Summit Township Yi Torch Festival Sword Dance Studies

The sword dance is a traditional ritual folk dance in celebrating the Torch Festival of Yi people. There are now three villages retaining the sword dance, namely Dahuaqing village, Xiaohuaqing village, and Cangdi village. The Torch Festival in the area is celebrated from June24to June27, and lasts for four days. The ritual process contains a series of folk activities, such as worshiping ancestors, playing torches, sweeping exorcism, and sending torches. The sword dance runs through the ritual process of the Torch Festival. People play Suona horns, bugles and drums for accompany during the sword dance. The theme is to fight against enemies over territory, which reproduces the war of ancient Yi tribes and reflects the history of combat, migration, and development of Yi people. The sword dance is a folk dance with ritual meaning, reveals local ethnic spirits of worshiping fire and ancestors and their idea of ghost. It expresses cohesion of ethnic consciousness, maintaining social operation, and reflecting aesthetic standards. In2009, the Sword Dance of Gaofeng\was named on the intangible heritage protection list by Yunnan Provincial Government. With rich traditional culture of Yi Gaofeng was titled "the hometown of Chinese folk culture and art" by the Department of Culture of Chinese government in2008. In this paper, I will study the sword dance from three aspects. Firstly, diachronic study of history, forms and development of the sword dance in different historical periods based on materials and field interviews. I will analysis the structure of the sword dance from "the cultural layer of the time "to explore the natural ecological environment, social and historical background of the sword dance, and ethnic groups interaction of the national psychology. secondly, synchronic study through different fields study of the sword dance which compromise a culture circle to show the variation and geographical differences of the sword dance. I will analysis the ritual structure from space culture layer of the sword dance It includes the physical structure and the spiritual structure. The physical structure contains visible ceremony materials with dynamic nature of symbols, such as instruments used Priest, gods, players’masks, sword, dance. The spiritual structure refers to invisible spirituality,for instance Yi religion, national identity, aesthetic standards. From above physical materials, we can learn about intangible ideology such as religious ideas, values valued by Yi people, and their concept of life and death. The sword dance is the core of the Torch Festival ritual celebrations and it presents cultural diversity. The dynamic sword dance constitutes costume, diet, and folk beliefs of Yi people. This paper will put "cultural circle" theory into practice to disorganize the sword dance, particularly the individual folk project of the sword dance into local cultural space to have a holistic analysis of the sword dance and its development-related issue.