It is a custom in Dai areas to use folk songs to find people. Young men and women sing answers when testing each other and listening to love, which leads to "less duets".
At this time, the actors just sit on the stage, express the dramatic characters and reveal the plot in the form of rap, supplemented by simple gestures and facial expressions. Later, artists changed their tones and added movements, which developed into a kind of "Butenla" to express characters. "Butengla" has been talking and singing, singing and dancing, and there are props cows that people jump on paper, showing grandpa and grandson plowing the fields, grandma delivering meals, and three people singing in pairs.
Later, artists created an art program that combined poetry with singing and dancing. Such as tooth saint west, Cohen, etc. People call it "Twelve Horses". Although "Twelve Horses" are still very naive and rough, they have already taken shape in traditional Chinese opera.
It is characterized by strong singing and dancing, or emphasizing singing skills. For example, in the performance of Twelve Horses, six men and six women each held lanterns and fans, rode bamboo horses, tied paper horses and wore flowers, which showed the seasonal changes and production and labor situation of 12 months in the form of songs and dances.
This is quite similar to the folk lantern dance in the early Han nationality. Later, the "Twelve Horses" gradually increased the storyline of characters, but the storyline was not closely related to the dance movements of Dai opera, and actors often used three-step dance movements according to the rhythm of gongs and drums.
At that time, Dai actors had a low level of education and couldn't remember the lyrics. The master was behind the desk, prompting word by word. Actors on the stage often sing without dancing, dance without singing, and talk very little because they listen to words. This simple way of performance has made all the Dai people who can sing and dance on the stage and have been addicted to drama. The masses are actors and the actors are the masses.
By about 1880, Ying Ting, the chieftain of Yingjiang, translated the scripts of Peking Opera, Sichuan Opera and Yunnan Opera of Han nationality into Dai language, and put Twelve Horses on the stage, forming a new kind of drama, namely Dai Opera. Singing is also based on the "traditional opera tune" evolved from Dai folk songs. Yingting also wrote the Dai drama Mu Ying Zheng Nan.
An Ren, the chieftain of Ganya, also organized the compilation of Dai dramas such as Lang Huatie, Long Baogong and Lang Gaohan. They have made beneficial contributions to the development of Dai opera.
In order to introduce the advantages of Yunnan opera and promote the development of Dai opera, one of the representative works of Dai opera is Zhuangzi's Trying to Wife. For the story about Zhuangzi's wife's trial, see Wonders of Ancient and Modern, which is the sequel to Zhuangzi's The World of Red Dust. Together, these two dramas constitute a Taiwanese drama "Zhuangzi". Zhuangzi tried his wife, which was more popular with the audience.
Zhuangzi fell from the sky and fell in love with his beautiful wife. In order to turn over to heaven, Guanyin Bodhisattva incarnated as a newly widowed widow, and came to Xin Lei's husband's grave to fan the wind, so as to dry the grave soil and remarry as soon as possible. Zhuangzi saw it and decided to go home to test his wife's loyalty.
After returning home, he pretended to be cheerful, sang folk songs and fanned the wind. When his wife asked about it, Zhuangzi described what he had just seen. His wife said that she was by no means the heartless woman.
After a period of time, Zhuangzi suddenly died of "disease" and used a literary broom to conjure up his own "student" and "extremely" to mourn for him. Seeing that the students were young and beautiful, his wife provoked them with words. The students pushed the boat with the tide and readily agreed. Just as his wife was happy, the student suddenly became critically ill. The wife asked extremely, and replied, "Xianggong often suffers from this disease, and he needs to take a human brain to recover."
After a moment's meditation, the wife pried open Zhuangzi's coffin with an axe in her hand, trying to cure the medical students with Zhuangzi's brain. Unexpectedly, the coffin was pried open and Zhuangzi came back to life. Asked why, his wife hanged herself in shame. From then on, Zhuangzi broke the dust and went to heaven with Guanyin Bodhisattva.
According to the introduction of the old artists of Dai opera, the performance at that time was wonderful, and the language was both colloquial and vivid. Although the drama is a Han theme, it has always been dominated by the Dai people, and the plot has produced a * * * sound in the Dai audience, so it is very popular.
Dai drama is greatly influenced by Han drama, which has greatly changed and improved in content and form. For example, "West Yunnan" and "Fafen" are impromptu performances after Dai opera absorbed the performance mode of Yunnan opera.
