MUSIC & DANCE GUIDE
The Pipa, the Guzheng and the Rainbow Skirt Dance
What the Tang Dynasty show's instruments and dances actually are — the pipa, the guzheng, the Rainbow Skirt piece, and the real history behind each one.
See Tang Dynasty dates on GetYourGuide ↗The pipa: a Silk Road instrument gone fully Chinese
The pipa, a four-string, pear-shaped lute played upright and plucked with the fingers or fingernails, is often the standout solo instrument in Tang-inspired programmes. It's a useful symbol of Tang cosmopolitanism: the instrument's ancestors arrived in China from Central Asia and Persia along the Silk Road centuries before the Tang, and by the dynasty's height it had been fully absorbed into Chinese court music, with virtuoso pipa players celebrated in Tang poetry. Its bright, percussive plucked sound — capable of both delicate melody and rapid, drum-like passages — is one of the more immediately striking sounds in the show's ensemble.
The guzheng: the older, homegrown zither
Where the pipa came from outside China, the guzheng (often shortened to zheng) is a native Chinese instrument with roots that predate the Tang dynasty by centuries. It's a long, horizontal plucked zither with movable bridges under each string, allowing a player to bend pitch and produce the sweeping glissando runs that are instantly recognisable as "classical Chinese" to most Western ears. In a Tang-show context, the guzheng typically supplies the flowing, melodic backbone under the dancers, while flute and pipa provide texture and ornament — a division of labour that reflects how these instruments were actually combined in historical Chinese ensembles.
Flutes, mouth organs and the rest of the ensemble
Rounding out a typical Tang-inspired orchestra are the dizi, a bamboo transverse flute with a distinctive buzzing membrane over one hole that gives it a brighter tone than a Western flute, and the sheng, a mouth organ made of vertical bamboo pipes that is one of the oldest free-reed instruments in the world and a likely ancestor of the harmonica and accordion. Some productions also feature the konghou, an ancient plucked harp that largely disappeared from use after the Ming dynasty and exists today only because instrument makers reconstructed it from historical depictions — itself a small example of the same revival spirit behind the whole show.
The Rainbow Skirt and Feathered Robe dance
The best-known named piece in most Tang-show programmes is Nishang Yuyi, usually translated as the "Rainbow Skirt and Feathered Robe" dance. Tang-era accounts and poetry, including a famous long poem by Bai Juyi, associate it with Emperor Xuanzong's court in the 8th century and with his celebrated consort Yang Guifei, who was said to have performed it. As with the rest of the repertoire, no original choreography survives — what audiences see is a modern reconstruction built from literary descriptions, historical costume research and the broader vocabulary of Chinese classical dance, rather than a preserved original routine.
What the long sleeves are actually doing
The flowing, oversized silk sleeves seen throughout the show belong to a specific tradition within Chinese dance sometimes called "long-sleeve dance," where the fabric is treated as an extension of the dancer's arms and used to create shapes in the air — sweeps, spirals, sudden flicks and slow unfurling arcs. It's a technique with its own centuries-old history in Chinese performing arts, requiring real physical control to keep several feet of trailing silk moving on rhythm rather than just draping loosely. Watching for how the sleeve work syncs with the music is one of the more rewarding ways to follow the choreography if you don't read the programme notes.