“Dance of Bull Fighting Against Tiger” is a of folk dance popular in Ongnigod Banner of Chi Feng City in Inner Mongolia. It is performed by four people, among whom two act as a bull (one as bull's head, the other as the bull's tail), one acts as a tiger and the last one acts as a woodcutter. The performance includes four stages: first, the bull, the tiger and the woodcutter come onto stage together to form a triangle; second, the bull fights against the tiger; third, the bull and the tiger lie down to have a rest; fourth, the bull fights against the tiger fiercely and then the quick-witted woodcutter fights against the tiger by trickery and beats it to death. The dance has been spread for nearly a hundred years. According to a legend, in the ancient times there lived a red-haired tiger near Ulaanban Village and it often came to the village to cause disturbance. So this place was once called “Ulaan Bar” which means “red tiger” in Mongolian. The people who suffered a lot from the tiger decided to collaborate to fight the tiger and finally succeeded in beating it to death. Afterwards, the villagers invented a dance imitating a bull's fight against a tiger to celebrate the victory. Later, with the arrival of many new migrants, new movements have been added to the dance, such as “somersaulting”, which give highlight to the bull-fighter's distinguished moral qualities: brave, quick-witted and strong-minded. |