One person plays the role of Ma Lang, four people play the role of fierce horse, and the other three people are accompanied by cymbals, gongs and drums with the intense beat of the dance. This is the unique "hippocampus dance" of the Yi people in Guizhou.

In fact, hippocampus dance has a history of 2000 years in Yi people. As an intangible cultural heritage in southwest Guizhou, Haima Dance is said to have been created by Meng Huo, the king of Nanman at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, and now it is spread in Gegong and Sanbanqiao Meizijing, Digua Town, Pu 'an County. At the 9th National Minority Traditional Sports Meeting, Hippocampus Dance was listed as a performance item.

Unique dance in the depths of the mountains

The dull and heavy tapping of the leather drum sounded.

Ma Lang took off on one foot, and four "fierce horses" began to dance with Ma Lang's movements. Ringing bells, ringing in the heavy drums. The seahorse dance begins.

Ma Lang jumped down, and the "fierce horse" immediately followed, with his head facing the sky and his eyes full of screams. At the same time, keep changing the jumping pace of one foot and follow Ma Lang closely.

The cymbals and gongs sounded, and the dull and slow drums gradually accelerated. The crowd began to boil. Someone shouted: "The climax is coming!"

The words sound just fell and Ma Lang began to jump rapidly, and there was a powerful roar from the depths of his throat. The "fierce horse" behind him seems to have lost his temper. When the actor jumped off his feet very quickly, dozens of bronze bells on the prop horse's head sounded at the same time, and the drums were almost drowned out by it.

Suddenly, Ma Lang jumped up and led the "fierce horse" to run wildly on the field. The rhythm of drums, gongs and cymbals accelerated rapidly, and sweat dripped down the actor's dark skin, raising dust behind him.

Then, the drums gradually slowed down, Ma Lang slowly stopped, and the "fierce horse" surrounded it, stood still and bowed.

Here, there are only a few villages in the country where the Yi people's seahorse dance is still circulating.

In the deep mountain of Maolin, we drove L3 Lotus Car and walked on the winding mountain road for three hours before we saw Ge Gong, a small mountain village of Yi people.

Because it is a new car, I am worried about its chassis. Fortunately, the competition is fierce. According to the relevant personnel of Guihang Youth Lotus Automobile Co., Ltd., as a family car, the most noteworthy thing about Lotus L3 is its chassis. The "X-TEC" chassis system, which originated from British Lotus, adopts multi-link rear suspension structure, which makes its chassis structure particularly advanced in compact family cars. What is even more rare is that both the front and rear suspensions are equipped with stabilizer bars, which are rare in family cars. This undoubtedly plays an important role in improving the body rigidity and driving stability, and is known as the best chassis model with a class of 6,543,800 yuan. In the actual control, we did feel this. It was noon when we arrived in Gegong. Xing Wu, the "horse head" in the village, and his teammates performed the unique hippocampus dance of the Yi people.

The whole hippocampus dance performance lasted for 5 minutes. Just like the drums from the distant flood, the powerful roar of throwing the ground, the accompaniment with strong rhythm and the shouting of the audience, the primitive and quaint atmosphere spread in the mountains.

"Carnival" with the participation of the whole people

In Gegong, when it comes to "jumping on the seahorse", the villagers all show a trace of unspeakable pride: "I have won many awards, and now there are not many places except us."

Today, Wu Xingjin, who has been doing horsehead dance outside the village Ximulou for more than 30 years, is 68 years old, but there is no obvious aging in his seemingly black and thin body. Wu Shuo, but no one who dances the hippocampus is physically exhausted, because the hippocampus dance has a strong rhythm and a lot of exercise.

At first, the performance of hippocampus dance was divided into three groups. One of them plays Ma Lang, and the other two play Meng Ma. Ma Lang holds a bamboo pole with a red and white flower at each end, while Meng Ma ties the dancer's waist with the horse's head and buttocks, and the props are woven into a skeleton with bamboo strips and pasted with white cotton paper. During the performance, the dancers hold the horse neck, and the dance steps include jumping with both feet, stepping, changing feet, running freely and so on. Hua Gun in Ma Lang's hand is used to guide the fierce horse to make various dance steps.

