After dinner we went to see a dance performance called Dynamic Yunnan that is all composed of dances and songs of the various ethnic minorities in the Yunnan province. Apparently there are around forty of them in the province and Yunnan is known for that. By ethnic minorities, I gathered that they also meant indigenous minorities because a lot of the performances we saw were “tribal” in a sense. They tended to be big group numbers with many different kinds of drums and very colorful body paint or costumes. In general I found the production to be of extremely high quality with fantastic set and costume design. The dancers were all exquisite as well. Most people rave over the Peacock Dance at the end of the show where one very tall and very thin female performer basically moves her arms and hands and even every joint of her fingers in such a way as to mimic the head of a peacock. It’s really quite amazing how she can move her arms and hands so fluidly. There is a part where she moves her whole body that way too and she looks like she had no bones somehow. Pretty amazing. The first part of the peacock dance is done with just her as a silhouette in front of the moon but the second part is her and a whole corps of dancers moving identically, all wearing these beautiful white peacock gowns that eventually glow in fluorescent colors when they turn a black light on. I loved that effect.
Nevertheless, I think my favorite was probably the Tiger Drummer where one sole drummer performs for about 7-8 minutes and the beat goes from slow and somber to very quick and intense but the whole time he is incorporating his body into the drumming in this almost organic way. He was really impressive. All of the other dances were also really good though and there were people of all ages onstage, even a couple of 6 year-olds, which was very cute. It was definitely a very unique experience.