How did the Bayu Dance and the Long Sleeve Dance come about in the Qin Dynasty?

During the Qin and Han Dynasties, people continued to create new forms of song and dance, and discarded the rituals and music formulated by the Zhou people, who overthrew the Zhou Dynasty's educational institution for elegant music and dance and set up the "Lefu", an institution specializing in the collection of folk music and dance, which had a profound impact on the development of ancient music and dance in the subsequent period.

The "Xianghe Daqu" is another form of performance that emphasizes both song and dance and is rich in content, and it is a large-scale song and dance song of the Han Dynasty. The dance for self-entertainment in the Han Dynasty social life showed an active situation, from the court to the royal relatives, down to the general officials and even ordinary families, all have the custom of inviting each other to dance in the banquet rituals.

During the Han Dynasty, people loved to dance and had the custom of singing and dancing for their own amusement, which was a concrete manifestation of people's simplicity at that time. Qin Dynasty "Bayu Dance" and "Long Sleeve Dance"

It was in the Qin Shi Huang victory over the six countries, after the unification of the world, he ordered the Prime Minister Li Si to rectify the Guanzhong region of the militia, the provisions of a month after the military parade ceremony, during which the focus of the militia's training results review. Li Si was in a difficult position when he received the order, because Qin Shi Huang had already collected the weapons from the civilians of various countries at that time, and only Qin Shi Huang's regular army had official weapons, and the militia in Guanzhong area had no weapons to train.

Li Si was very anxious, and he meditated but could do nothing. Later, Li Si saw two big men wrestling in the street of the capital city of Xianyang, and he had an idea, which led him to think of training the militia by wrestling, and then passing the inspection of Qin Shi Huang in the form of a wrestling dance.

So Li Si immediately ordered the militiamen to practice their wrestling skills day and night, and adapted the Bayu Dance, which was widely circulated at that time, and incorporated wrestling as a form of sport into the Bayu Dance, gradually interpreting it into a kind of wrestling dance, which he named Jiaojiao Dance.

A month later, Emperor Qin Shi Huang conducted a military parade, he saw the militiamen wrestling with each other and dancing a very special wrestling Bayu Dance, all the militiamen in the plaza move in unison, the people's postures are very neat, very powerful and majestic.

Qin Shi Huang was so pleased that he rewarded Li Si and declared this "Bayu Dance" to be a key ritual in future army ceremonies.

In fact, after Qin Shi Huang annexed the six kingdoms and unified the world, although the history of the Qin dynasty was very short, he did some crucial things, such as establishing a national map, gradually eliminating the gap between the lords and nobles and the common people under the Zhou dynasty's feudal system, and establishing a unified system of "books in the same language and vehicles on the same track," forming a great unification system, as well as a great unification system. It also established a unified system of "books in the same language, vehicles on the same track", forming a sense of unification and tradition.

Qin Shi Huang rejected the music and dance traditions of the Zhou Dynasty, and he used very harsh means to abolish the rituals and dances formulated by the Zhou people, and he overthrew the Zhou Dynasty's educational institutions of elegant music and dance and established the "Lefu", which was specialized in collecting folk music and dances for his own amusement.

Later in the tomb of Qin Shi Huang unearthed a wrong gold silver button clock, engraved with the word "Lefu", is the best proof of the Qin dynasty music and dance since its creation. All this has a profound influence on the development of ancient music and dance.

The Bayu Dance is a kind of dance of the southwestern ethnic minorities. Because they lived in the Bayu area around Sichuan, this dance was named "Bayu Dance".

In the ancient city of Langzhong in Sichuan, which used to be the other capital of the pre-Qin Ba state, a folk culture with distinctive local characteristics was formed here, which has become an important part of the history and culture of Langzhong.

The Bayu Dance is a collective martial arts dance developed by the Cubans in their struggles with fierce animals and tribes. In the "Battle of Muye" of King Wu's conquest of Zhou, the "Long Ben" army was formed by the Ba people, who held clubs, sang and danced in front and behind, and "Ling Yin people fell down", thus winning the victory. According to Chang Qu, a famous scholar of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, in his "Huayang Guo Zhi - Ba Zhi", it was recorded that:

Yu Shui is located in Langzhong, and the people live around the water, and they were born to be strong and courageous, and they were the forerunners of the Han Dynasty, and their sharpness and joyfulness in dancing made them enter into the imperial court.

Thus, the Bayu Dance is a dance that came from people in the southwest. When Liu Bang, Gaozu of the Han Dynasty, pacified the Three Qin Dynasty, he recruited a group of people to be the vanguard, who were brave and good at fighting, and whose customs were good at dancing, so he ordered the musicians to learn and adapt their dances, and because they lived in the area of Yushui in Bayu County, he called such dances "Bayu Dance". Later, after the Bayu Dance was introduced to the court, it became the court dance, which was used to perform military battle scenes at court banquets to glorify the emperor's merits, and was a famous dance at that time. When the Bayu Dance was performed, the dancers clad themselves in armor, holding spears, crossbows and arrows, singing ancient war songs, music and dance, singing and dancing, and there were 36 dancers, which was a kind of group dance. Because this dance is a martial music dance, it is said that later in the Han Dynasty, Emperor Ai of the Han Dynasty after the strike of the Lefu, he is still very much attached to the Bayu dancers 36 people, he thought that can not be struck off the Bayu Dance, but will be the Bayu Dance by the Dale leading the belonging to the system, which will be included in the elegant music dance.