Although "jumping on the hippocampus" is a great sport, it is a sport that all men, women and children in Gegong Village are talking about and participating in.

Many times, the village jumps on the hippocampus, and "amateurs" like villager Xie Long will participate. At that time, people with or without dance props mostly sang and danced with "professionals" like Wu Xingjin under the influence of gods and cymbals, gongs and drums.

Funeral custom originated from Yi people.

Hippocampus dance is said to have been circulating in Yi settlements for nearly 2000 years.

According to legend, its founder is Meng Huo, a Yi leader who experienced seven escapes and seven verticals in Zhu Gekongming in The Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

According to Yi people's legend, emperors before the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty had the habit of being alive, but Meng Huo was regarded as a hero by Yi people because he cared about the people and was resourceful. Hippocampus dance is a set of dances he created before his death. It was originally called horse dance. However, due to the strong worship of water in nature, the Yi people changed the "horse dance" to "hippocampus dance" and danced it every year on June 24 of the lunar calendar to commemorate their heroes.

During the Kangxi period of Qing Dynasty, Yi people Xie, Liu, Che and Mao moved from Yunnan to Pu 'an, Guizhou, and hippocampus dance was introduced.

In the funeral custom of Yi people, a group of people dressed as Malang and fierce horses perform around the coffin.

On the first lap, the caravan trudged, which means telling relatives and neighbors that the caravan is coming and asking the dead to return to the coffin. On the second lap of the performance, after the cavalry was deployed, Ma Lang took the fierce horse and bowed to the mourning hall from time to time, indicating that he bowed to the dead. On the third lap, there was a fierce horse fight, and the scene was warm, which indicated that the lively scene of the early marriage of the undead was back. Please comfort the dead, don't be sad, and go happily. On the fourth lap, the performance surrendered to the fierce horse. Ma Lang hit the horse with a musical instrument, indicating that the deceased had gone to the west, and lost the musical instrument, indicating that he would feed the horse and continue his journey after a rest.

Later, with the government's attention to national and folk culture, hippocampus dance gradually went to the fields and was used in weddings, funerals, farming, celebrations, festivals and other occasions. In 1980s, Haima Dance began to take to the stage and participated in various cultural performances organized by provinces, prefectures and counties for many times.

1982, with the improvement of him and his teammates, the number of people performing fierce horses increased to four. 1 person was equipped with cymbals, gongs and drums, and the dance steps and rhythm were more intense, which improved the stage effect of hippocampus dance.

Wu Xingjin believes that it is the greatest achievement in his life to bring hippocampus dance into folk cultural life.

Ancient dance steps "jumping red" small village economy

About 3 kilometers away from Ligegong Village, there is a very wide venue called Wachangping, which was specially built by the local government for the performance and rehearsal of Yi seahorse dance.

On festivals such as June 24th of the lunar calendar, Wu Xingjin and others will jump seahorses in this area. In this way, it gradually attracted foreign tourists or vendors passing by here to watch.

In Wu's memory, every time they danced at that time, the audience applauded and shouted "Bravo". "People like to watch us jump on the hippocampus, which is our greatest motivation." Jin and team member Mao Dalong said.

As time goes by, more and more people come to the depths of the mountains from all corners of the country to watch the hippocampus dance.

Later, someone found a business opportunity. After that, whenever the seahorse dance team in Gegong Village came here to perform or rehearse, there would always be people carrying big bags of groceries to sell here. Over time, it has developed into a small market.

Every Tuesday, the hippocampus dance team in Gegong Village will come here to perform for free, and the mountains will become lively. This excitement not only attracted business opportunities, but also attracted the attention of relevant departments.

The local government spent 0.2 million/200 thousand to build a venue where Wu Xingjin and others danced. On the one hand, it is more convenient for them to rehearse and perform, on the other hand, they also want to take this opportunity to form a small market and promote local economic development.

Now, every Tuesday, people from all towns will go to Washiping for market.

For the people in Gegong Village, this is a rare source of income besides planting crops. Xie Long, a villager, said with a smile while recalling: "I never thought that the seahorse dance thousands of years ago can now bring economic benefits to the whole village and surrounding villages."