Origin of Four-Tile Dance

 

Four-Tile Dance was originated in Song Dynasty and has a history for nearly one thousand years. In ancient sacrificial ceremony, people played Four Tiles Dance to pray for god’s blessing. In the ceremony, one important part was to drive pests and honor the enemy of pest-frog. That’s the history of Four Tiles Dance.


Mr. Chen Rong is telling us the origin of dance.

Group dance

 

Four-Tile Dance is performed by a group of dance in each Spring Festival. On each dancer’s face, a frog is painted. Their tools are camel bone-made tiles. The basic actions are the simulation of frog’s jumping, swimming and crying. At the same time, the tiles are beaten to sound like frog’s crying. It seems that many frogs are jumping in the farmland.


 

Cultural value

 

Four-Tile Dance is part of folk culture in Huangjiazhai Town, Datong County of Qinghai Province. Its value mainly reflects in two aspects.
The first is long history. It is the living fossil of traditional folk culture. Secondly, the sense of Four-Tile Dance is people’s gratitude to the god, which is inductive to the construction of our harmonious society.