A Cultural Study Of Dance In The Music-Dance At Confucius Memorial Ceremony

The music-dance used in the Memorial Ceremony for Confucius, the famous Chinese ancient Saga, is one of the China "Court Music-Dance" preserved from the old time. It is composed based on the survived dance books of Ming Dynast and Qing Dynast, and presents as a "vivid antique" in annual Confucius Memorial Ceremony in Temple of Confucius located in Qu Fu, Shandong Province. As an important part of the ceremony, with inherently abundant culture implication, the performance of the music-dance has its unique effect on the ritual. This paper intends to uncover the preserved China traditional cultural spirit through analysis of origination, motion's characteristic and functionalities of the music-dance at Confucius Memorial Ceremony.Governors in past dynasties advocated that Confucianism played a very important role in the evolution of Chinese ideology and culture, and the main reasons behind this is the Confucianism's conceptions of humanity, self-command, gain and loss, loyalism were all complied with governors' political requirements and reinforced their regime at that time. The political factor like this indirectly resulted in origination and inheritance of the music-dance at Confucius Memorial Ceremony. Therefore in chapter 1, basing on rise and fall of the Confucianism through the history of ideology, author analyzes the historic background of and reason behind the evolution of music-dance at Confucius Memorial Ceremony from "music of Six Dynasts" to its final form, and the social value of its preservation nowadays as well.In Ming Dynast, with several times of modification, the music-dance at Confucius Memorial Ceremony became more comprehensive and went towards its integrity and maturity. Later in Qing Dynast, it was mostly inherited from Ming Dynast with only some minor changes, so what we can find today is its dance books of Ming Dynast and Qing Dynast. In Chapter 2, basing on these dance books and video material of music-dance at Confucius Memorial Ceremony in Qing's form recorded by group led by Mr. Wu Xiaobang, the forerunner of the new dance art in China, in Qu Fu 1957, the author, with her personal experience in Confucius Memorial Ceremony 2006, analyzes in details the dancer actions, formation transformation, costume and property, psychology of dancer and aesthetics from the view of Confucianism's point reflected in the music-dance at Confucius Memorial Ceremony. The last chapter is about the moralization function of the music-dance at Confucius Memorial Ceremony. Correlative with the contents of previous chapters, this chapter focuses on the effect of moralization function of Confucianism on etiquette, moral and politics besides its primary role as the dance in ceremony, and then digs out the particular realistic functionality of the music-dance at Confucius Memorial Ceremony substantiated through performance of dance.