Tea picking and butterfly dance
Tea-picking and butterfly-catching dance, formerly known as butterfly-catching lantern, is a folk dance popular in Penglong Village, Xixiang, Qimen. The dance music shows a group of tea-picking girls who are attracted by the colorful butterflies around them while picking tea, so they drop their tea baskets and go to catch colorful butterflies. It was originally performed during the Lantern Festival. Four girls hold butterflies in one hand and round paper fans in the other hand, and sing and dance to catch butterflies. The lyrics are the names of flowers and farm work in the ten months of the year, which is intended to celebrate the Spring Festival while arranging farm work for the year, with a strong rural flavor. It shows the joy of people's love for life and labor. After being sorted and arranged by the county cultural department, it participated in the Anhui Provincial Workers and Peasants Youth Amateur Art Festival in May 1955 and won the program award and performance award. In January 1956, it was introduced and recommended in the 5th issue of the provincial "Festival Newsletter". In December of the same year, Anhui Provincial People's Publishing House published the single volume of "Butterfly Catching Dance". The melody of "Butterfly Dance" is beautiful, smooth, cheerful and natural. It has been used by many music creators and is called "Southern Anhui Melody". In recent years, the amateur troupe of Zhukou Village has performed this dance many times and it has been sung continuously.