Dunhuang wupu 敦煌舞譜

The dance scores from Dunhuang (Dunhuang wupu 敦煌舞譜) are fragmentary manuscripts of Chinese dance notation from the Tang and Five Dynasties periods, preserved in Cave 17, the "Library Cave", of the Mogao Grottoes 莫高窟 in Dunhuang 敦煌, Gansu. The term Dunhuang wupu is the modern name for this collection. The manuscripts were illicitly removed from China in 1907-1908 by the British explorer Aurel Stein (1862-1943) and the French explorer Paul Pelliot (1878-1945). The original documents are now held by the British Museum in London (catalogue no. S.5643) and the National Library of France (catalogue no. P.3501).

Beginning in 1919, Chinese scholars repeatedly travelled to London and Paris to examine and transcribe the Dunhuang documents that had been taken abroad. In 1925, Liu Fu 劉復 published the manuscript he identified as P.3501 in the book Dunhuang duosuo 敦煌掇瑣, giving it the title "Dance Notations" (Wupu 舞譜), through which the Dunhuang dance scores became known. In 1960, Rao Zongyi 饒宗頤 (1917-2018) published the manuscript he identified as S.5643 in Dunhuang pipa pu duji 敦煌琵琶譜讀記, and research on the Dunhuang dance scores thereby developed into a specialised field of study.

Thereafter, additional dance notation manuscripts were identified: in 1984, Chai Jianhong 柴劍虹 discovered manuscript S.785. In 1986, Li Zhengyu 李正宇 (b. 1936) discovered manuscript S.5613; and in 1993, Fang Guangchang 方廣錩 (b. 1948) discovered manuscript Bei-can 820. The corpus of Dunhuang dance scores thus comprised five manuscripts. With the continued deepening of research, it remains entirely possible that further Dunhuang dance scores will be discovered in the future.

The Dunhuang dance scores consist primarily of three parts: the title of the piece (qu ming 曲名), a preface (xuci 序詞), and groups of characters that indicate dance movements, rhythm, and the relationship between dance and singing. The titles found in the dance notations include typical airs (cipai 詞牌) such as Nanxiangzi 南鄉子, Fengguiyun 鳳歸雲, Xiafangyuan 遐方遠, Shuangyanzi 雙燕子, Huanxisha 浣溪沙 or Moshanxi 驀山溪. Most of these are names of song lyrics and tunes popular at the time.

The prefatory texts mainly explain the meter, rhythm, sectional divisions, and the starting points, endings, and transitions of the dance. The character groups, serving as a kind of "score", include characters such as ling 令, song 送, wu 舞, ju 據, qi 奇, ruo 挼 (or rou 揉), yao 搖, tou 頭, yue 約, zhuai 拽, qing 請, ken 掯, and yu 與. These signs indicate specific movements, rhythmic cues, and coordination within the performance. These elements are combined to form complete dances, each consisting of several sections. Four-section structures are the most common. Each section may contain twelve, fourteen, sixteen, or twenty-two characters, and the meters they represent also differ.

The dance rules apply variations on verse sequences according to the drinking-game (jiuling 酒令) style of the Tang period. From this system, three levels of lingge 令格 or template rules can be summarised, namely the segmental templates (paidian lingge 拍段令格): the basic template requirement established by the melody and rhythm of the piece; rhythmic variation templates (dasong lingge 打送令格): variation of the template requirement by performing the same melody using multiple (usually three) rhythmic patterns; and character-beat templates (zipai lingge 字拍令格): finer template rules achieved by increasing or decreasing the number of beats for each dance posture according to set rules. These three types of rules correspond precisely to rhetorical template in the song lyrics (called zhuoci ling 著辭令 by Tang writers), namely: melodic templates (qudiao lingge 曲調令格), rhyme-coordination templates (xieyun lingge 協韻令格), and repetition of characters and phrases (diezi dieju 疊字疊句).

Score to the air Huanxisha 浣溪沙. P3501. From International Duhuang Programme.

The five extant Dunhuang dance score manuscripts contain a total of twenty-eight dance examples. They include melodies (qudiao 曲調), notation characters (puzi 譜字), structures with cue words (shici 示詞) and notation characters, and modes of performing ling dances (xingling fangshi 行令方式).

Because scholars in China and abroad have not yet reached a consensus on the meanings of these specific characters or symbols, nor on how the meter should be calculated, research into the Dunhuang dance scores remains at a preliminary and exploratory stage.

The fragmentary Dunhuang dance scores are highly valuable historical documents. From the perspective of art semiotics, they emerged during a period of rapid development in China's system of artistic symbols, such as musical notation. As the earliest surviving dance notations, they mark a new stage in the theoretical and artistic vocabulary of Chinese dance.

From a musicological perspective, they are the earliest Chinese documents that contain both musical and dance information. They provide detailed records of the rhythms, sectional divisions, formal structures, and methods of accompaniment for fourteen melodies, offering a valuable resource for the study of historical music notation.

From a dance studies perspective, they reflect the existence of the jiuling game dances as a form of folk dance. These dances originated in the drinking customs of northern and north-western peoples and incorporated elements from folk entertainments such as bo-xi 博戲 and playful mocking games. They thus became a form of dance with rich artistic means. As a result, the Dunhuang dance scores challenge the traditional view that Chinese ancient dance can be understood only from the perspective of court dances or teaching-house (jiaofang 教坊) dances.

Complete collated and annotated editions of these dance notations are now available, most notably in Wang Kunwu's 王昆吾 Han-Tang yinyue wenhua lunji: Dunhuang wupu jiaoshi 漢唐音樂文化論集·敦煌舞譜校釋 (Taipei: Xueyi Publishing House 學藝出版社, 1991) and Tangdai jiuling yishu: Guanyu Dunhuang wupu, zaoqi wenren ci ji qi wenhua beijing de yanjiu 唐代酒令藝術：關於敦煌舞譜、早期文人詞及其文化背景的研究 (Taipei: Wenjin Publishing House 文津出版社, 1993; Shanghai: Shanghai Knowledge Press 上海知識出版社, 1994).