Sunday, December 12, 2004
I Love Traditional Dance
Dancing is an activity or exercise that relaxes our body. We learn the dance steps and forms especially for performance on stage. Today, many Chinese elderly men and women take up dancing class to fill up their leisure time. When I was a Chinese schoolteacher, I had to teach a few dances to the students for performance on certain festive nights every year. I find that it is interesting to learn and teach the dance.
There are two types of dances, the traditional and modern dance. Personally, I enjoy the traditional dance. The traditional dance needs the dancers to dress up their colourful traditional costumes and carry some hand props like fans, umbrellas, handkerchiefs and others. We explore Chinese culture and heritage through traditional dance. The Chinese traditional dances are Lion Dance, Dragon Dance, Feather Fan Dance, Traditional Chinese Ribbon Dance, Ribbon Dance, Silk Fan Dance, Sword Dance and so on.
Most people use sound to communicate in their everyday life, but a dancer on stage uses his limbs and body to do the same thing. Just like the Chinese language, Chinese dance has its own unique vocabulary, semantics, and syntactic structure that enable a dancer on stage to fully express his thoughts and feelings with ease and grace.
Chinese used choreographic movements of the hands and feet to express their veneration of the spirits of heaven and earth, to act out aspects of their everyday life, and to give expression to shared feelings of joy and delight. Dance was also a performing art that brought pleasure to both the performers and the audience.
Nowadays, we seldom see people performing traditional Chines dance. It can be found only in festive seasons like the Chinese New Year and Mooncake Festival. The young people today prefer modern dance like cha-cha, street dance and so on.
When reading the play “In The Name of Love” by Ramli Ibrahim, we can see that a traditional Malay dance, makyung, is losing its popularity and fame. As the protagonist, Mak Su in her monologue reveals, “The old makyung is not what the makyung is now. In the old days, it was alive. Segar. Now, you yourself can see what it has become – not dead or alive!” I totally agree with her views on traditional dance. Nowadays, many people prefer modern dance, traditional dance has received few attention from the public. So who is going to learn and inherit the skills of traditional dance from the older generations? If we don’t inculcate the love for traditional dance among the young ones, I am sure one day the traditional dance will face the same fate like makyung. If not, it will become not dead or alive!
In another play, “Dance lIke A Man” by Mahesh Dattani, the conversation between Amritlal and Jairaj has shown too the decrease of the traditional Indian dance has caused the professional female dancers who work in the temple turn to be immoral prostitutes. What a pity the society has forced these professions into such degrading and obscene conduct!
Dance, whether social, theatrical, or ritually based, is a form of cultural expression. Dances can teach us practical knowledge about a culture, such as its agricultural traditions or the historical migrations of the people. With every dance that dies, another source of data about the nature of human communities dies with it.
Therefore, regardless of our races, whether we are Chinese, Malays or Indians, we want to preserve our cultural and traditional dance. We want to promote awareness of cultural identities among our younger generation. It is time for all of us to cultivate our interests in the traditional dance and pass it on to our next generations. A dance dies along with its last practitioner. Yes, why not we start to learn our traditional dance today?
There are two types of dances, the traditional and modern dance. Personally, I enjoy the traditional dance. The traditional dance needs the dancers to dress up their colourful traditional costumes and carry some hand props like fans, umbrellas, handkerchiefs and others. We explore Chinese culture and heritage through traditional dance. The Chinese traditional dances are Lion Dance, Dragon Dance, Feather Fan Dance, Traditional Chinese Ribbon Dance, Ribbon Dance, Silk Fan Dance, Sword Dance and so on.
Most people use sound to communicate in their everyday life, but a dancer on stage uses his limbs and body to do the same thing. Just like the Chinese language, Chinese dance has its own unique vocabulary, semantics, and syntactic structure that enable a dancer on stage to fully express his thoughts and feelings with ease and grace.
Chinese used choreographic movements of the hands and feet to express their veneration of the spirits of heaven and earth, to act out aspects of their everyday life, and to give expression to shared feelings of joy and delight. Dance was also a performing art that brought pleasure to both the performers and the audience.
Nowadays, we seldom see people performing traditional Chines dance. It can be found only in festive seasons like the Chinese New Year and Mooncake Festival. The young people today prefer modern dance like cha-cha, street dance and so on.
When reading the play “In The Name of Love” by Ramli Ibrahim, we can see that a traditional Malay dance, makyung, is losing its popularity and fame. As the protagonist, Mak Su in her monologue reveals, “The old makyung is not what the makyung is now. In the old days, it was alive. Segar. Now, you yourself can see what it has become – not dead or alive!” I totally agree with her views on traditional dance. Nowadays, many people prefer modern dance, traditional dance has received few attention from the public. So who is going to learn and inherit the skills of traditional dance from the older generations? If we don’t inculcate the love for traditional dance among the young ones, I am sure one day the traditional dance will face the same fate like makyung. If not, it will become not dead or alive!
In another play, “Dance lIke A Man” by Mahesh Dattani, the conversation between Amritlal and Jairaj has shown too the decrease of the traditional Indian dance has caused the professional female dancers who work in the temple turn to be immoral prostitutes. What a pity the society has forced these professions into such degrading and obscene conduct!
Dance, whether social, theatrical, or ritually based, is a form of cultural expression. Dances can teach us practical knowledge about a culture, such as its agricultural traditions or the historical migrations of the people. With every dance that dies, another source of data about the nature of human communities dies with it.
Therefore, regardless of our races, whether we are Chinese, Malays or Indians, we want to preserve our cultural and traditional dance. We want to promote awareness of cultural identities among our younger generation. It is time for all of us to cultivate our interests in the traditional dance and pass it on to our next generations. A dance dies along with its last practitioner. Yes, why not we start to learn our traditional dance today?
# posted by Dr. Yee Bee Choo @ 10:30 AM 
