The picture shows the Kinnaro dance at the 2022 "Four Seas Long Love • Five Continents Gong Chunhui" transnational New Year Literary and Art Gala. Photo by Li Jiaxian
(New Year to the grassroots) Geng Ma literary and artistic performance team's cultural dissemination road: from the field to the international stage
Kunming, February 2, 2019 Title: The Road of Cultural Dissemination of Geng Ma's Literary and Art Performance Team: From the Field to the International Stage
Author Hong Yi
Wearing hats and masks, barefoot boards, and colorful "wings" on their backs, the actors showed the traditional Dai dance - Kinnara Dance to audiences at home and abroad in the music of traditional Dai instruments such as pineapple drums, row niobium, wooden fish drums and other traditional Dai instruments. This is a wonderful scene at the 2022 transnational New Year Literary and Art Gala broadcast to the global audience on the night of the Chinese New Year's Eve.
The dancers come from the Gengma Literary Performance Team. Gengma County, Lincang City, is located in the southwestern border of China, connected to the Burmese landscape, and has been Chinese mainland an important gateway and land shortcut to Southeast Asia and South Asia since ancient times. Here are rich in ethnic and cultural resources, living in Dai, Wa, Lahu, Lisu, Deang, Jingpo and other 10 ethnic groups.
If you don't see it with your own eyes, it is difficult to believe that the "majestic and exuberant" Kinnara on the stage, after taking off the mask off the stage, is actually a group of young people. Li Bo, deputy head of the Gengma Literary and Art Performance Team, introduced that there are 32 people in the team, the youngest is only fifteen years old, the average age is eighteen or nineteen years old, there are Dai, Wa, Han, most of them are "halfway out of the house".
Dai guy can be 22 years old at the end, don't look at his age, not tall, but he is the "old senior" in the team, this is already his eighth year in the group. The traditional court drumming of the Dai ethnic group is his specialty, and he often serves as a court drum teacher in the team, training the team members in drumming methods. As a result, he was not only an actor in the Kinnara dance, but also participated in the performance of dance music.
The Kinnara Dance performed by Noh and the team members this time is a traditional dance of the Dai people. In the Dai mythological story, Kinnara is a pair of sacred birds, the male bird is called Kinnara, and the female bird is Kinnari, two guardian birds of the Buddha, and the two birds love each other, symbolizing loyal and beautiful love. The Kinaro dance is a quasi-bird dance and has been included in the list of intangible cultural heritage projects in Lincang City.
Li Bo introduced that in the past few years, few people danced the Naluo dance, but in Gengma, the relevant information is still relatively complete. Since 2016, Gengma literary and artistic workers began to investigate and collect the information of Kinnara, and in 2017, centralized excavation and collation were carried out, and three Jinnara folk artists were invited to the troupe to teach dance and soundtrack, and through four years of practice and polishing, The Kinnara dance has become a classic program of the team and is also known to more and more people.
All along, everyone in the team has always had the original intention of "spreading national culture" in their hearts, deeply cultivating the fertile soil of Gengma national culture and absorbing the essence of national culture. Li Bo said, "Not only Kinnara, but also traditional dances such as Dai female boxing and red deer dance have been brought to the stage from the folk and have become a beautiful cultural business card of Gengma." ”
As a literary and artistic team for cultural publicity, the GengMa literary and artistic performance team often starts to perform in the fields and squares, as soon as the banner is pulled and the sound is turned on, they can be "stars". Every year, he goes deep into the village to perform more than 70 times and participates in more than 140 other performances, truly achieving that national songs and dances come from the folk and feedback to the folk.
In fact, their works have already taken to the bigger stage. "Red Deer Dance" won the Gold Medal of Yunnan Provincial Ethnic Folk Song and Dance Exhibition, "LaiYi And Knife Dance Boy" won the "Caiyun Award", the highest award of mass culture and art in Yunnan Province, and "Dai Female Creative Fist" won the first prize in the comprehensive category of the performance project of the National Ethnic Minority Traditional Games... The "Spring Warm Blossoms" transnational New Year literary and art evening is aimed at more than 20 countries in South Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, West Asia and other countries, and their dance works have taken a solid step on the road of cultural dissemination.
"We will continue to create more high-quality works to disseminate culture through literature and art." Li Bo said that he was very happy to participate in this Spring Festival Gala activity, which is a great opportunity for the world to understand the national culture of Yunnan. (End)