A special art——called Ansai Waist Drum Dance（安塞腰鼓ān sāi yāo gǔ ）, is a unique, large-scale folk dance with a history of more than 2,000 years. Like a hurricane sweeping across the yellow earth, the dance displays the unsophisticated and wild character of peasant life on the Loess Plateau(黄土高原huáng tǔ gāo yuán）, revealing its unique artistic charm.
The drum dance is a traditional lunar New Year and Lantern Festival activity in Shaanxi Province. Young people perform the dance throughout their villages while wishing people a happy New Year. Villagers set off firecrackers to welcome the arrival of the dancers and invite them to sample their homemade rice wine.
Origin
This type of folk performance is believed to have originated before the Spring and Autumn Period(770-476) as a religious activity to greet gods and dispel evil（驱邪qū xié）. In the past, Shaanxi villagers used the drum dance to pray for good weather, a successful harvest and a happy life.
Decayed wooden drums covered with boa skins have been unearthed from theYin ruins of Anyang City,Henan Province, suggesting that waist drums appeared more than 3,000 years ago. It is believed that waist drums were originally used in ancient times by Chinese soldiers stationed at the border to sound alarms, train troops or accompany cavalry (matching to the rhythm of horse hooves) as the soldiers advanced.
This theory is evidenced by a concentration of waist drums in frontier fortress regions near theGreat Wall, including martial costumes and other dance elements.
Ways of Performing
The Ansai waist drum dance is an extremely impressive spectacle that consists of vigorous dances and leaps accompanied by frenetic drumming. The dancers wear costumes and headdresses similar to those of ancient Chinese soldiers.
The dance manifests vigorous movements to the accompaniment of rhythmic drumbeats. At the climax of the dance, dancers beat drums while jumping in the air and yelling: “Hai hai.”.
The number of drummers ranges from a few to several thousand. When celebrating festivals or the bumper harvest, performers often stage a large-scale Ansai waist drum dance, which is usually performed by about 60 drummers. In some cases, several teams of drummers perform together in a 500- to 1,000-meter-long procession.
Worldwide Fame
The Ansai waist drum dance has demonstrated its unique charm in Beijing,Hong Kong, Japan and many other places around the world. The drum dance won the top prize at the First Folk Dancing Contest in 1986. And, in recent years, it successively performed in pageants, such as the opening ceremony （开幕式kāi mù shì ）of the 11th Asian Games, the Hong Kong Handover Celebration, etc.
The Ansai waist drum dance is called “The No 1 Drum Dance in the World” for its majestic performance and boundless vigor. In 1996, Ansai County was named “the hometown of the Chinese waist drum”.
It is reported that in recent years many foreigners traveled especially to Ansai to learn the waist drum dance in attempt to discover its hidden secrets. Unfortunately, only a few can master it since many find it difficult to coordinate their arm and leg movements.
