Shandong Liaocheng "Canal Yangko Dance" Art Feature Research

"Canal yangko" is the representative form of folk art in Liaocheng area. It is acomprehensive performing arts including "umbrella dance","sing a song","number plate","fire shooting star", et.al.."Canal yangko" has a history of more than three hundred years.It is presented in the folk year celebration activities with its unique dance form, organizingmode and performance mixing with the local folk customs. Since "Canal yangko" wassinged and performed with local language, it has a strong local characteristic. However,with the development of economy and society, less local people were willing to join in thisarts performance."Canal yangko",the valuable folk cultural heritage, is now at risk ofbeing lost forever. The effective neatening and mining must be taken to rescue this typicaland representative folk dance.On the basis of predecessors’ research, this paper did a detailed neatening and miningwork on "Canal yangko" through solid fieldwork, historical data collection from localcultural departments combing with the history, geography and ecology. Through the visitof living heir, the remaining dance moves, music tracks, lyrics were sort out and the way ofsinging was also recorded, videoed and composed. At the same time, the transmissionspectrum of "canal yangko" was neatened in detail. There are two major "canal yangko"branches in Liaocheng area which are Hou Shi yangko and lee yangko respectively. Eachone has five generations. In addition, the living conditions of the "yangge" canal, artisticcharacteristics and existing value, mining and protection on the analysis and study of thecultural ecology, art character and cultural value are discussed in this paper. It is mainlyfocusing on the artistic features of the "canal yangko" as well as the inheritance andprotection. The study accumulated experience of folk art mining, inheritance andprotection and provided realistic significance to other folk art in Liao Cheng area.