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The art of Chinese dance traces its origins to even before the appearance of the first written Chinese characters. Ceramic pots have been unearthed in the Sun Chia Chai excavation site in Ta-tung County of the western Chinese province of Chinghai that depicts colorful dancing figures. A study of these archaeological artifacts reveals that people of the Neolithic Yang-shao culture of around the fourth millennium B.C. already had choreographed group dances in which the participants locked arms and stamped their feet while singing to instrumental accompaniment.
Chinese dance was divided into two types, civilian and military, during the Shang and Chou periods of the first millennium B.C. In civilian dance, dancers held feather banners in their hands, symbolizing the distribution of the fruits of the day's hunting or fishing. This gradually developed into the dance used in the emperor's periodic sacrificial rituals held outside the city, and other religious rituals.
In the large group military dance, on the other hand, the dancers carried weapons in their hands, and moved forward and backward in coordinated group motion. This later evolved into the movements used in military exercises. Chinese used choreographic movements of the hands and feet to express their veneration of the spirits of heaven and earth, to act out aspects of their everyday life, and to give expression to shared feelings of joy and delight. Dance was also a performing art that brought pleasure to both the performers and the audience.
After the establishment of the Music Bureau in the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-220 A.D.), an active effort was made to collect folk songs and dances. By the third century A.D., Northern China was subjugated by the Hsiungnu, Sienpi, and Western Chiang peoples. In this way, folk dance forms of the various peoples of Central Asia were introduced into China, and merged with the original dances of the Han people. This pattern continued well into the T'ang Dynasty (618-907 A.D.). Due to the more stable political situation during the T'ang Dynasty, dance in China entered into a period of unprecedented brilliance. The T'ang Dynasty imperial court founded the pear Garden Academy, the Imperial Academy, and the T'ai-ch'ang Temple, gathering the top dancing talent of the country to perform the magnificent, stately and incomparably lavish "Ten Movement Music" dance. This dance incorporated elements from dance forms of the peoples of China, Korea, Sinkiang, India, Persia, and Central Asia into one colossal dance. It featured intricate body movement techniques, and made full use of colorful, gala stage costumes and props to set off the refined dance movements. Poetry, songs, a dramatic plot, and background music were incorporated to create a comprehensive multimedia production rich in content and fanfare. This was a predecessor of modern Chinese opera.
Each minority people or aboriginal group of China has its own folk dance forms. The Miao (also known as Hmong) people of southwestern China, for example, developed a lively form of antiphonal singing and competitive dance; the aborigines of Taiwan, influenced by their island life and environment, created hand-holding line dances as part of a harvest ritual. Folk dances directly reflect the lifestyles and customs of a people, and in addition to their artistic value as dances; they are a precious part of China's cultural heritage.