On The Artistic Values Of Couple Show

Shanxi, regarded as the cradle of Chinese opera arts, has a long history of opera performances and ranks the top concerning the opera types. According to the survey in 1980, there are about fifty-two types of opera in Shanxi, accounting for one sixth of the opera types all over China. With their own specialities, they can compete with each other and develop themselves in full swing. "Couple show" is standing out among them."Couple show", as a local small opera type, originates from Hequ of Shanxi province and is widespread in Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Shaanxi, the northern part of Hebei. It can also be called couple class. Couple show gets the name from the singing forms of a clown and a female lead. During the development, couple show in different places gradually form different artistic styles. Couple show is divided into two subcategories, eastern and westem, by Huhehaote of Inner Mongolia. With the history of over a hundred years, it is deeply rooted in the yellow earth along the Yellow River and handed down by those generations living on this land. Some history records show that couple show goes through six stages: "Da zuoqiang", "Da wanyi", "Feng jiaoxue ", "Da ruanbao", "amateur troupe", "professional troupe". It has accumulated rich essentiality of life and is full of unique artistic fascination during the development. It is brief and various in performing pattern; folk, unique and comic in content; and live and humorous in language. This dissertation is the research specialized in the artistic values of the couple show. As the local folk arts, couple show is extremely popular on the yellow earth full of channels and ditches, along the winding Yellow river and in the expansive grassland and desert. It had the glorious achievement, But in recent years due to historical and practical various reasons, lack of audience and the market where small drama into a survival plight, Theater economic situation constraints, aging talents fault, performance skills drain. Some endangered opera drama, information scattered people, the absence of funding where there is lost artistic heritage danger. However, its audience and market is decreasing in recent years due to the historical and the actual reasons. There are many problems such as deviation from the society, obsolete performance, a lack of fresh appearances, loss of younger audience, and the outdated stage decoration. On the contrary, the similar folk art, a song-and-dance duet (popular in the Northeast) is flourishing and gradually gains acceptance nationwide. It is attributed to various reasons. Regional economy, pronunciation, artistic innovation, performing forms, effects of superstars and the media etc are reasons to be reckoned with. Is there no artistic enchantment with couple show? The answer is negative. Couple show, as the treasure of Chinese traditional culture, contains rich culture and reflects thoughts and ideas, ethic and morality and values accumulated during the hundreds of years in particular ways, thus being the cultural legacy which cannot be reproduced.Adopting various research methods, such as analyzing and comparing, this dissertation intend to analyze the issue of the current decreasing of the audience and the market, to keep pace with times on the basis of retaining the original situation of local arts and furthermore to find out the solutions from two aspects, protection of the existing resources of couple show and innovation and development of it. The author attempt to conduct an objective, comprehensive and systematic research and offer many practical solutions to develop the opera type so that this folk art can be descended to the next generations.