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Pure Land Jewels: Religious and Grotto Dances

The soccer dance had a long history and profound influence. It had once reached a very high level. The Annals of jin recorded that in the Jin period, someone chanced upon the ritual of two witches (named Zhang Dan and Chen Zhu). The two were not only beautiful and well dressed their gait was also adroit and nimble. They were imitating the look and actions of some spirits with floating long sleeves with superb skills. The last emperor of Chen in the Southern Dynasties had a favorite royal concubine named Zhang Lihua, who knew much about sorcery, and often gathered many witches in the palace to beat drums while singing and dancing. Although they did this with the excuse of paying tribute to gods, they were actually entertaining the emperor.

A great number of Wu dances are passed down today, and many of them can be traced to the traditional dances of various ethnic groups. The Shaman dance of the northern ethnic groups, the Bon religious dance of Tibetans, the Nuo dance and Tiaoshen dance of the Han people, and the Shigong dance of the Zhuang ethnic minority, etc., all develop from sorcery dances. The Dongba dance of the Naxi people is very ancient and requires high skill. What's more interesting is that the Dongba scriptures have preserved dance steps with the ancient hieroglyph Dongba characters. As the quality of these characters is close to photographs, the dancing characters are vivid as a direct painting of every dance. There are many categories in the Dongba dance. The "God Dance" describes the gods' adventures to establish their Sublime position; the "Instrument Dance" manifests the power of ritual instruments and weapons; the "Animal lmitation Dance" portrays various birds and animals; and the "Battle Dance" defeats demons to protect the religious power, etc. These are representative of the most common types of Wu dances. These dances still exist today, with old Dongba people still performing according to the ancient dance steps. The Dongba dance step is really a precious heritage in the history of the Chinese dance Culture.

The religion of sorcery declined with the appearance of Taoism and the introduction of Buddhism. But after Taoism and Buddhism thrived, they also assimilated many local ancient dances into their religious activities. The newly-appeared Buddhist and Taoist dances also became important types of Chinese religious dance. Especially the Buddhist dances added greatly to the development of Chinese dance art. For instance, the temple fairs still popular today include activities like the Incense Fair, Travelling Fair and Flower Fair All these originated from the Buddhist ritual of "Xingxiang" (showing the Buddha). "Xingxiang" first appeared in India in the form of a mass activity to celebrate the birthday of Sakyamuni (the eighth day of the fourth lunar month). It was introduced to China with Buddhism.

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