Historical Origin of Classical Dance

Chinese Classical Dance, the definitive name of this dance, was first proposed by Mr. Ouyang Yuqian in 1950, and was later agreed upon by people in the dance community and widely circulated, and finally identified. Contemporary Classical Chinese Dance has a blood relationship with ancient Chinese dance, but it is not synonymous with ancient Chinese dance. Contemporary Classical Chinese Dance was founded after the founding of New China by Tang Mancheng, Li Zhengyi and other dancers of Beijing Dance Academy, on the basis of Chinese Opera Dance and Chinese Martial Arts, and in combination with foreign ballet, it was gradually summarized and generalized. The concept of Chinese classical dance has its own history, more stylized meaning, and it is also a developing concept.

Chinese classical dance has an extremely long history. Its origin can be traced back to the ancient Chinese court dances or the folk dances of more distant times. To the beginning of the Zhou Dynasty, to the Han Dynasty, the two Jin Dynasty and even the Tang Dynasty, five generations of the court set up a special music and dance institutions, concentration and training of professional music and dance personnel, and popular in the folk self-indulgent dance and religious dance and even foreign dances for the collation, research, processing and development of the formation of the court dance. Among them, such as the Zhou Dynasty's "six generations of dance" (including the "Cloud Gate", "salty pool", "Da Shao", "Daxia", "Da Spinach", "Dawu" six music and dance), the Tang Dynasty's "Nine Department of Music", "Ten Department of Music", "sitting part of the伎"、"Le Part of the伎"、"Daqu",etc., a variety of colorful, and so on, each leading the way. Chinese court dance, is the successive rulers to enjoy pleasure, singing the praises of an important tool, mainly female music. Because of the court dance to the ruler's aesthetic interest and creation, part of its works inevitably exist in the style of the beautiful and negative content; but most of them are still mostly by artists in the Chinese folk dance based on the creation of out, so there is no lack of Chinese traditional art of the exquisite place. After the Song and Yuan Dynasties, due to frequent wars and cultural destruction, the development of dance was also affected, and many famous dances of the Han and Tang Dynasties were lost. In the Song Dynasty dance formed on the basis of traditional dance, the formation and development of opera gradually replaced the art of song and dance. In the Yuan Dynasty, the combination of court music and dance with folk songs and dances, and even "white opera", "burlesque", and "corner theater" gradually formed the art form of opera. The art of opera requires a combination of singing, reciting, acting and playing, and has various factors such as dance, music, fine arts, acrobatics, literature and speech, etc. It is a comprehensive art form. Dance in opera contains the essence of traditional Chinese dance, which absorbs and transforms certain life movements according to the needs of the characters' plots, strengthening and enriching the expressive power of dance. After the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, the social conflicts were relatively complicated, and the complex social life provided many materials for the further development of dance.

After the founding of New China, in the early fifties, dance practitioners, in order to develop and innovate the art of national dance, extracted dance materials from the rich Chinese opera performances, and drew on the Chinese martial arts to research, organize, refine, and refer to the ballet training methods, etc., to establish a set of Chinese classical dance teaching materials. At the same time, it choreographed and performed a series of dance dramas and dances in the style of Chinese classical dance, such as "The Po Lin Lantern", "The Little Dagger Club" and "Moonlit Night of Spring River". Along with the open policy in the 1980s, Chinese classical dance has been undergoing constant changes, and has begun to expand into new spaces from appearance to content. On the one hand, the dancers broke through the scope limited to the study of opera dance, and got involved in the ancient cave murals and various excavated artifacts in the dance image of the data, so as to collate and create a lot of unique classical dance and classical dance drama, such as the "Silk Road Flowers and Rain", "Chimes and Dance", "Imitation of Tang Music and Dance", "Copper Sparrow Kabuki", etc., and these vintage music and dance highlights the gracefulness and generosity, precision and rigor, These vintage music and dances emphasize the gracefulness, precision, rigor, and clarity of the style. On the other hand, it is the innovation, creation and practice of the theory of classical Chinese dance body rhyme by dance educators Tang Mancheng and Li Zhengyi. Prof. Tang Mancheng said, "'Body Rhythm' starts from getting rid of the lines and routines of opera, and explores the aesthetic laws of 'form, spirit, strength, rhythm, qi, and meaning' from the great cultural traditions of China, including calligraphy and martial arts, and refines its elements to summarize the movement characteristics of classical dance. elements, and summarize the routes, laws, and connotations of masculinity, femininity, and rhythm of classical dance movement, so that it no longer bears the traces of dramatization, similitude, and lineage, and moves towards the abstract function of the subjective consciousness of the dance and the symbolization of movement." They refined and summarized the movement rules in previous classical dances into a number of basic movements centered on the waist and performing circular movements, greatly expanding the movement space of Chinese classical dance. As a result, they practiced and produced a large number of excellent dance works represented by "The Yellow River", "The Water of the River", "Mulan Returns", "Liang Zhu" and so on. In "The Yellow River", Chinese classical dance, which was born out of opera dance, breaks through the limitations of opera routines, and is no longer a replica of opera lines. Instead, it renovates classical dance into a human language that can freely express thoughts and passions by means of large-scale body movements, "thus making Chinese classical dance find not only the spirit of the Chinese tradition of Wendai from the appearance but also from the inner charisma". Thus the Chinese classical dance finds not only the appearance but also the inner charm to be consistent with the spirit of traditional Chinese literature, thus making the Chinese classical dance form the aesthetic characteristics of delicate and mellow, rigidity and flexibility, scenario blending, skill combination, as well as the perfect combination and high degree of unity of the essence, qi, and spirit, and hand, eye, body, method, and footwork." The success of The Yellow River marks a new stage in the development of Chinese classical dance.