According to Shangshu Xia Shu, people in this area often hold song and dance revelry when celebrating harvest and offering sacrifices to ancestors and gods. Accompanied by drum music, they dressed up as various birds and animals, chanting, jumping and dancing. Simplicity of songs and dances, musical instruments, performance movements, etc.
Later, with the development of society, religious witchcraft and totem worship appeared. On both sides of the Yellow River, at the beginning of the Spring Festival, people hold an annual ritual to worship the gods in order to pray for a bumper harvest, which was later recorded by Confucius in The Analects.
This folk custom has been handed down, but the content of the sacrificial ceremony changes with the development of the times. Performance has become an important part of offering sacrifices to ancestors and gods, praying for good luck and wishing a bumper harvest. It gradually changed from a religious ceremony focusing on entertaining gods to an artistic activity focusing on entertaining people.
In the Tang Dynasty, there were musical dramas here. According to Du You, a famous historian in the Tang Dynasty, the popular repertoires at that time included Da Mian, Jumping Head, Jumping Lady and Lei Zi in the Cave. Among them, the form of stepping on a song in "Step on a Shake Mom" is very similar to the dance action of jumping on a play.
These music and dances originated from the folk, were absorbed by the court, improved in art, returned to the folk and spread to all parts of the country. For example, Step on the Girl was not only widely circulated in Shanxi, Shaanxi, Henan, Hebei, Shandong and other places, but also spread to Xinjiang through the Silk Road.
In the northern part of Wuren, Xingjiazhuang and Nanyizhuang, where the dance drama is popular, there is a folk legend that the dance drama went to Bianjing to perform for the imperial court when it was in Song Renzong.
After the Yuan Dynasty unified China, people were forbidden to keep iron. However, the monitoring of upper-class people entertaining guests, performing gongs and drums and drinking for fun is a bit lax. People also take this opportunity to greet God during the Spring Festival, and scholars and farmers get together to perform.
During Chenghua period of Ming Dynasty, a magistrate collected folk literature and continued to perform. However, because it was banned for a long time, it lost its original tune and could only be expressed by action, so there was a revival of dumb jump in Hexi. Later, after several generations, the performances of civil and military operas gradually appeared.
During the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, the Xu brothers in Xinli Village, Dongwang, Heyang, once entered the play as Hanlin and pretended to be peonies and danced with farmers.
During Daoguang and Xianfeng years in Qing Dynasty, there were many dance clubs and more than 30 troupes in villages along the river, which was the heyday of the development of dance drama.
Often a village has several teams, which are mainly popular in Wuren, south and north of ma jia zhuang xiang, Hangjiazhuang, Songjiazhuang, Nanshun and Beishun villages in Xinchi Township, Fangzhen and Yuezhuang in Fangzhen Township, Kunlong in Fuliu Township, Baichang in Pingxiang, Lingao in Zhibao Township, Nanyi and Xinli in Dongwang Township, etc.
After the end of the Qing Dynasty, many troupes were dissolved and there were fewer and fewer kinds of dances. Only a few villages in Dongxiang can make do.
1in the spring of 949, with the liberation of Dongxiang and Heyang, Xingjiazhuang performed the drama "Flame Mountain" at the military-civilian get-together to express condolences to the Western Expeditionary Army. 1957 During the Spring Festival, Heyang Dance Drama participated in the "Third Folk Music and Dance Exhibition Conference in Shaanxi Province", and Shen Drama "Meeting the Red Sea" was jointly performed by Xingjiazhuang artists.
1963 Spring, Nanyizhuang performed for two days and three nights. 1979, Xingjiazhuang resumed performing traditional repertoires such as Victory of Veterans, War Horse Super and Battle Pan River.
1982, Xingjiazhuang performed "Fishing Tax" and "Yan Qing Hit People" and participated in the rehearsal of the county drama. In order to preserve this ancient dramatic art form, the Spring Festival of 1984 recorded a picture of a dance drama.
There is no professional class club organization for the performance of Heyang Dance Drama, but the performance is organized in the form of social drama. A large village or community has a troupe, or a class in two communities, or a class in one village. The cultivation of actors and the inheritance of art are passed down from generation to generation.
