The Living Fossil Opera

This essay takes the body movements of Chinese traditional opera as the research object. It mainly focuses on Peking Opera, supplemented by Kun Opera.

Because of the popularity of Peking Opera, the viewpoints of Peking Opera body movements adopted in the research are easier to understand.

Kun Opera is the living fossil of Chinese opera. It absorbs the traditions of singing and dancing from Yuan opera since Han and Tang, as well as the local operas of the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, thus becoming the category of performing arts with the highest artistic achievement and the most complete artistic structure in the history of Chinese culture.

Therefore, the object of this study, in addition to Peking Opera, also includes Kun Opera. From it, the primitive style and in-depth observation of the body movements of the Kum Opera are drawn.

In the process of learning between the two types of opera, I found that there are similarities in the use of physical methods between the two.

However, in terms of performance, Peking Opera is more emoted, while Kun Opera is more implicit. Besides, Peking Opera is more improvised, while Kun Opera is more coded.

But in terms of the degree of coordination with other performance elements, Kun Opera’s body movements, facial expressions, dialogue, and singing are closely integrated, and one word is matched with one action, the performance is complicated and delicate.

As a cultural anthropologist, Mary Douglas said in “Natural Symbolism” (p.7.pp. 65–81) that the expression of the body is related to the experience of social groups (or it can be said that social groups have restricted the of the body).

From personal observation, I also feel that the collective experience will shape a shared behavior pattern. Although local operas have different dialects due to geographical factors, their physical manifestations have similarities. Besides, Peking Opera has also absorbed a lot of essence from Kun Opera. So there are similarities between the two.

Originally published at http://poeticmindfulness.wordpress.com on September 19, 2020.