Lahuzulusheng Dance
01 · Historical Records
The Lahu lusheng dance originates in rites for the worship of ancestors and prayers for a bountiful harvest.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Lahu lusheng dance is a representative folk dance of the Lahu people, popular within Lancang Lahu Autonomous County, Pu'er City, Yunnan Province. The lusheng dance evolved from the earliest ritual for entertaining the gods and praying for blessings; its content mainly presents the Lahu people's primitive religious rites, production and daily life, imitates animals, and expresses the joyful emotions of human beings. The Lahu people revere the gourd and regard it as the maternal symbol from which their ancestors were born. The Lahu people insert five bamboo pipes into a gourd to make a lusheng; every year at the Taste-the-New Harvest Festival and at the Spring Festival they dance the lusheng dance, showing reverence for the ancestors and praying for a happy life in the coming year. Through the labour and refinement of hundreds of generations of Lahu people and folk artists, the lusheng dance has now formed more than one hundred repertoires. Whenever Lahu traditional festivals, primitive religious activities or the slack farming season come round, people gather with great enthusiasm and, following a certain procedure, carry on lusheng dance activities through the night to celebrate the harvest, give thanks for the protection of the spirits, and pray for peace and happiness in the coming year. In the Lahu residential area of Lancang the lusheng dance has already become an activity for the whole populace; every man can blow the lusheng and dance the lusheng dance. When a Lahu lusheng dance activity is held, the men blow the gourd lusheng and dance in a circle, while the women hold hands and dance in accompaniment on the outside. The rhythm of the whole dance is steady, the movements are concise, the tunes are beautiful, and the style is deep and resolute, free and ingenious, with a simple archaic flavour. Lancang is the only Lahu autonomous county in the country; the Lahu population is most concentrated here, and Lahu traditional culture is also preserved most completely.
More than a hundred routines
Refined over generations, the dance now has over a hundred routines; Li Zengbao mastered a hundred of them.
Gourd and reed pipe
The gourd is revered as the ancestral womb; five bamboo pipes are set into it to make the reed pipe.
Men pipe, women circle outside
Men blow the gourd pipes in the inner circle while women link hands and dance around them.
The Mupamipa epic and two inheritors
Both Li Zengbao and Li Shikai can sing the epic Mupamipa in full; Li Shikai has trained hundreds of students.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Within Lancang County the lusheng dance flourishes in Zhutang, Muja and the other townships where the Lahu people are concentrated.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
The lusheng dance is a typical representative of Lahu culture and also the bond sustaining the Lahu national spirit, and it occupies an extremely important position in the study of Lahu history and culture. At present, because of the impact of modern culture, the repertoires of the Lahu lusheng dance are gradually being lost and the content of the activities is shrinking more and more. With the old Lahu artists who master the techniques of the lusheng dance continually decreasing in number, this precious national dance is facing a serious survival crisis and urgently needs effective protection. Li Zengbao (as recorded in the official archive of the associated inheritor): at twenty years old he had basically grasped the movement repertoires of the lusheng dance. At forty years old he mastered the dancing method of one hundred lusheng dance repertoires, was especially skilled in the old-people dance, the door-opening dance and the monkey dance, and could sing the entire Lahu epic Moupa Mipa. The dances he performs have a lively rhythm and lifelike images, and possess a distinctive ethnic character and artistic appeal. A man of the Lahu ethnic group, born in January 1929, died in July 2017, native of Lancang Lahu Autonomous County, Yunnan Province. Representative inheritor of the third-batch national-level intangible cultural heritage project Lahu lusheng dance. He used the slack farming season to organize local people in transmitting the lusheng dance, leading and training a large batch of Lahu lusheng dance cadres. In 2013 he won the second China Intangible Cultural Heritage Inheritor Xin Chuan Award, organized by the Chinese National Academy of Arts (China Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Center). Li Shikai (as recorded in the official archive of the associated inheritor): a man of the Lahu ethnic group, born in July 1963, native of Lancang Lahu Autonomous County, Yunnan Province. Deeply influenced by his family and by Lahu culture from childhood, he especially loved the lusheng dance. His dance movements are free and easy, his images lifelike and exquisitely vivid, his repertoires complete, with a striking personal style. He can sing the entire Lahu epic Moupa Mipa. He has performed the lusheng dance on such CCTV programmes as Avenue of Stars and Chinese Folk Songs, enjoying fairly high fame and influence. Representative inheritor of the fifth-batch national-level intangible cultural heritage project Lahu lusheng dance. He has more than forty disciples, and has repeatedly held Lahu lusheng dance training courses training more than eight hundred students.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Li Zengbao 03-0943
- Li Shikai 05-2274
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。