There is another difference between Heyang Dance Drama and other operas. Regardless of the background, class generation and status of the cast members, clan rules do not discriminate and call them "actors", and actors are called "ladies". Therefore, as long as you are willing, you can be on the same stage, from lifting, supervision, warehousing, students, Hanlin bachelor, to farmers and craftsmen.
The village that has become a good family is called "playing nest" Where is the village called "Xiwozi", there is a theater box in the community and a stage in the village. Every performance has a lot of good plays, each with its own merits.
Therefore, since the formation of dance drama, many outstanding artists have emerged, including Dang Guiyi, Dang Jiubao, party emblem Zheng, Dang Zuoxing, Dang Wanshou, Dang Tiegou, Dang Rang and Dang Yunlong, all of which are well-known artists.
Xingjiazhuang is a well-known dance theater with a long history of dance activities. In its heyday, the village was divided into four clubs: East, West, South and Yao, with nearly a hundred plays. Xishe is good at literary drama, while Dongshe is famous for its martial arts drama. The plays performed by various societies are different, with different skills and styles.
Dance dramas are usually performed during the Spring Festival every year. During the slack season in the twelfth lunar month, villagers elect leaders to organize rehearsals. The elected leader is called "strategy" and is equipped with several assistants. The assistant, known as the "schemer", is responsible for raising performance expenses and rehearsing chores.
Except for those with good families who went out, the part with insufficient performance expenses was voluntarily donated by the villagers. In addition to cash, most of the donated items are daily necessities such as grain and oil and performance materials.
Some directors are called "dialers" and others are called "jumping mother and son". They must be proficient in rehearsed plays, familiar with the performances of various roles, and be good artists with comprehensive art and excellent acting skills.
On the afternoon of New Year's Day before the jump, various clubs beat gongs and drums, commonly known as "playing the burden", to create an atmosphere and inspire people, so as to urge "social workers" to come forward and discuss the performance organization and expenses. On the fifth day of the first month, before dawn, the "good family" carried drums and "shouldered the burden" in the yard of the "good family" and ordinary villagers in our society, which was called "the town poor ghost" and also called "breaking the five evils". At home, the householder will thank you with a pot of wine and a "cold dish".
"Good people" receive thank-you gifts, and after the "poor town" ends, they eat thank-you gifts together and get together for business trips. On the same day, it entered the stage of "Niu Gong and Drum", that is, all the clubs gathered gongs and drums in the center of the village, beating each other and encouraging each other. The next day, the community began to jump in the square, that is, twice in the morning and afternoon, and landed in different places in the village every time.
This dumb jump is popular, and sometimes there will be a scene of 100 people, with the actors on the stage and the audience under the stage. Most of the performances are martial arts programs, such as "Three Wars Lu Bu", "Song Wu Da Pu", "Wood Carving Zhai" and "Lintong Mountain". The next actors cheered around and played a coordinating role. It reached its climax before the Lantern Festival, and it was performed on the 13th and 14th of the first month.
When "jumping on the stage", the gongs and drums are turned on first, and then the "Spring Official" takes the stage. The jumping on the stage was held in the auditorium of the village Committee compound. There is a performance stage in the hall that can accommodate 300 people. The role of "spring official" is mostly played by "good family", "fellow villager" and "strategy"
"Spring officials" usually wear scarlet official uniforms, round-winged gauze hats, tofu clowns and flower fans, similar to the opening of "Deputy End" in Ming zaju. The content is impromptu, the sentence pattern is not fixed, or the local scenery is described, or the oppression of officials is told, and even the names are named, and the words are used to ridicule. Actors often take the opportunity to express their feelings and vent their anger.
In the past, when dancing, fairy tales such as God bless the people, Lingguan beating Taiwan, Five Ghosts' Judgment, Impatient Biting Chicken, and Kuixing Fighting were performed first, saying that this was to welcome good luck, send away the plague, give birth to a precious child, bring good omen and drive away the ominous, and then we started the passbook play or this play.