QIANSHOU KAUYIN

   The Qianshou Kaunyin (Bodhisattva with a 1,000 Hands) Dance is a showy dance in which a bunch of dancers stand behind each other, so only the person in front is visible to the audience. The dancers move their arms and hands so that it looks like the person in the front has a multitude moving of arms. In recent years the dance has been performed publically by 21 hearing-impaired Chinese women who move their hands and arms to the rhythm even though they are unable t hear it.

  One of the most dramatic forms of Chinese dance is the sleeve or ribbon dance in which a dancer uses long silk sleeves to accentuate her hand and arm movements, whirling then around like banners or ribbons and snapping them like whips. The opening scene of the film House of Daggers features Ziyi Zhang repelling an attack of stones and trying to assassinate a leader with a knife hidden in here long sleeves while doing such a dance.

   Extra-long sleeves are associated with Confucian moral conduct, which promoted covering the entire body from sunlight. The sleeves are used as both extension of the hands or are thrown back to reveal sensitive and beautiful hand movements of the dancer. A.C. Scott wrote in the International Encyclopedia of Dance, “The long white silk cuffs, the ‘water sleeves,” are “a functional extension of the ordinary sleeves of an actor’s robe, as much as two feet log, and the sweeping pheasant plumes of six to seven feet, worn in pairs and attached to certain headdresses. These are manipulated while being held between the first and middle fingers of each hand.”