Martial Dance: Stage Wushu as a Performing Art

The current Chinese martial arts have at least three major values or functions – combat, health, and art. However, the combative value has been weakened while its healthy and aesthetic values have been strengthened in mass culture. With the development of digital technology, the media for disseminating visual cultural products have been broadened to film and television, advertising, performing arts, photography, video games, and so on. The inherent aesthetic quality of Chinese martial arts has been fully explored, reshaping the performativity of stage wushu in kung fu dance drama and wushu performance troupe with Shaolin Kung Fu as its core. This paper investigates the historical origin, present representation, and cultural connotation of stage wushu in accordance with performance theories and media culture theories and concludes that stage wushu is a type of hyper-real martial arts.