Lantern Dance
01 · Historical Records
Lantern dance has existed since ancient times; even in the Qing dynasty there are records of "lantern dance" in which characters were danced out with lanterns as props. The second year of the Daoguang reign of the Qing dynasty (1826) was Boyang's great lantern festival. In order to achieve a good result, the Sujiazuo artist Wu Heidan (given name unknown) combined the dragon lantern with the phoenix lantern; on the basis of the dragon and phoenix dancing together, he added several dozen kinds of accompanying lanterns, composed a great many lantern dance programs, and performed them during the Fire God Temple Fair on the twenty-ninth day of the second lunar month of that year. The Sujiazuo dragon-and-phoenix lantern dance is at its most splendid in performances such as the dragon touring the field, the dragon teasing the phoenix, the dragon shedding its skin and a hundred birds paying homage to the phoenix. Traditional programs include Twelve Beauties Towing the Boat, King Wen Towing the Boat and Jiang Ziya Fishing, and in modern times further programs were composed, such as Crimson Phoenix Greeting the Rising Sun, A Hundred Birds Paying Homage to the Phoenix, Dragon and Phoenix Presenting Auspiciousness, Dragon and Phoenix Turning Back to Gaze at the Peony and Dragon and Phoenix in Playful Combat.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
On every festival (especially the Lantern Festival) and during rites such as prayers for rain, sacrifices, and supplications for a good harvest, both court and common people would hold lantern dance performances. In its earliest form, lantern dance was characterized by arranging lanterns into characters; it later gradually developed into a form of folk dance in which colored lanterns are arranged to construct patterns and create artistic settings, and it spread throughout the country. Classified by the shape of the lantern display, lantern dance falls mainly into three types: those imitating animals — dragon lantern dance, lion lantern dance, fish lantern dance, clam lantern dance, butterfly lantern dance and hundred-bird lantern dance; those imitating flowers — lotus lantern dance, chrysanthemum lantern dance and waxflower lantern dance; and other forms such as boat lantern dance, cart lantern dance, cloud lantern dance and embroidered-ball lantern dance. Lantern dance performances are richly varied; they are generally presented at night as group dances on a grand scale. The performers dance as they walk, the formations change constantly, and firecrackers and fireworks are let off during the dance, making the scene a magnificent spectacle. This form of folk dance appears mostly in Han areas, while also being popular in some ethnic minority areas. The Sujiazuo dragon-and-phoenix lantern dance is a traditional folk dance that takes folk stories from different historical periods as its subject matter, and it is mainly popular in the Boyang area of Henan Province. In former times the people of Sujiazuo made their living chiefly by farming, and their spare-time cultural life was comparatively rich. Every year during the Spring Festival and the Fire God Temple Fair, the people of Sujiazuo, in celebration of a year of labour and in the hope of a good harvest in the coming year, would make festive lanterns in the shapes of auspicious plants and animals such as the dragon, the phoenix, the qilin and the tiger. Besides hanging them, they would also organize the festive lanterns according to certain folk stories and hold shua-type dancing activities. From this, the Sujiazuo dragon-and-phoenix lantern dance finally took shape. The dragon and phoenix lanterns are exquisitely made: the frames of the dragon and phoenix are built of bamboo strips, the dragon's body is decorated with painted gauze, and patterns of the phoenix's plumage are painted on white gauze. The dragon lantern consists of 9 sections, each supported by a wooden pole. In a dragon-and-phoenix lantern dance performance the performers can number more than five hundred, making the scene ardent in atmosphere and magnificent in scale. At present the Sujiazuo dragon-and-phoenix lantern dance has shrunk from the grand performances of its heyday, in which more than five hundred people took part, to performances with two or three hundred participants, and the choreographic skills of the lantern dance survive only in the memories of 5 aged veteran artists.
The nine-section dragon and its craft
Frames are bamboo splint, the dragon sheathed in painted gauze and the phoenix in white gauze painted with patterns; the dragon runs to nine sections, each on a wooden pole.
