Yi Dage Dance
01 · Historical Records
According to the Jingdong Zhili Ting Zhi (Gazetteer of Jingdong Directly Administered Subprefecture) compiled in the Jiaqing reign of the Qing dynasty, “dage” was already widely circulated at that time. Apart from certain occasions with strict rules about time and place, whenever the Spring Festival, the Little New Year (the fifteenth day of the first lunar month), the Torch Festival, or a wedding, a gathering or a feast came round, people would dance through the night.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Yi dage is mostly performed in the evening. At the start a bonfire is lit in the centre of the dance ground, and taking the fire as the centre, people form naturally one circle or several circles, stamping their feet to the beat as they dance and sing. If dage is danced in the daytime, there is no need to light a fire. The lusheng and the flute are indispensable instruments for dage. While the activity is going on, one or several people within the circle play the lusheng and are called the “song leaders”; another plays the flute, and one or two people swing sabres and brandish staves. Besides the lusheng and the flute, in some places the sanxian and the yueqin are used as accompanying instruments. The dance movements take the waist and legs as their pulse; there are few changes of formation, the dancers must be in pairs, hand clasping hand and shoulder resting on shoulder. Dage has a great many tunes, the principal ones being dage tunes for happy occasions, for festivals, for occasions of mourning, dage tunes of temple fairs for good deeds, and everyday dage tunes. The melodies are beautiful and the style distinctive; the tunes move smoothly, the intervals leap and rise only a little, and are mostly structured in upper and lower lines or in four-line phrases. A single tune can be quick or slow according to the dancers’ mood and needs, can be used repeatedly with elaborations added, and individual style can be introduced into it. In the social life of the Weishan area dage occupies an important position, and it is an indispensable element of the local Yi traditional festivals and of major events such as weddings and funerals, and the raising of the ridge beam and the erecting of the new house pillar.
Wedding, mourning and temple-fair tunes
The tune repertory ranges from wedding and festival to mourning and temple-fair songs, built on two- or four-phrase periods.
The song head and weapon dancers
Reed pipes blown by the song head, a flute, and one or two weapon dancers form the core of the ensemble.
West hill and east hill styles
In the western hills men and women form facing half-circles; in the east, dozens of pairs circle counter-clockwise in couples.
Cha Chunmei
Cha Chunmei of Weishan commands steps such as the sixteen-step sway and triple turns, performing in Beijing in 2006.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Yi dage is also called “tage” and is the most widely distributed, most influential and most popular self-entertainment dance among the Yi in Weishan County, Yunnan Province. In the Weishan area, dage in the western hills is generally danced with the men forming a half circle and the women a half circle, the circles closing in layer upon layer as the activity unfolds; in the eastern hills it is generally danced with one man facing one woman, with dozens of such pairs moving anticlockwise, singing as they dance, gradually forming a circle and freely displaying beautiful dance and a ringing voice. Its lyric forms may be in four lines, six lines, eight lines, ten lines, twelve lines, an odd number of lines, and so on, while the lines themselves include five-syllable, six-syllable, seven-syllable and long-and-short forms.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
In dage, where singing, dancing and music are united in one, are accumulated the ancient historical and cultural connotations of the Yi, and it has research value in such fields as sociology and folklore. Under the impact of modern culture, this ancient folk cultural activity of dage is in danger of disappearing and urgently needs protection. Cha Chunmei (as recorded in the official dossier of the associated inheritor): Female, of Yi ethnicity, born in August 1962, a native of Weishan Yi Hui Autonomous County, Yunnan Province. Her voice is sweet and high, and she is a folk singer known to every household in Qingyun Township. The dage she performs has a lively rhythm and a variety of steps, among them “sixteen-step level swing”, “three steps and a toss”, “half turn and half twist”, “full turn” and “three turns and three twists”. She has taken part many times in the various performance activities organised at provincial, prefectural and county level. In 2006 she led the Ma’anshan Qingyun dage troupe to Beijing to take part in the exhibition of the Chinese National Folk Song-and-Dance Grand Ceremony, deeply moving the audience with her lively and varied dance and her stirring, forward-striding emotion. Representative inheritor of Yi dage, a national-level intangible cultural heritage project in the third national-level batch. As a leader of Yi dage, she actively passes on the art of dage to the villagers and cultivates succeeding talent.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Chachunmei 03-0940
- Guo Jianrong
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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