In their colorless, short-sleeve shirts, they dance in bare feet. Men, with red ribbons on their heads, wear wide pants; women, with white ribbons on their heads, wear bracelets and skirts and long hair. The dance is grand: At dusk, the long-haired female protagonist stands on the wooden drum, raising her hands to the sky; two men stand respectively at the ends of the drum with drum sticks and bamboo in hand, other performers are around the drum, dancing slowly to the singer's voice, the drum and the cymbals. It's a mixture of slow and fast beats, anger and sadness, anxiety and happiness. As the song climaxes, the dance steps become orderly and powerful, straightforward and uninhibited, grand and magnificent, shaking the sky and land, vibrating the heart, which describes fully human being's vigorous vitality and their spirit of fighting against nature.
The Wooden Drum Dance faithfully reproduces the solemn scenes of the ancient Wa people's struggle with nature. It expresses the ethnic spirit of unceasing strife and united struggle and reflects the Wa's yearning for a happy life.
The respect and praise for women expressed in the wooden drum dance faithfully reproduces the historical background of the formation of the wooden drum and the Wooden Drum Dance. The Dance is a corroboration of traditional cultures and a testament to ancient Wa history.
Wa is one of the ethnic groups in China that has the longest primitive societal history. The history of the Wa's wooden drum culture is as long as that of the Wa society. A series of wooden drum activities narrate the development of Wa society. Wooden drum sacrificial activities are all-embracing, relating to all aspects of Wa society, from the heavens to the earth and from the ancient to today. The study of wooden drum culture obviously has high academic value in various aspects, such as ethnology, religion and art history.
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