Lahua
By admin on 2015-01-07

Lahua 拉花, one of the yang'ge dance categories, is a popular folk art in Jingxing County, Shijjiazhuang City in northern China's Hebei Province. The Lahua dance accompanies the local people from birth to death.

During the Spring Festival celebrations, young men and women express their feelings of joy by singing and dancing at thetemplefair to ward off evil spirits.

There are many stories about the origin of the Lahua performance, of which one widespread story is "La Huang (fleeing the famine)," the other is a love story featuring a girl named La Hua.

The Lahua performance is famous for its uniqueness. Its unique dancing style is greatly admired by the locals, featuring both hard and soft dance steps and actions. Its unique actions of turning the shoulder and the hip are not easy to learn.

Though having changed in form with the passing of time, the Lahua performance remains the same in terms of its dance movements, which resemble a person climbing a mountain with burdens on his or her back; and the role of the clown has also been kept. Another unique aspect of the folk art of the Lahua performance lies in its accompaniment, as most of the musical instruments are those used in temples.

Nowadays the Lahua ballad focuses more on love than on fleeing famine and war, while the Lahua dance of today, rather than expressing the sadness and heaviness involved in fleeing famine and war, has become a good way to express the affection between men and women. In their leisure time, the men will gather together and sing the traditional Lahua tunes which express passionate affection.

There are two kinds of Lahua performance: Stilt Lahua and Ground Lahua. The former is performed on stilts, and the latter is staged on the ground, which is more widespread as it doesn't require the high level of acrobatic skill as the Stilt Lahua.

Story of La Huang
The first story of the Lahua performance is about "La Huang (fleeing the famine)". In ancient times, Jingxing was the fifth of the eight fortresses along Taihang Mountain, and because of the large mountainous area, natural disasters happened almost every year. Even worse were the frequent wars. Jingxing people spent over half of their time fleeing on the road or in the forest. However, they had to find a way to feed themselves. It was in such circumstances that the Lahua performance came into being. On their strenuous flight, Jingxing people walked and swayed their bodies, living by begging. That explains why the dancing steps of the Lahua performance resemble climbing a mountain.

Traditionally, six people performed the Lahua dance: two elderly people, a husband and wife, and two children, vividly representing the scene of a family fleeing a calamity. This explains why all the Lahua performances take on a sad and heavy tone. In fact, the special dance movements of Lahua performance, such as turning the shoulder and hip, were not intentionally created, but rather a reflection of long travel over land and water.

Love Story of Lahua
Apart from fleeing famine and war, the most common theme of the Lahua performance is love. Legend has it that a clever and deft girl named La Hua from the Stone Village fell in love with a lad of the same village. However, the Mountain King living in the mountain nearby took a fancy to La Hua and forced her to be his wife. In order to help La Hua, the villagers worked out a dance. Pretending to celebrate the Mountain King's marriage, they killed him and rescued the girl. The dance has since been passed down with the name "Lahua."