Chinese lion dance has a long history, various diversity and wide geographical distribution. Lion dance is a unique art of the Chinese nation, and its basic characteristics is to mimic a lion walking, running and jumping movements and emotions to express human emotion demeanor. Lion dance moves and lion's head lion body production varies because of different customs throughout the country. Lion dance form, the past has been divided into two Northern Lion Dance and Southern Lion Dance. In fact, there is a special form of lion dance: hand-hold lion dance.
Maqiao Hand-hold Lion Dance(马桥手狮舞) originated from lights and it is one of Shanghai Han folk dance. It is an important part of Shanghai culture. When the local people love lantern carnivals to walk along the streets, and because of the town’s narrow streets, the audience are crowded, people will use bamboo lantern lamp propped lion to facilitate show off and dance, to show joy, so that it become ingenuity of Han folk dance.
As a Han folk art, hand-hold lion dance is the combination of colored-lantern making and acrobatics. They use their hands to go on lion dance which is full of skills and unique features. Maqiao hand-hold lion dance absorbed the techniques of rolling over, stumble and fall of lion dance, play the straightforward bold of lion dances and pay attention to the exquisite and touching style of performance.
With overwhelming hand-hold lion dances, full of self-entertainment, entertainment person with the life breath of festival and peaceful artistic appeal, so it is widely loved by people. In the past century, Maqiao hand-hold lion dance has been one of the major local Han Chinese folk customs of dancing at the age of seasons.
Hand-hold lion dance embodies the local cultural history and customs, in the spread and development, so that people, especially the younger generation predecessors deeply comprehend the wisdom and virtue, consciously to the unique geographical and cultural heritage, resulting in a far-reaching impact on society.
In June 2007, Maqiao hand-hold lion dance was listed as the first batch of intangible cultural heritage of Shanghai. In June 2010, Maqiao hand-hold lion dance has been listed as the third batch of national intangible cultural heritage list public.
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