“Rainbow Skirt and Feathered Dress Dance”

The “Rainbow Skirt and Feathered Dress Dance,” also known as the “Rainbow Skirt and Feathered Dress Melody,” is a renowned court music and dance composition from the Tang Dynasty. It was composed by Emperor Xuanzong of Tang and primarily performed during sacrifices to Laozi at the Taiqing Palace. The “Rainbow Skirt and Feathered Dress Dance” represents the pinnacle of Tang Dynasty music and dance, acclaimed as a brilliant gem in the history of music and dance. The creation of the dance has multiple narratives. One suggests that Emperor Xuanzong was inspired after witnessing Daughter Mountain from the Sanxiang Post. Another, based on “Tang Huiyao,” records that in the thirteenth year of the Tianbao era, Emperor Xuanzong revised the “Brahman Melody” introduced from the Western Regions using the Taichang engraved stone method. A compromise theory posits that the initial part of the dance (scattered prelude) was composed after Emperor Xuanzong saw Daughter Mountain, while the latter part (song and break) incorporated the musical tones of the “Brahman Melody” offered by Yang Jing, the military governor of Hexi. After the An Lushan Rebellion, the “Rainbow Skirt and Feathered Dress Dance” was lost, but during the Southern Song Dynasty, Jiang Kui discovered eighteen sections of the Shang mode Rainbow Skirt Melody, which were preserved in his “Baishi Hermit’s Songs.”