Fengyang drum dance gets new lease on life

Changes

In recent centuries, the Fengyang flower-drum dance has changed significantly.

"One of the biggest changes is the art is no longer a trick of beggars and has been played mostly on happy occasions," said Shi, the youth league chief.

As a native girl from Fengyang, Li Man has more knowledge about the art form than the other members of the art troupe.

"I often see middle-aged women performing it, like a kind of square dance, which is very popular in China nowadays," said Li. She added that she had barely any memory of young people performing the art form until 2015.

As the country's only undergraduate college to be based in a county instead of a city, ASTU founded a student flower-dance performance team in 2000. It focuses exclusively on performing the Fengyang flower-drum dance. The team created many new programs for the purpose in the following years.

The dance is a very important part of Fengyang's culture, so the government often calls on people to perform it, according to Shi.

"But the county has always lacked professional players, so our students are often invited to perform", said Shi.

"Chinese performances are sometimes very boring. They sing some individual songs and dance some individual dances, and at the end sing a chorus to finish the performance," said Shi, who had been thinking about how to improve on this.