Written by Laurence Brahm - Published by Hongkong Culture on 03/10/2006

Yang Liping, China’s most accomplished modern dancer and choreographer, is an ethnic Bai minority. When I first met her, she was sitting on the floor of a dance studio in Kunming, back pressed against a mirror, hair braided Tibetan style laced with chunks of turquoise, wearing a red Chinese jacket with the sleeves torn off. Before her, teenagers from different minority villages in Yunnan were rehearsing traditional dances in costumes handed down from their grandparents.

Yang Liping had spent nearly three years traveling to some of Yunnan’s most remote villages searching for traditional songs and dances being performed in their original state. She recruited teenagers to her Kunming studio from these isolated poor villages, recording and preserving their songs and dances representing village life, oral traditions they had been brought up with. Before speaking to me, she motioned to sit down beside her, cross-legged and listened to the children sing, almost as prerequisite before talking.

“They do not have any written language or technique to keep records of their dance and culture,” Yang Liping explained in the middle of their performance. “How your mother teaches you is how you dance or sew. It is entirely an oral tradition. Their music has no fixed foundation. It is not composed but rather its composition is true natural expression. Look at their clothes, hand sewn, with thought. There is no way to write this down and record it, because it had always been part of their natural life.”

“I never went to dance school,” she confided. “But in the school of life I have felt and searched for what life is all about and come to express this. Through this there is meaning. It is not just putting music on and dancing to music. This has no meaning. I am now in the Central Ethnic Dance Troupe, my career is there. But I do not plan to stay on the stage dancing and singing. I sometimes think about my childhood, dancing alongside the river. In the village, dance is more natural. Now we must perform as a matter of work. But my composure is still that of before.” She pointed to the children chanting, enveloped in village tradition. “Once you have left your roots, you have lost it. You will become light without strength, nothing behind to support you. In the end, you will not even be yourself.”

In a way Yang Liping’s efforts are helping to spearhead a subtle yet conscious rejection of crass materialism which has overwhelmed Chinese society in recent years. “What is modern? Tell me,” Yang asked intensely. “It is not just wearing jeans and eating McDonald’s. It is not just using an electronic music synthesizer.” She pointed to the village girls rehearsing in her studio. “You can see their dance is very modern because a modern sense of meaning is implicitly within. Look at the color of their clothing. A French fashion designer can only come this far, but cannot exceed what they have. Yes, just because his design is very modern and fashionable, you cannot dismiss what they have as ethnic and antique. Their intention and ideas are modern. Their music is modern. The problem is can you understand it? This is the kind of spirit we are trying to express by saving these traditions.”

Yang estimates that with new road construction and urbanization of townships, that most of Yunnan’s traditional ethnic culture will be lost within the next five years. “With this kind of future we will lose this natural way of living,” she sighed shaking her head. “Because now many ethnic groups do not sing or dance, having relocated into cement buildings covered with bathroom tiles, calling this modern lifestyle. They have exchanged and lost their traditions for materialistic hopes. In the end they will lose themselves.”

Although frustrated she is also realistic working within her means at grassroots. “So the best we can do is to quickly grab what is left of their traditions and find a way to keep them. Soon the villages will not exist, their people will be gone. They will be the same as ethnic Chinese. Maybe on a stage or in a museum you will be able to see what they were, maybe in the end, we will only be able to save just this little.”

Author’s note: Since meeting Yang Liping, she has choreographed her students into a performance called Impressions of Yunnan which won national awards in Yunnan and has received international recognition, becoming a self-sustaining cultural preservation performance. Yang Liping has become a living legend, a symbol of the rich mosaic of modern China. She has achieved her status by preserving her unique culture for future generations.

Laurence Brahm is a global activist, international mediator, political columnist and author. He is the leading advocate of a fresh development paradigm - The Himalayan Consensus - an innovative approach to development.

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