When “Bear Shivering Hair” enters the lives of young people

Recently, “Bear Shivering Hair” and “Dodge Step” have suddenly become popular. Some people tremble in the office, some tremble in the dormitory, and some put the movements into various scenes such as catching the subway, meeting the leader, writing a paper, attending a party, etc. The original dance teaching video was intercepted, added with new music and text, and was forwarded and imitated one after another.

In fact, these two actions are not new. “The bear’s trembling hair” comes from Shandong Guzi Yangko, and “the flashing step” comes from Anhui flower drum lanterns. They are both training contents in the teaching of Chinese ethnic folk dances. The former looks like “shaking”, but it actually relies on the waist and abdomen to drive the force through the body; the latter looks like “driving”, which involves a rapid shift of the center of gravity.

When this set of teaching materials was recorded, the author was also one of the demonstrators. Although I am not the two teachers who are now popular in the video, I still feel friendly and a little surprised when I see these scenes. At that time, everyone recorded it over and over again in order to explain the movements clearly and accurately for students to learn. Who would have thought that after so many years, they would be rediscovered by young people and become popular in this way.

Why these two actions? The name is fun, and the actions are also fun, which is probably the most direct reason. The words “a bear trembling with hair” sound like a picture, but the teacher demonstrated it very seriously in the video. The contrast itself is interesting. “Stepping out of the way” is more intuitive. The person is still here, but in a flash he has reached the other side. Both movements are short and have distinctive features. You can roughly follow them after reading them once. More importantly, what is popular this time is an action of a few seconds. It does not require a stage or complete music. It can be taken out at any time and put into one’s own life.

So, if you don’t want to work overtime, dodge; if you encounter embarrassment, dodge; if you don’t want to answer, dodge. An action that was originally a training center of gravity shift gradually took on the meaning of “I’ll withdraw first.” The same goes for “shivering fur”: shake it when you are tired from work, shake it when you can’t write the paper, and shake it after a busy day. Some people are joking, some are laughing at themselves, and some people just think it’s fun to move like this a few times. In the past, we often used a buzzword or an emoticon to express our feelings online, but now our bodies have also joined in.

I don’t want to explain this too heavily. Young people may not want to express any complex social psychology, but often they just find it fun. However, when people actually follow the video, it is different from sitting and watching videos. The body of Guzi Yangko needs to be stable, heavy, stretched, and tough; the body of Huagu Deng needs to be tight, accumulated, sudden, and constantly changing the center of gravity. Even if you only imitate it for a few seconds, your body will have changed into a different state. This may be why they feel so pleasurable.

However, for those who study dance, there is still a lot in “flash” and “shake”. How to perform an action depends on where the center of gravity is, where the energy comes from, how the waist and hips cooperate, and how the breathing and rhythm are carried out. Many ethnic and folk dances are like this. It seems like a very simple movement, but only when you really learn it do you realize that there are many subtle things in it.

Thinking about it this way, there is an interesting back-and-forth to what happened today. Folk dance originally came from life. How people in a place work, how they celebrate festivals, how they entertain, and how they interact with each other gradually form different physical patterns over time. Later, these actions and experiences scattered in life were sorted out and refined, and entered into professional classrooms and teaching materials. Now, some of the actions in the textbooks have returned to ordinary people’s lives through the Internet. However, the scene has changed: in the past it may have been the countryside, festivals and fairs, but now it is offices, dormitories and subways; life in the past grew out of dance, and today’s young people use these dance movements to express their lives.

Of course, you don’t necessarily need to understand the entire history of Anhui flower drum lanterns to learn the “dodge step” once; you don’t need to immediately understand Shandong drum yangko by following the video of “Bear Shivering Hair” once. First you find it fun and are willing to move. This is the natural beginning of getting to know a dance. Some people stop here, and some people will look more at it: Why does the drum and Yangko dance “shake” so much? Why does the flower drum light “flash” like this? Why doesn’t it look difficult, but when done by professional dancers, it has a different taste? Going a little further, you might be able to see the focus, rhythm, and breath behind an action, and see the place and life it comes from. Many things about folk dance cannot be understood through explanation. Sometimes, if you start moving, your body will tell you something.

When talking about the spread of traditional culture these years, we often think about how to make traditions more acceptable to young people. “The bear’s trembling hair” and “the ducking step” provide very natural examples. No one redesigned them to look younger, and the video was recorded many years ago, but young people found them themselves and added their own explanations.

As a participant in the recording of the teaching materials that year, I found this scene more interesting. At that time, these movements were recorded in the hope that students could learn them; many years later, they “walked out” of professional classrooms and were seen by more people who had never studied dance. Some people laughed, some danced a few times, and some people went to see the complete flower drum lanterns and drum yangko. Popularity on the Internet always comes in waves, and this craze will slowly fade away. However, some movements that were left in the textbooks have returned to the bodies of ordinary people due to this accidental popularity. Young people have added today’s meaning to them, and their original taste is still there, waiting to be slowly discovered by those who are willing to look more.

This is the interesting part of folk dance.

(The author is a teacher at Capital Normal University)