Park dance
The park dance ( Chinese 廣場 (健身) 舞 / 广场 (健身) 舞 , pinyin guǎngchǎng (jiànshēn) wǔ - "space (fitness) dance"; also open-air dance , senior dance , Chinese fitness dance ) has been one in the People's Republic of China since the 1990s -Years popular, mostly in the evening ritualized form of communal exercise. Mostly women, but also middle-aged and older men, meet in public places to dance choreographed to modern and classical songs. A pre-dancer gives the steps. The groups receive sound from CD players or portable music amplifiers that they have brought with them.
The park dance as a mass phenomenon
The dance groups are typically organized privately within the neighborhood. Since around the 2010s, the movement has received increased media attention inside and outside of China. In the course of its popularity increase, the park dance came under criticism, among other things, for occupying other used spaces such as parks or parking lots and causing noise pollution. According to the Chinese media company CCTV , up to 100 million dancers take part every day in the People's Republic. An organized dance group usually meets around 7 p.m. The number of participants can vary greatly from season to season. Participation is usually free of charge (with the exception of cost sharing for the shared musical instrument).
Park dance has become a cultural and economic phenomenon in China. In recent years, numerous various media large and small have organized park dance tournaments as well as television shows. Many companies fund the groups for competitions (such as costume, speakers, headphones, etc.). Many park dance groups are named after their financier.
Origins
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Communal dance is firmly anchored in the millennia-old culture of China. Historical and socio-economic changes also play a role in the modern form of park dance. The cultural revolution is assumed to be the starting point .
Mao Zedong drove the industrialization of China after the end of the civil war in 1949 . A hallmark of the communist-motivated Great Leap Forward was that private activities such as dinner were conducted in public. Foreign influences such as dancing in ballrooms or discos were forbidden during the Cultural Revolution. Another measure of this reform was the sending of intellectuals and academics to rural areas.
They witnessed a folk dance, the yangge, which was practiced mainly in northern China. There were performances at harvest festivals, for example. The Communist Party used the custom henceforth as a propaganda tool to deceive about famines and shortages. Later the Yangge was banned along with many other traditional forms of culture. The modern park dance can be understood as a late consequence of Maoist politics, as Finn Mayer-Kuckuck describes in the Frankfurter Rundschau:
“The dancers belong to the generation of the Cultural Revolution: Those who were born in China in the 1940s and 1950s, as young adults, fell among the fighters and victims of this social experiment in the decade from 1966 onwards. At that time, dictator Mao Zedong incited the youth against their parents and teachers - and had teenagers from the city sent to the country to do hard work. The result was millions of broken biographies. "
Growing up in times of poverty, the generation later experienced the reform and opening-up policy initiated by Deng Xiaoping . Visiting discos and dance halls was again allowed. China developed into an industrial nation and economic power within a few decades. Today's 50 to 70-year-olds are also among the first to be directly affected by the one-child policy introduced in the early 1980s .
Life shifted from the agrarian country to the cities. Broad sections of society benefited from the economic upturn. Since this generation often gave birth to only one child, fewer grandchildren were born accordingly. The grandparents are traditionally heavily involved in the upbringing of their offspring. Compared to before, however, the associated effort is much lower due to demographic change.
“Today, as grandparents, the members of this generation are particularly hungry for life and curious, but also bold: They have seen so many changes in ideology, social rules and way of life that they are reluctant to be told. Sometimes there was total communism , then suddenly a market economy. Back then there was no phone anywhere, today they are on smart phones. China has surprisingly risen from a developing country to a modern world power. "
On this basis, the park dance developed into a mass phenomenon in China, in which it is estimated that up to 100 million people regularly take part.
Conflicts
The positive effects of the park dance cannot be dismissed out of hand: it helps older people keep fit. There is also a social component. Contacts are established and maintained through regular meetings. However, the extent and political framework mean that Park Dance is sometimes faced with considerable criticism.
government
The government has criticized the fact that the dance events are the result of private initiatives and basically see themselves as such. Attempts at control by the Communist Party are in turn rejected by the park dancers themselves. In 2015, the political leadership drafted a twelve-song list of “correct” songs that were advertised on the Internet through instructional videos:
“Troops of 'neighborhood dance teachers' should swarm out and teach choreographies that a commission has developed. The goal is a 'nationally standardized activity' that gives senior citizens 'positive energy', the propaganda media announced. "
This attempt failed. At the same time, the responsible sports authority continues to try to enforce regulatory measures. Indirectly, the influence can be exercised, for example by calling competitions. The various dance groups in a city compete against each other, supported by the media.
Generation conflict
The generation of today's 20 to 40 year olds grew up under the influence of the opening policy. Often brought up as the only child in a family, the middle class is also under great economic pressure to perform. Noise nuisance in the evenings and the occupation of otherwise otherwise used spaces lead to civil society criticism being discharged.
“For many years the image of these 'dancing grandmas', as the common name is, was part of the usual, rather friendly, tolerated folklore of Chinese cities. But that's over now. In Wuhan and Changsha the elderly dancers were pelted with poop bags from higher floors, in Chengdu with water bombs. Residents and passers-by feel annoyed by the noise and the disruption of the flow of traffic. In Beijing, a man fired a rifle in the air and released three large dogs at the women. […] The complaints about unauthorized harassment now range from the 'disruption of family harmony' to the disability of the students in the preparation of their university entrance exams. Experts speak of a growing awareness of the middle class for their rights and their private space. "
The generation of dancers feeds their self-image from the social and political upheavals of the last decades. They themselves mostly come from the middle class, can retire relatively early and are financially supported. There can be no question of a widespread rejection of the park dance on the part of the younger generation. However, points of friction and conflicts of interest can be classified in this way.
World record
In November 2016, the world record was set for most participants in a park dance. 50,085 mostly older women danced parallel to the same music in 14 Chinese cities. The dancers broke a record set a year earlier, in which around 18,000 participated.
New techniques
In order to avoid the conflicts caused by noise, silent park dances were implemented in many dance groups. This is realized by three types of devices: a music player, a signal converter and lots of wireless headphones.
literature
- Finn Mayer-Kuckuck: Resistance against dancing pensioners . Frankfurter Rundschau (September 21, 2015) fr.de
- Mark Siemons: You can't displace a hundred million . Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (August 28, 2014) faz.de
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Dancing with danger. In: english.people.cn. November 13, 2013, accessed July 20, 2017 .
- ↑ a b c Mayer-Kuckuck 2015
- ↑ Siemons 2014
- ^ Tye Donaldson: 50,000 Grannies Set World Record for Square Dancing Across China. November 10, 2017. Retrieved July 28, 2017 .