Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T07:26:05.093Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Death of Tiaoxi (the ‘Leaping Play’): Ritual Theatre in the Northwest of China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 October 2003

David Holm
David Holm
Affiliation:
The University of Melbourne
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article is about one of the most depressing fieldwork situations I have ever encountered in China. Tiaoxi, basically, is dead. Some of the old artists are still alive, but the plays themselves were performed for the last time in 1987. There is video footage, taken by a professional team from the Ministry of Culture in Beijing, but the quality can only be described as execrable. There are abundant surviving libretti in manuscript, collected by field workers during the 1950s and again during the surveys of the 1980s, but they are almost all held in the Provincial Arts Research Institute in Xi'an, and no one is allowed to see them, not even the ‘old artists’ who donated them in the first place; not even photocopies are held by the county Cultural Bureau or by the artists themselves.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 37 , Issue 4 , October 2003 , pp. 863 - 884
Copyright
© 2003 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)