Report on an Experiment with Yangge Dance and Music

Report on an Experiment with Yangge Dance and Music David Holm ex Contemporary China Institute, London On September 17th of this year, what was probably the U.K. 's first ever ~*~~JIJt.i~ took place at the second annual conference of the British Association for Chinese Studies. The conference, held in St. Antony's College, Oxford, witnessed a lighthearted attempt to recreate an evening of "new yangge" - yangge dancing, that is, as taught by CCP cultural workers in the middle and late l94O's. I am happy to report that all but a small handful of those at the conferenc, came forward voluntarily, received instruction in the dance, and participated enthusiastically. The idea for this amusement originally grew out of my research on the transformation of the folk arts in North China during the Yenan period, much of which is concerned with the music and dance forms of traditional North Shensi yangge and its modernised offspring the "new" or "fighting yangge". Yangge, as everybody knows, was a form of folk dance and folk opera, current in North China and performed mainly at the New Year, which the Party adopted and used extensively during the War of Resistance and the Civil War. Yangge was officially promoted starting in 1943 and the "new yangge" soon became one of the cornerstones of cultural and educational policy. Indeed, portraying as it did the "new people" - the new workers, peasants and soldiers - it wa1 something of a showpiece, and almost all the foreign and KMT-area correspondents who visited the Shen-Kan-Ning Border Region in 1944 were treated to yangge performances. In the post-war period, largely owing to the efforts of CCP cultural workers, "new yangge" dances based on North Shensi styles became widely fashionable in Chinese cities. By 1949 yangge was firmly established everywhere as the "dance of revolution": KMTcartoonists even railed at the new People Government as the ~~3:..~ , the "Yangge Dynasty". The scene on the night of 17 September might have struck a familiar note with CHINOPERLmembers, but for BACS it was more novel. We were billed on the schedule of events merely as "an informal session based on the folk music of the Yenan period", so only a few activists knew beforehand quite what to expect. Dinner was over and 92 r ! I 93 everybody had retired upstairs for coffee when (after a suitable interval) lo! the sound of gongs and drums was heard, first far away somewhere in the bowels of the building, then ever louder and more distinct until finally six musicians emerged at the head of the stairs and, clashing cymbals and beating gongs and drums in time to a yangge lu6gjidian ( ~ it,,I{ ) , marched into the great hall of St. Antony's and proceded to tread the perimeter of a large open area on the floor. This then was the :1f~ ~ , and everybody flocked back into the great hall or leant over the balcony. After a rousing speech and some cajoling from the chief cultural worker, the vast majority of the academic masses laid aside petit bourgeois self-consciousness and received basic instruction in the steps of the dance. We then proceded to dance yangge! Imagine: in the lead the sant6u (+-*)wielding an open umbrella, followed by two dancers holding a hammer and a sickle; then a long line of dancers in the costumes of ordinary academic workers holding paper handkerchiefs; everybody twisting their waists, kicking with their toes and waving their handkerchiefs or other I. A as they danced out all sorts of dance formations: circles, squares, cabbage hearts, thrashing serpents, hanging lanterns and Great Walls of China! Enthusiasm ran high, and I expect we afforded no small amusement to any of the staff of St. Antony's who happened to be looking on. Such an evening did not just happen but was the result of a great deal of preparation and cooperation. Credit goes in the first place to th.e members of BACSand the BACScommittee, who provided the necessary finance and support. The plot was hatched in conversations I had with Professor S.R. Schram of the BACScommittee, who also provided much needed encouragement. We were most fortunate in being able to...