Cultural History Of The Ancient Silk Road Music And Dance

Not only is the Silk Road the road of culture and transportation betmeen Asia and Europe, bullalso it is the central road of spreading the culture of the world. The oldest civilized conntries illthe world had had some connections with this road. The Silk Road can be divided into two parts: land route and sea route. The former is refered to theroad for communication between China and central Asia, west Asia, Greece, Rome. The latter is the one amorg east Asia, east and Sonth Asia and Arab. From the view of history, land and sea route had experienced different hey times. Two Han Dynasty is the prosperons time of land route and during the later per od of Tang Dynasty, sea route had filled in for land route. The content of these two Silk Road related to is ery broad. Looking back to the history. We can find that there were many exehangeroent instances of dance and music among different nation alities, and many religions dances and musics had been communicated onllthis road, which were controlled by the nationalities. Although superficially there are distinct character istics of dance and music between east and west, inllfaet they had close connections. During the early period of Qing, China had exchanged dances and musics with the west indirectly. Not until the second centnry BC did Emperor Wu of Han Dynasty send Zhang qian to the west, exchang ement of music and dance became more and more frequant, Which impulsed the development of dance and music of Han Dynasty. Dnring the period of Wei, Jin, Sonth and Worth Dynasty, a turbulent period in history, the culture of different nationalities came together. With the development of Buddhism, the dance and music of Buddhism became more popular in China. Zn Suioand Tang Dynasty, which is the most active times of exchanging dance and music in history. They can receive all the cultures from the ontside, bring the sorted out arts to east Asia, east sonth Asia, and aecerlerate the formation and , edvelopment of national dance and music in undeveloped countries. After the foundation of North Song Dynasty, the sea route of Silk Road became prosperous. After Tang and Song Dynasty, the exchanging activities between China and Korea, Arab, Zndia became more frequnent, especially dance and mu s ci. The exchecngement of dance and music on the Silk Road is the light point among different exchangements of civilization. My dissertation wants to explore the exchangement of Chinese and foreign arts in history as well as the formation, development and exchangement of dance and music arts of civilized old conntries along the Silk Road, which helps me to learn thorongly about the dance and music arts of many different Cultures and the exehangement between them.