Chinese performing arts
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What are Chinese performing arts?
Chinese performing arts encompass dance and theatre, deeply rooted in religious beliefs and customs dating back to 1000 BCE. These arts feature costumed shamans who use song, dance, and music to connect with heavenly spirits.
Rituals involving impersonations of supernatural entities aim to ensure longevity, bountiful harvests, and protection from harm, linking humans to the spiritual realm through rhythmic music and patterned movements. Chinese theatre originated from early religious dances performed at festivals to banish demons or celebrate historical events.
Over time, diverse forms such as Peking opera and regional variations evolved, showcasing elaborate costumes, martial arts, and acrobatics. While theatre was once China's most popular art form, television dramas have gained prominence.
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What are some popular types of Chinese performing arts?
Chinese performing arts encompass a rich variety of forms with deep roots in religious and cultural traditions. Dating back to 1000 BCE, early performances involved costumed shamans who used song and dance to connect with heavenly spirits.
Some popular types include:
* Chinese Opera: A traditional form of musical theatre that integrates music, drama, song, and dance with stylized movements, costumes, and makeup. Jingxi (Peking opera) and other regional operas feature elaborate costumes, props, martial arts, and acrobatics.
* Kunqu: An elegant and artistic genre of traditional Chinese drama that combines song, dance, and spoken word. Known for its mild, exquisite, and melodious music, kunqu emphasizes vocal control and rhythmic changes to express various characters and stories of romantic love.
* Acrobatics: Chinese acrobats are renowned for their unique acts that emphasize balance and coordination. Stone engravings from the Han period (206 BCE–220 CE) in Shandong province depict acrobatics as an art form.8 Britannica SourcesCreated from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles. -
What is Chinese opera and why is it important?
Chinese opera is a traditional form of musical theatre that combines singing, acrobatics, costumes, and instruments to create a multifaceted performance. Jingxi (Peking opera) is one of the most well-known styles. Confucian ideals underpin traditional Chinese drama, emphasizing virtues such as duty and loyalty. While themes of spiritualism and magic from Daoism appear, the plays primarily focus on ethics, promoting virtuous behavior and illustrating the repercussions of evil.
Chinese opera is important because it upholds morality and demonstrates proper human conduct within a social context. It has roots as far back as the Zhou dynasty, with the Tang-period Pear Garden school setting the stage for its development. It is a highly conventionalized art form influenced by the need for troupes to travel with minimal props and scenery.
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How do music and dance play a role in Chinese performing arts?
In Chinese performing arts, music and dance are tied to religious beliefs and customs, dating back to 1000 BCE. Shamans used song and dance to connect humans to the spiritual world.
Dance, music, and dramatic representation have merged through their religious function. Music is integral to Chinese opera, with singers, acrobats, costumes, scenery, and instruments creating varied works of art. Traditional Chinese theater has not produced much dance, but dialogue is accompanied by arias and recitatives.
Music and dance are essential, inseparable arts rooted in aesthetic and philosophical principles. Confucianism says that performing appropriate music and dances creates social harmony.
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What traditional instruments are used in Chinese performances?
Chinese performances feature a variety of traditional instruments, classified by their construction material using the ancient ba yin system, which includes stone, earth, bamboo, metal, skin, silk, wood, and gourd.
Stringed instruments, traditionally made with silk strings, include the pipa, a short-necked lute, and the erhu, a two-stringed vertical fiddle. The erhu, jinghu, and sihu are all variants of the huqin, a group of Chinese fiddles. The yueqin, or moon guitar, is a plucked lute with a round wooden body.
Wind instruments include the di (horizontal flute), the xiao (notched vertical flute), and the sheng mouth organ, which consists of bamboo pipes set in a gourd. Percussion instruments include barrel drums (gu), cymbals (bo), and a small flat gong (luo).
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How have Chinese performing arts influenced other cultures or changed over time?
Chinese performing arts have ancient roots in religious beliefs and customs, dating back to 1000 BCE. Over time, these traditions have significantly influenced the cultures of East Asian neighbors. Chinese theater emerged from early religious dances and storytelling, evolving into various forms, including Peking opera, known for its elaborate costumes, stylized music, and martial arts.
Despite facing restrictions during the Cultural Revolution, Chinese performing arts have seen a revival since the 1980s, with efforts to renew cultural traditions and rejuvenate art forms. Contemporary Chinese theater has also been influenced by Western musicals, incorporating modern dialogue and less stylized music. Chinese acrobats are renowned for their unique acts emphasizing balance and coordination, such as the "Peacock Bicycle".
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Chinese performing arts, the dance and the theatre arts of China, tied from the earliest records to religious beliefs and customs. These date to 1000 bce, and they describe magnificently costumed male and female shamans who sang and danced to musical accompaniment, drawing the heavenly spirits down to earth through their performance.
