A Study On The Composition Of The Stage Context Of The Yi People 's Left - Footed Dance

Left-foot dance, called "Gu Zhe" in Yi language, originates from the Mouding country in Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture of Yunnan Province in China. It is an ancient traditional dance of Yi nationality with more than 1000 years history, meanwhile, it is the most popular and influential dance in Yi ethnic group, which honored for "The living fossil of Yi culture". As "The living fossil", left-foot dance has following characteristics:Firstly, it has unique style so that it becomes an indispensable dance in traditional Yi festivals and ceremonies like weddings. Secondly, as an marginal, natural and popular folk culture, it is not only a performance for entertainment, but also a social activity for people. With the development of history and culture, it gradually becomes a stage performance with unique nationality characteristics, and can be spread to broader stages that exhibit the beauty of traditional culture and gesture language of Yi nationality. Thirdly, it has various functions in different circumstances. The influence of ecological environment, religious beliefs and folk life constitutes an integral cultural context of left-foot dance. Based on it, left-foot dance gradually forms its unique art personalities and functions, as well as keeps enriching its stage performance on dance grammar, morphology and semantic system. Fourthly, left-foot dance always keeps its unique and original cultural characteristics.This thesis firstly introduces the background and motivation of the research, which emphases on the research literature of left-foot dance, analyzes the correlation theories of left-foot artists, scholars, performance works, etc., and as well as summarizes the research status of left-foot dance. Chapter one describes the history and culture of Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture, and summarizes the cultural and historical background of development in left-foot dance, and then briefly introduces the other representative folk dances. Chapter two emphasizes the origin, category of dancing and performance styles of left-foot dance, we also clarify the different influences on left-foot dance from geographical environment, folk life and religious belief and then analyze the expression of dancing style. Chapter three describes the performance works of left-foot dance from stage performance perspective, and we focus on the analysis of two performance works of Yi three-person dancing Boy, Four-Stringed, Lantana Camara and Girl’s Blanket, which summarize the transformation of semantic in left-foot dance from the perspectives of creation background, structural analysis, and dancing style. Chapter four summarizes the discussion of folk dance works creation, which focuses on the transformation from folk style to stage performance and from personal entertainment to performance expression, discussing the heritage and development of traditional nationality culture.In summary, according to the analysis on how folk features of left-foot dance affects the stage performance semantic, this thesis mainly illustrates the general and particular phenomenon and problems from the perspectives of historical cultural background, theoretical analysis, language expression feature and stage context in left-foot dance development. It will provide some useful theoretical references for the creative development of folk dance and contribute to the protection, development, and creation of traditional folk dance.