Bringing Dongba Dance Notation and Dongba Dance to the World: A Documentary Record of Rescuing and Filming Dongba Dance Notation and Dance
This article documents the making of "Dongba Notation and Dance," a documentary completed in 1996 to rescue and preserve the pictographic dance notation and ritual dances of the Naxi people's Dongba culture. It credits the film's team—producers, scholars, dance consultants including Guo Huiliang and Liu Jinwu, and writer Ge Agan—and highlights years of collaborative preparation involving officials in Lijiang, Yunnan dance experts, Naxi scholars, and elderly Dongba priests. The piece traces the historical struggle to preserve this ancient, "living fossil" pictographic notation, noting earlier efforts by Zhang Cencen using Labanotation, and the pivotal 1980s validation by renowned dance scholar Dai Ailian, who authenticated the Dongba "bamo" texts as genuine dance notation. It also recounts Ge Agan's landmark 1988 presentation at an international dance notation conference in Nanjing, which first brought Dongba dance notation to global academic attention.
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