 |
---- GUOXIE DANCE
Guoxie (meaning "village" in Tibetan) is a group dance
popular in rural areas of Tibet. The participants dance hand
in hand and sing in rotation. The dance is often seen in villages, on open squares and threshing grounds. At festivals
people dance and sing from sunset to sunrise. They mark the
rhythm by stamping their feet.
Guoxie is performed to a 2/4 beat with the stress on the
first beat. The steps are steady and vigorous, characterized
by a marked tempo and a strong sense of people's labour and
life. The underlying characteristic of the dance is the expression of collective enthusiasm and joy. This dance is found
everywhere in Tibet, but the most renowned version is found
in the Shannan area. The form is largely as follows:
At festivals men and women stand hand in hand in two
lines around a big vat of highland-barley wine placed on open
ground. The two groups first sing and walk from left to right
in a circle. When they finish singing, the xieben, or organizer
of the dance, leads in shouting, "Xiu, xiu, xiu, xiu," and starts
the dance with rhythmic steps. This rhythmic shouting is
called xiege in Tibetan, or "beginning of the song," which is
followed closely by quick-tempo singing and dancing. The
two lines of men and women compete in their dancing. After
repeated dancing the xieben leads in shouting, "Xiu, xiu, xiu,
xiu," or sings alone while the others dance to his tempo. This
part of the dance is called xiexiu, or finale.
Xiege thus is both the beginning of the song and the initial
dance steps to shouts of "Xiu, xiu, xiu, xiu," or "Ci, ci, ci, ci."
The dancers' shouts are very similar to "One, two, three-- everybody dance!" As many people participate in Guoxie and
it usually does not have any instrumental accompaniment, it
is hard to attain uniform dance movements. Xiege is designed
to arouse people's enthusiasm and get them moving together.
Xiexiu, the finale, is usually the climax of the dance. Xiege
sparks the participants' enthusiasm in their concluding climatic
dance steps. A solo popular in the Shannan area goes, "Ah,
jia, hei! Nowhere else on earth can match our beautiful
homeland. No house is as comfortable as my house. No
other young people are as happy as we are, and no other people are as lucky as we are." The people dance during the solo,
then shout in chorus, "Xiu, xiu, xiu, xiu," to conclude the
dance.
|
