance popular in the area around Nanjing Village, Wanrong County. The long-standing Wanrong flower drum has a strong local character and important cultural value, and its influence has been far-reaching.

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04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

In recent years, because of social and economic development young people have gone away to work, very few are willing to learn the flower drum, and most of the older flower drum artists are already advanced in age, so the art of the flower drum faces a crisis of transmission. Wang Qiren (official archival record of the associated inheritor): Male, of Han ethnicity, born in April 1941, a native of Wanrong County, Shanxi Province. He loved the art of the flower drum from childhood, and from the age of seven learned the Wanrong flower drum from elders of his village such as Wang Zengsheng, Wang Bingyin and Wang Xinze; he was later instructed by famous masters including Di Gang of the Central Song and Dance Ensemble and Qiu Shufang of the Shanxi Song and Dance Ensemble. Building on the tradition he kept innovating, reforming the art of the Wanrong flower drum so that it developed from the single drum to the combined use of head, arm, waist, knee and foot drums, and integrating folk dance, operatic facial expression and martial arts movements into one, greatly raising the visual appeal of the performance. In addition, he has been engaged to teach art students at institutions of higher education. Representative inheritor of the drum dance (Wanrong flower drum), a national-level intangible cultural heritage project in the fourth national-level batch. Over the years he has persisted in transmitting the project, taking on two close disciples in succession, and has continued every year to teach the art of the flower drum in schools, dance training classes and village cultural centres, training more than one hundred local cultural and artistic cadres.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

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

• Mairemuhan Adili 02-0402
• Li Chengyuan 03-0925
• Yang Menyuan 03-0926
• Daisanhai 03-0927
• Gao Ruchang 04-1570
• Wang Qiren 04-1571
• Qi Xuede 05-2243
• Zhang Hongnian 05-2244
• Chen Defu 05-2245
• Zhang Lanqing 05-2246
• Zhang Jifu 05-2247
• Su Anfu
• Wang Chengde
• Liu Xueguang

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

1. Drum Dance (Wanrong, Shanxi) · China ICH Official Project Archive
2. Wang Qiren · National Representative Bearer Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