"Bayu Dance" accompanied by instruments mainly bronze drums, with chimes, rattle, fiddles, dance songs have "Spear Yu Ben songs", "An Nuyu Ben songs", "Antai Ben songs", "line of resignation Ben songs" 4 articles.

The Bayu Dance was developed in the Wei and Jin Dynasties, and it has been completely transformed into a temple ritual dance. Therefore, the Bayu Dance occupies a more important position in the ancient dance art.

The later "Eight Immortals Drum Dance" is in fact a manifestation of the evolution of the "Bayu Dance". The "Drum of the Eight Immortals" is a long-handled, double-sided animal skin drum with eight immortals or totem patterns painted on the surface, a slightly narrower diameter and a wider handle.

The "Eight Immortals Drum Dance" is mostly a group dance for more than 10 people, and it is suitable for performing in the square. When people perform the Eight Immortals Drum, usually the gong player goes first, and then the drummer follows, and people beat the drum on one side, shout on the other side, and keep changing the formation, which is very powerful and majestic.

The Bayu Dance of the Qin Dynasty was also known as the Yu'er Dance in folklore, and the name was still widely spread in the later Tang Dynasty during the reign of Emperor Taizong Dali of Tang Dynasty. Later, the Tang Dynasty poet Han Shide (翃) left a trace of the Bayu Dance in the poem "Sending Ambassador Yang to Bazhou" written at the mouth of Qianshan Mountain, which reads:

When the singing bells of ten thousand miles celebrated each other's birthday, the Bayu Dance was performed at the Batong Sound Festival. The "ten thousand miles of songs and bells" in the poem refers to the vast state of Bazhou, where the people sing and beat gongs and drums. The general idea of the poem is that the people of Bazhou would sing and dance to celebrate the achievements of Ambassador Yang when he came to Bazhou to straighten out the defense, which shows that the "Bayu Dance" of the Qin Dynasty was still popular in Bazhou in the later Tang Dynasty.

The Bayu Dance of the Qin Dynasty gradually evolved into a new dance called the "Weeding and Drumming Dance," which was also a dance circulated in the Micang Mountain area of Bazhong at the southern foot of the Dabashan Mountains, and was a large-scale set of songs sung by the local people when they were weeding and gathering grains of grass, and the gongs and drums used for this dance originated from those used in the Bayu Dance.

According to the local record "Bazhou Zhi - Customs" in the record:

Spring field rice-planting, the election of song Lang two drums and gongs in the long, Man sound and song, more singing iterative, Li Li can be listened to, so that ploughing to forget their fatigue, in order to qi Gong Li.

According to this account, the "Weed and Drum Dance" is indeed a song and dance for people working collectively in the Bayu area during the Qin Dynasty, and its purpose is actually the same as the ancient war dance "Bayu Dance".

In addition to the Bayu Dance, there was another kind of dance that was very popular in the Qin Dynasty, which was called the Long Sleeve Dance, and it was a very popular dance at that time. The old saying "long sleeves are good for dancing, more money is good for business" actually originated from this dance during the Qin Dynasty.

The "Long Sleeve Dance" illustrates from one side that our country is a silk country, and also proves that the dance characterized by long sleeves has long been spreading in the land of China. The "Long Sleeve Dance" of the Qin Dynasty is corroborated in many ways. Such as Henan Nanyang Shiqiao town portrait stone on the image of a dancer show long sleeves, dancing.

This dancer raises one hand on the top, drags one hand on the bottom, and then raises one leg, as if she is making a sideways jumping movement.

A similar image is typical of later portraits of the Han Dynasty. Of course, the dance with long sleeves was a musical dance developed because of the characteristics of the costumes, and the hemline of the women's skirts in the Qin Dynasty costumes was wide and long, so sometimes it was necessary to strengthen the momentum of the dance through the movement of the sleeves.

It is worth noting that such moving performances were sometimes in quite open areas, and sometimes indoors, with fine draperies as decoration. What's more, the Qin Dynasty "Long Sleeve Dance" performances were actually performed with an orchestra.

The number of musicians in the Qin Dynasty Long Sleeve Dance was either large or small, or even sometimes only one person, while the instruments accompanying the Long Sleeve Dance at that time included xiao, drums, drums, rattles, sheng, ocarinas, cymbals and so on, and in many cases, there were also singers who sang for the dancers of the Long Sleeve Dance.

Qin Dynasty women's "long-sleeved dance" sometimes also appeared in the form of two-person dance, such as Jiangsu Qishan in the portrait stone, you can see two women dancers flinging their sleeves and the dance of the vivid situation. Their bodies tilted, two sleeves symmetrical, waist soft, sleeve length and the ground and waving without confusion. Around them, there were still musicians accompanying them, and next to them, two others seemed to be clapping and singing.

The form of the "pair dance" shows that the "Long Sleeve Dance" is often performed as a small program, and because of the individual performances, the level of the "Long Sleeve Dance" should naturally be higher than that of the collective dance, so that it can be noticed by the appreciators.