Chinese performing arts | Music, Dance & Theatre (2024)

Chinese performing arts, the dance and the theatre arts of China, tied from the earliest records to religious beliefs and customs. These date to 1000 bce, and they describe magnificently costumed male and female shamans who sang and danced to musical accompaniment, drawing the heavenly spirits down to earth through their performance.

In China, as elsewhere in East Asia, the descendants of magico-religious performances can be seen in a variety of guises. Whether designed to pray for longevity or for a rich harvest or to ward off disease and evil, the rituals of impersonation of supernatural beings through masks and costumes and the repetition of rhythmic music and patterns of movement perform the function of linking humans to the spiritual world beyond. Hence, dance, music, and dramatic mimesis have been naturally fused through their religious function.

The formative period

Singing and dancing were performed at the Chinese court as early as the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 bce). An anecdote describes a case of realistic acting in 402 bce, when the chief jester of the court impersonated mannerisms of a recently deceased prime minister so faithfully that the emperor was convinced the prime minister had been restored to life. Drama was not yet developed, but large-scale masques (a short allegorical performance with masked players) in which dancing maidens and young boys dressed as gods and as various animals were popular. Sword-swallowing, fire-eating, juggling, acrobatics, ropewalking, tumbling, and similar stage tricks had come from the nomads of Central Asia by the 2nd century bce and were called the “hundred entertainments.” During the Han dynasty (206 bce–220 ce) palace singers acted out warriors’ stories, the forerunners of military plays in later Chinese opera, and by the time of the Three Kingdoms (220–280 ce) clay puppets were used to enact plays. These evolved into glove-and-stick puppets in later years.

The Tang period

The emperor Xuanzong showed an interest in the performing arts, stimulating many advances in stage arts during the Tang dynasty (618–907). More than a thousand pupils were enrolled in music, dance, and acting schools. Spectacular masked court dances and masked Buddhist dance processions that soon were learned by Korean and Japanese performers were part of court life. Three types of play are recorded as having been popular. Daimian (“Mask”) was about Prince Lan Ling, who covered his gentle face with a horrifying mask to frighten his enemies when he went into battle. Some suggest the colourful painted faces of warriors in contemporary Chinese opera derive from this play. Tayaoniang (“Stepping and Swaying Woman”) was a farcical domestic play in which a sobbing wife bitterly complained about her brutal husband, who then appeared and, singing and dancing, abused his wife even more. The embezzling rascal hero of Canqun (“The Military Counselor”) became a stock character in later plays. Thus, by Tang times, three basic types of drama were known: military play, domestic play, and satire of officialdom; and the establishment of role types had begun.

The Song period

The variety play (zaqu) was created by writers and performers in North China during the Bei (Northern) Song dynasty (960–1127). None of the scripts has survived, but something of their nature can be deduced from the 280 titles that remain and from court records. A play consisted of three parts: a low-comedy prologue, the main play in one or two scenes (consisting of extended sequences of songs, dancing, and perhaps dialogue), and a musical epilogue. Two, three, or four variety plays would be included in a program along with a sampling from the “hundred entertainments.” In the following Nan (Southern) Song dynasty (1127–1279), northern writers continued composing plays of this general type under the name professional scripts (yuanben). None of the 691 professional scripts of which the titles are known has survived. Concurrently a new form of drama, southern drama (nanxi), emerged in the area around Hangzhou in southern China. Originally the creation of folk authors, it soon became an appealing and polished dramatic form. A southern drama tells a sustained story in colloquial language; flexible verses (qu) were set to popular music, making both music and poetry accessible to the ordinary spectator. Professional playwrights belonging to Hangzhou’s writing societies (shuhui) wrote large numbers of southern dramas for local troupes. Of these, 113 titles and 3 play texts remain, preserved in an imperial collection of the 15th century. Zhang Xie zhuangyuan (“Top Graduate Zhang Xie”) is probably the oldest of the three texts. It dramatizes the story of a young student who aspires to success, earns a degree and position, but callously turns his back on the girl who faithfully loves him.

Professional theatre districts became established during the Song dynasty. Major cities contained several districts (17 or more in Hangzhou), with as many as 50 playhouses in a district. Plays performed by puppets and mechanical dolls were extremely popular.

A legend attributes the origin of shadow theatre in China to an incident said to have occurred about 100 bce: a priest, claiming to have brought to life the emperor’s deceased wife, cast a woman’s shadow on a white screen with a lamp. Others suggest the shadow play dates only from the Song period. In any case it was widely performed in Song times in the theatre districts. Puppets were made of translucent leather and coloured with transparent dye so they cast (like some Indian puppets) coloured shadows on the screen. In this respect they were unlike Javanese shadow puppets, which, though brilliantly coloured, are opaque and cast a largely colourless shadow. Shadow plays are still performed in China. Singers, dancers, actors, acrobats, and other performers were all employed at the professional theatres of the districts. Troupes were as small as possible for economic reasons, containing as few as five or six performers. They would tour the countryside if they had no work in the large cities, thus spreading urban styles of performing arts throughout the vast region of China.