I think the most beautiful ancient dance is the colorful feather dance.

The dance of colorful clothes and feathers is also called the song of colorful clothes and feathers. It is a kind of court music and dance of the Tang Dynasty. It was composed for Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty and was used to perform at the Taiqing Palace to commemorate Laozi. It was lost after the Anshi Rebellion. During the Southern Song Dynasty, Jiang Kui discovered eighteen sections of the score of Shang Diao Nishang Opera. These fragments are still preserved in his "Songs of Taoist Baishi". A masterpiece of singing and dancing in the Tang Dynasty, it is still worthy of being a shining pearl in the history of music and dance. Yang Guifei, one of the four beauties in ancient China, was extremely favored by Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty because she was good at this dance.

Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty quoted "The Song of Colorful Clothes and Feather Clothes" as his proud work, and it was only performed in the palace at first. lead. At that time, the minister Zhang Hu's "Huaqing Palace" said: "The sky is dark and the night is still young, and the green clouds and immortals are dancing in neon clothes. A jade flute is heard in the sky, and the moon is full in the Lishan Palace." "The Feather Clothes Song" was written in the Kaiyuan and Tianbao years. It was once popular, but after the Tianbao Rebellion, the palace stopped performing it. Due to the beautiful melody and exquisite conception of "The Song of Colorful Feather Clothes", various vassal towns also rehearsed this song one after another, so literati in the Tang Dynasty sang or wrote about it. Later, with the decline and collapse of the Tang Dynasty, the famous song "Neon Shang" has "never been passed down". In fact, by the mid-Tang Dynasty, this song had been forgotten by many people. During the Five Dynasties, Li Yu, the late emperor of the Southern Tang Dynasty, obtained the remaining score. After Zhaohui, Emperor Zhou E and the musician Cao Sheng searched for the sounds according to the score, patched it into a song, and once arranged and rehearsed it, but it was no longer the original tune.

"Song of Colorful Feather Clothes" describes the myth that Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty longed for gods and went to the Moon Palace to see fairies. Its dance, music and costumes all focus on depicting the ethereal fairyland and the image of dancing fairies, giving people a sense of wonder. Immersive artistic experience. Bai Juyi's poem "Neon Dress and Feather Dress Dance Song and Wei Zhi" gave a detailed description of the structure and dance posture of the song: the whole song has thirty-six sections, scattered with a preface (six sections), a middle preface (eighteen sections) and the song It is divided into three parts (twelve sections), integrating singing, dancing and instrumental music into one. There are 36 sections in the whole song, which express the fairy tales of Chinese Taoism.

"The Song of Colorful Feather Clothes" was very popular in the Tang court and played an important role in the music and dance of the prosperous Tang Dynasty. Xuanzong personally taught the Liyuan disciples to play, and the palace maids sang, using 30 female artists, 10 at a time. Regarding the performance of this song, Bai Juyi and Yuan Zhen have wonderful descriptions in their poems.

"The Song of Colorful Feathers and Clothes" shows that the Tang Dynasty's operas already had a huge and varied body of music, and its artistic expression shows the great achievements of the Tang Dynasty's court music. From Bai Juyi's "Song of Neon Clothes and Feather Clothes", it can be seen that the accompaniment of "Song of Ni Clothes and Feather Clothes" uses chimes (referring to copper bowls in the Tang Dynasty), zither, Xiao, flute, konghou, 筚簟, sheng and other gold, stone, silk and bamboo music. The sound is as intoxicating as "jumping pearls shaking jade".