Opera & Performing Arts

Built on song, speech, movement and combat, it fuses literature, music, dance and visual art into a total stage art.

Three hundred years ago the Anhui troupes came to Beijing and gave birth to Peking opera; three hundred years ago Tang Xianzu's Peony Pavilion was sung in the watery Kunqu style. China's three hundred and more opera forms pack song, dance, martial arts and poetry onto a single stage.

Embracing Peking opera, Kunqu, Yue opera, Yu opera and many regional forms; stylized performance, painted faces and water sleeves are its signature language, carrying Chinese feeling and ethical narrative.

Silhouettes of leather figures behind lamplight — stories told through shadows, an ancient art of light.

UNESCO intangible heritage: drama through light and shadow, an old union of theater and design.

Unaccompanied, multi-part chorus — natural harmony from the woods of Dong villages.

UNESCO intangible heritage: polyphonic singing without instruments, harmony from the mountains.

Song, dance and music as one — a musical epic of the Western Regions a thousand years in the making.

UNESCO intangible heritage: a grand integrated art of song, dance and instrumental music handed down in the Western Regions.

Born of the entertainments of the common people: a traditional performing art built on bodily skill, balance, strength and ingenuity.

A thousand years of daring feats joined to Eastern aesthetics — spectacle and folk depth in China’s oldest stage art.