In China, as elsewhere in East Asia, the descendants of magico-religious performances can be seen in a variety of guises. Whether designed to pray for longevity or for a rich harvest or to ward off disease and evil, the rituals of impersonation of supernatural beings through masks and costumes and the repetition of rhythmic music and patterns of movement perform the function of linking humans to the spiritual world beyond. Hence, dance, music, and dramatic mimesis have been naturally fused through their religious function.
The formative period
Singing and dancing were performed at the Chinese court as early as the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 bce). An anecdote describes a case of realistic acting in 402 bce, when the chief jester of the court impersonated mannerisms of a recently deceased prime minister so faithfully that the emperor was convinced the prime minister had been restored to life. Drama was not yet developed, but large-scale masques (a short allegorical performance with masked players) in which dancing maidens and young boys dressed as gods and as various animals were popular. Sword-swallowing, fire-eating, juggling, acrobatics, ropewalking, tumbling, and similar stage tricks had come from the nomads of Central Asia by the 2nd century bce and were called the “hundred entertainments.” During the Han dynasty (206 bce–220 ce) palace singers acted out warriors’ stories, the forerunners of military plays in later Chinese opera, and by the time of the Three Kingdoms (220–280 ce) clay puppets were used to enact plays. These evolved into glove-and-stick puppets in later years.
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The Tang period
The emperor Xuanzong showed an interest in the performing arts, stimulating many advances in stage arts during the Tang dynasty (618–907). More than a thousand pupils were enrolled in music, dance, and acting schools. Spectacular masked court dances and masked Buddhist dance processions that soon were learned by Korean and Japanese performers were part of court life. Three types of play are recorded as having been popular. Daimian (“Mask”) was about Prince Lan Ling, who covered his gentle face with a horrifying mask to frighten his enemies when he went into battle. Some suggest the colourful painted faces of warriors in contemporary Chinese opera derive from this play. Tayaoniang (“Stepping and Swaying Woman”) was a farcical domestic play in which a sobbing wife bitterly complained about her brutal husband, who then appeared and, singing and dancing, abused his wife even more. The embezzling rascal hero of Canqun (“The Military Counselor”) became a stock character in later plays. Thus, by Tang times, three basic types of drama were known: military play, domestic play, and satire of officialdom; and the establishment of role types had begun.
The Song period
The variety play (zaqu) was created by writers and performers in North China during the Bei (Northern) Song dynasty (960–1127). None of the scripts has survived, but something of their nature can be deduced from the 280 titles that remain and from court records. A play consisted of three parts: a low-comedy prologue, the main play in one or two scenes (consisting of extended sequences of songs, dancing, and perhaps dialogue), and a musical epilogue. Two, three, or four variety plays would be included in a program along with a sampling from the “hundred entertainments.” In the following Nan (Southern) Song dynasty (1127–1279), northern writers continued composing plays of this general type under the name professional scripts (yuanben). None of the 691 professional scripts of which the titles are known has survived. Concurrently a new form of drama, southern drama (nanxi), emerged in the area around Hangzhou in southern China. Originally the creation of folk authors, it soon became an appealing and polished dramatic form. A southern drama tells a sustained story in colloquial language; flexible verses (qu) were set to popular music, making both music and poetry accessible to the ordinary spectator. Professional playwrights belonging to Hangzhou’s writing societies (shuhui) wrote large numbers of southern dramas for local troupes. Of these, 113 titles and 3 play texts remain, preserved in an imperial collection of the 15th century. Zhang Xie zhuangyuan (“Top Graduate Zhang Xie”) is probably the oldest of the three texts. It dramatizes the story of a young student who aspires to success, earns a degree and position, but callously turns his back on the girl who faithfully loves him.
Professional theatre districts became established during the Song dynasty. Major cities contained several districts (17 or more in Hangzhou), with as many as 50 playhouses in a district. Plays performed by puppets and mechanical dolls were extremely popular.
A legend attributes the origin of shadow theatre in China to an incident said to have occurred about 100 bce: a priest, claiming to have brought to life the emperor’s deceased wife, cast a woman’s shadow on a white screen with a lamp. Others suggest the shadow play dates only from the Song period. In any case it was widely performed in Song times in the theatre districts. Puppets were made of translucent leather and coloured with transparent dye so they cast (like some Indian puppets) coloured shadows on the screen. In this respect they were unlike Javanese shadow puppets, which, though brilliantly coloured, are opaque and cast a largely colourless shadow. Shadow plays are still performed in China. Singers, dancers, actors, acrobats, and other performers were all employed at the professional theatres of the districts. Troupes were as small as possible for economic reasons, containing as few as five or six performers. They would tour the countryside if they had no work in the large cities, thus spreading urban styles of performing arts throughout the vast region of China.
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