The Variation And Inheritance Of The Song-and-dance Duet During The Transitional Period In China

This dissertation is characterized by practical relevance. The transitional period in China,which includes the seventeen years after the founding of new China in1949, the time whenthe cultural revolution was over, especially the1990s when “planned economy" wastransformed into "market economy", has witnessed the great changes in the song-and-danceduet due to the changes in economy, leading to a confusion in people’s understanding of it. Itis found in this paper that problems in the song-and-dance duet are discovered, analyzed andinterpreted in terms of reality. Mr. Fei Xiaotong used to claim “positioning theories down tothe earth”, which is also the striving direction of this dissertation.Originated in the local villages and towns of Chinese agricultural society in the Kangxiperiod of Qing Dynasty, song-and-dance duet is one of the systems of the traditional Chinesedrama, whose form and style fall into “the esthetics in the field” proposed by Wang Ken, anexpert in the song-and-dance duet. The song-and-dance duet was classified into two typesafter the foundation of the new country: one is the folk duet performed by the nonstate-owned artists, and the other one the state-operated duet performed by the artists of newChina. The folk duet was called “gun tu bao zi” in the planned economy. Its artists went fromtown to town and sought different opportunities to perform in order to make a living,adopting master-apprentice teaching style to maintain the tradition passed down from QingDynsty. However, the folk duet was often under the supervision by the governmentdepartment of market supervision thanks to its “dirty talk”. With the transformation from“planned economy” to “market economy” since the1990s, the folk duet has been introducedinto urban theaters, and the song-and-dance duet has undergone tremendous changes duringthis “urbanization”. These changes were reflected from the fact that the function of theperformance was switched from educating to clowning, the content from primarily singing toamusingly talking, the acting style from the performance of the duet only to a variety ofperformances, and acting places from adaptable simple sites to luxury theaters. Thisdissertation endeavors to analyze objectively and comprehensively the variation in thesong-and-dance duet characterized by the self-destruction of tradition during the socialtransformation in China.The evolution of the song-and-dance duet has aroused hot debates among differentpeople, which was caused by a lack real understanding of the duet. To this end, thisdissertation, after reorganization and summarization, proposes the dominant and latenttradition in the song-and-dance duet for the first time, which has an academic significance in theory construction and a practical significance in clarifying the confusion about the duet.There is a paradox in the song-and-dance duet in the cultural context nowadays:destroying the tradition and sticking to the tradition. The former is the variation of the duet,while the latter is the inheritance of it. As a pacesetter of the state-operated duet, JilinProvincial Fork Art Troupe has been displaying the fantasy of the duet to farmers byorganizing traveling groups of performers to villages on wagons in the early1980s. This issignificant in the thirty years of the reform and opening-up, and the very expression of theinheritance in the duet. Generally speaking, the inheritance of the song-and-dance duet ispresented in the following aspects: first, the inheritance of the state-operated duet representedby Jilin Provincial Folk Art Troupe. Then, as the intangible cultural heritage, thesong-and-dance duet has undertaken the mission of carrying on the tradition of the duet since2006. After that, the prosperity of the funny duet on the market activates the industry of theduet. The song-and-dance duet training schools, with impressive potential of employment,reserve huge strength for the duet. Finally, the spontaneous folk duet is also a continuation ofthe tradition. In addition, the critical role played by the TV column "The can not be ignored,either.Adopting an approach of“field investigation”, this dissertation studies the variation andinheritance of the song-and-dance duet during the transitional period in China. Puttingforward “going to field”, Mr. Fei Xiaotong insists on “knowledge from practice” inhumanistic research, which means obtaining humanistic knowledge from field workconstantly and comprehensively. In order to acquire the real evolution and inheritance of thesong-and-dance duet, the writer employs field investigation as well to gain the “knowledgefrom practice” on the research topic through the changes of the duet from the long-terminteraction with the performers, the managers and the senior audience.