The focus of drama is "formal dress", that is, the costume master tells the actors the plot of the drama and assigns roles, and the actors improvise dialogues according to the development of the plot of the drama.
Distribution means "rubbing" everyone's role on paper and distributing it to everyone. Actors are divided into male and female roles, born, brave, clean and ugly. Dressed in Han costumes, they stepped on the gongs and drums of the "Knocking Hall" and performed the action of "three steps and three steps back".
At this time, the Dai opera has already had the gongs, drums, cymbals and other musical instruments of the Han opera. Most of the actors wear Han costumes, while the actresses keep Dai women's costumes, and they still keep the characteristics of Dai music when singing. Dai drama music is an important part of Dai drama, full of feminine beauty, elegant beauty and human beauty, and almost completely unaffected by other drama music.
Dai people believe in Buddhism, and when monks recite scriptures for believers, they recite poems in the form of recitation. This form of chanting by monks is widely welcomed by Christians because of its beautiful poetry, rhyme and melodious singing. At first, the music of Dai drama was characterized by only one tune from beginning to end, with percussion between tunes, and a small number of folk songs or "Twelve Horses" tunes were added to individual plays.
Later, the tunes were relatively stable, and some common tunes appeared, such as Calling Fire, Calling Several Tails and Waiting for Dara. The combination of these tunes and Zhina folk songs gradually formed the characteristics of the basic tunes of Dai opera.
Around 19 10, Dao Anren, the son of Dao Yingting, returned from studying in Japan and established the first professional Dai drama troupe in Yingjiang. On the one hand, he sent people to Tengchong and Kunming to study Yunnan opera, on the other hand, he invited Yunnan opera artists to teach opera in Yingjiang. The performance of Dai opera has also moved from fields and squares to the stage.
Dai drama art has been greatly developed and spread in Yingjiang area. In Yingjiang, the birthplace of Dai drama, there are two earliest operas: "Chengzi Opera" and "Bazi Opera". With the spread of Dai drama, it is gradually integrated into Dai folk songs in different regions and styles, enriching the tunes of Dai drama. For example, after Yingjiang opera tune spread like mangshi, it absorbed "semi-light shouting", that is, it followed the drum tune and formed "mangshi opera tune".
By about 1950, the singing of Dai opera gradually developed into two basic tones, male and female, which ran through the whole drama, with percussion music in the middle and a few folk songs in the middle. A new stage of interlude arrangement.
1960, Yingjiang County and luxi county successively established county-level Dai Opera professional troupes. After the establishment of luxi county Dai Opera Troupe, the singing of Dai Opera further absorbed Dai folk tunes, such as mangshi Chengzi Mountain Song, mangshi Bazi Mountain Song, Ruili Mountain Song, Peacock Song, Recitation Tune and so on, which enriched the singing.
Traditional Dai drama is only accompanied by percussion, which is mostly composed of drums, gongs, cymbals, bowls and gongs, as well as percussion mixed with elephant foot drums, gongs and other Dai folk instruments in Yunnan opera. Luxi county Dai Troupe began to try out the music of silk and bamboo, with Banhu as the leading factor and Dai musical instruments such as Huluqin.
1962, Dehong Dai Opera Troupe was established. Since then, Dai drama has made many achievements in artistic innovation and improvement, such as adding overtures and endings. In vocal music design, according to the different changes of characters and plots, several Dai folk songs were interpreted.
Percussion music is still dominated by Yunnan opera, and Dai folk percussion music is mixed with it. In the band system, Han folk musical instruments are mainly used and mixed with Dai folk musical instruments. Dai costumes were worn in the performance, and the gait of Dai folk dance was incorporated into the performance. Musical instruments such as cucurbit silk, erhu and elephant foot drum are added to the accompaniment, which makes the national style more rich.
After a long period of development, Dai drama has been fully developed in singing, doing, reading and dancing. On the basis of studying and applying the "four skills and five methods" of Han drama, Dai dance and martial arts movements have been widely absorbed, and the unique performance skills of Dai drama such as "worshipping Buddha" and "pictographic posture" have been formed.
Peacock is a symbol of auspiciousness, happiness, beauty and kindness in Dai people's minds, so every festival, Dai people get together to watch peacock dance performed by folk artists according to folk stories, myths and legends, and Buddhist stories and dance that shows peacock habits. There are many peacock images in Dai drama, such as "peacock eyes and hands" and "peacock posture".