A Study On Artistic Characteristics Of Dingxiang Stilts Yangko

Stilts, also called "walking sticks", is performed by performers who stand on the wood stilts. Because of the performers’height, audience have to raise their heads or stand in high places to see. So someone may call it "look up opera". This kind of activity is quite popular in Shanxi province and it is a folk cultural activity which people are delighted to see.Dingxiang Stilts Yangko is a kind of Yangko which pays attention to not only the twisting and singing, but performance skills. It is a square performance combining walking, twisting, dancing and singing together by many people’s cooperation. Due to the accompanying of eight categories of musical instruments, it seems much more pleasurable and grander. The most distinctive characteristic lies in its blowing and twisting. Performers relax their waists and hips, dancing beautifully and charming. Stilts is one of the traditional and cultural arts. Under the crash of economical life, stilts artists are fewer and fewer. In recent thirty years, the economy of Dingxiang grows rapidly. For the sake of making more money, people who once anticipated in this performance in slack seasons go out for work or work in the enterprises. Thus the cities expand and the population grows. The urban people and teenager contact with more new and fashionable arts and lose interest in traditional arts. And this makes stilts, one of the traditional arts become extinct.Based on the related knowledge of dancing morphology, aesthetics, sociology and elements extraction, the thesis studies the origin, development, current situation, artistic characteristics, aesthetic values, inheritance and protection of Dingxiang Stilts Yangko by ways of visiting in person, reading, collecting large amount of material and data contrast. Through the communication with the local masters, extracting the elements in movements, and choreographing, the thesis would contribute to transform the Stilts Yangko which appears in Shehuo Festival and square performance into purely dancing and theatrical Yangko dance.