Tang Dynasty, 618-907 AD. A pair of terracotta entertainers consisting of: a drummer (?) wearing long yellow robes belted at the waist and with a floral pattern running vertically to the neck, hands held up at chest height; a black 'Phrygian' style cap, painted details to the face; a dancing female wearing a knee length yellow tunic, belted at the waist and with red collar, long sleeves over the hands with red cuffs' white trousers and black shoes; hair pulled into pigtails at the sides of the head tied at the top with a red band; painted details to the face. 1.5 kg total, 23-25cm (9 - 9 3/4"). From a German private collection, Cologne. There is a long recorded history of various forms of dance in China. Some Chinese dances today, such as dancing with long sleeves have been recorded since the very early periods, dating from the at least as early as the Zhou Dynasty. The most important dances of the early period were the ritual and ceremonial music and dances called yayue, and these dances were performed at the imperial court until the Qing dynasty, but only survive today as performances in Confucian ceremonies. The art of dance reached a peak in the Tang Dynasty, and the dances of the period were highly diverse and cosmopolitan, dances from Central Asia in particular were popular. A great number of dances were recorded in the Tang dynasty, for example there are over sixty Grand Compositions alone which are large scale performances from the Tang court, and there were tens of thousands of musicians and dancers at the Imperial palaces. The art of dance however declined after the Tang dynasty. This is due in part to the increasing popularity of the practice of footbinding, which may have first arisen from dancers themselves, but later tighter binding limited their movements, and greater social restriction placed on women may have also led to a virtual elimination of female dancers. [2]

Finely modelled.