Week 3
This is a traditional dragon dance from the 2013 Chinese New Year celebration in Hong Kong, China.
The piece is performed by Kwok's Team.
The peace features dancers, as well as mostly percussion sounds (some wind and string as well).
Dance and musical structure go hand in hand. In the Chinese dragon and lion dances, the music is focused on percussion. The different rhythms are assigned to different movements, and tell the performers what they will be doing next in the dance. In a way, the music tells a story of how the dragon should move and change throughout the performance. In this example, although the music is not performed live, the team changes movements when the rhythms change in the music. The dancers also rely on the sounds to stay together for a flawless performance. This music is designed to accompany a dance, and the two go hand in hand.
Eleanor,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing this video! I agree with your assessment that musical structure and dance are closely related; this seems to be true across many cultures. I'm not familiar with this tradition, so I'd be curious to know more about the context of this particular dance in terms of the significance of the dragon, and if/how the music and movement is meant to embody or portray certain qualities. I did some quick research and found that 2012 was the Year of the Dragon. Do you happen to know if this dance is used every year, or if the dances used in celebration of the New Year change depending on the Chinese zodiac?