The traditional programme
The traditional programmes include Twelve Beauties Hauling the Boat, King Wen Hauling the Boat and Jiang Ziya Fishing, drawn from popular historical tales.
The modern repertoire
Modern creations include The Red Phoenix Facing the Sun, A Hundred Birds Honouring the Phoenix and Dragon and Phoenix in Harmony, with Dragon and Phoenix at Play the most theatrical.
The fire-god temple fair
In 1826 the local lantern festival saw Wu Heidan combine dragon and phoenix lanterns with dozens of accompanying lanterns, first performed at the fire-god temple fair that year.
Wu Qifu's head and sun-lantern techniques
Wu Qifu learned lantern play from childhood, trained under Wu Zhicheng and Wu Qibao, and excels in the dragon-head, phoenix-head and sun-lantern techniques.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The Sujiazuo dragon-and-phoenix lantern dance has Sujiazuo Village, Boyang County, as its place of transmission. The lantern troupe is divided into groups by lantern according to images such as the dragon, the phoenix, the qilin and the tiger, and each lantern is under the charge of a designated person. The dragon and phoenix lanterns have frames tied of bamboo strips with painted gauze for their bodies; the dragon lantern has nine sections, each supported by a wooden pole; and on coming out they must be arranged in formation together with the sun lantern, the cloud lantern and the hundred-bird lantern.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Lantern Dance · Lantern Dance · Lantern Dance · Lantern Dance · Lantern Dance · Lantern Dance · Lantern Dance · Lantern Dance · Lantern Dance · Lantern Dance · Lantern Dance.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Dragon and Phoenix in Playful Combat places special emphasis on the character "play": tension gives way to ease, and friendship is embedded in the playful combat, giving the work extremely high artistic value. The Sujiazuo dragon-and-phoenix lantern dance performance embodies the traditional cultural connotation of harmony between yin and yang, and has research value in such fields as history and culture, folklore and mythology. This precious folk dance art has few successors, is in danger of extinction, and urgently needs to be rescued. Wu Qifu (as recorded in the official file of the associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born in November 1944, native of Jiaozuo City, Henan Province. From the age of six he played with lanterns together with his elders. In the 1960s he apprenticed himself to the veteran artists Wu Zhicheng and Wu Qibao, specializing in the techniques of the dragon head, the phoenix head and the sun lantern. In highly difficult movements such as "dragon touring the field", "flinging the great tail", "dragon rolling", "dragon shedding its skin", "two dragons playing with a pearl", "crimson phoenix greeting the rising sun", "dragon coiling round a pearl" and "two dragons playing with the phoenix", his performance is agile and accomplished. He is devoted to the transmission and development of the project: he drew up the Implementation Rules for the Protection of the Sujiazuo Dragon-and-Phoenix Lantern Dance, founded the Sujiazuo Dragon-and-Phoenix Lantern Dance Research Association, assigned dedicated staff to manage documents, props and archives, trained performers, and excavated, organized and choreographed lost dances. He has composed and performed new programs such as Dragon and Phoenix Presenting Auspiciousness, Crimson Phoenix Greeting the Rising Sun and Dancing Dragon and Phoenix to Celebrate the Harvest. Representative inheritor of the national-level intangible cultural heritage project Lantern Dance (Sujiazuo Dragon-and-Phoenix Lantern Dance) in the third batch. Since 1978 he has taken part in the municipal and county Spring Festival folk art exchange performances, winning the first prize for performance twenty-five times. After 2000 he was repeatedly awarded the honorary title of Advanced Worker at municipal level and above.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Chen Jinwen 03-0930
- Wu Guanqiu 03-0931
- Wuqifu 03-0932
- Guo Bingqiang 05-2253
- Yang Senfang 05-2254
- Huang Jiehai 05-2255
- Ren Juntang 05-2256
- Deng Jianmin 05-2257
- Shi Qing 05-2258
- Chen Wenshi
- He Wu
- Shi Guanbin
- Yang Hairen
- Mao Mingkang
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
This static English edition is rendered at the edge for search engines, AI crawlers and readers without JavaScript; it mirrors the bilingual dossier. 阅读中文版，或返回 英文名录。