Five-Horse-Touring-City Dance

49.Five-Horse-Touring-City Dance

Nominating Unit: Fengkai County, City of Zhaoqing

Five-Horse-Touring-City Dance is distributed among villages in Dazhou Township, Fengkai County in northwestern Guangdong Province. According to senior artists, this dance has been popular in this area ever since the end of the Song Dynasty.

Five-Horse-Touring-City Dance is a large-scale formation dance, in which the leading roles put horse-shaped props on their bodies to play five renowned generals in ancient times. The whole dance consists of three segments, namely “opening the city gate”, “taking roll”, and “touring the city”. The dance begins with “opening city gate”, which is composed of three segments, namely five-horse dance, stable boy dance, lantern dance. The scene, depicting a peaceful and merry world, is made grand with the showcase of warrior horses, colored flags, lanterns, and umbrellas. Next, the “taking roll” scene comes up, which simulates the procedure of “mobilization”, “drilling”, and “marching out”, and is mainly a sword and flag dance. The gestures and formations borrow from opera performance, and the drum beats, glistening swords and flying flags accent the heroism and spirit of warriors marching to the battlefield. The last piece, “touring the city”, is the climax of the dance, with the moving of five prop gates and the five generals leading the troops going through the gates to indicate a fighting scene. The dancing movements mainly consist of running around the stage like that in an opera, with the accompanying percussion music. The performance usually lasts half an hour to an hour, with a minimum number of 35 people on the troupe, sometimes as many as 50 people. The show is grand and depicts a heroic spirit of warriors defending home country. It bears rather high humanitarian and artistic value.(https://www.daowen.com)

Five-Horse-Touring-City Dance is mostly performed on an open ground of every village and is deeply loved by the locals. Its most practiced place, Dazhou Township, was named “Homeland for Ethnic and Folk Art in Guangdong Province” by provincial Department of Culture in 1997, and“Homeland for Ethnic and Folk Art in China” by the Ministry of Culture in 1998.

Currently, due to changes in social structures, most performers are getting old, and the transmission of the performance is faced with a breakdown. Some performing routines are already lost. The dance faces a hard time restoring its original glory, and urgent excavation, studying, and protection are called for.