If you have never learnt to dance, you may have had this feeling when watching Chinese ethnic folk dance: they are all dancing, so why does Tibetan dance immediately look Tibetan, Mongolian dance look Mongolian, and Dai dance have a completely different flavour?

The answer lies in one phrase: dance elements.

Dance elements are, put simply, the smallest movement units that make up a dance

You can think of dance as cooking. A dish has its core seasonings—Sichuan food has its peppercorns and chillies, while Cantonese food emphasises freshness and natural flavour. Dance is the same. Every ethnic dance has its own set of “core movement seasonings”, and these seasonings are the dance elements.

An element is not a whole dance, nor a complete combination. It is the smallest “movement gene” you can break the dance down into: a step, a way of moving the knees, a pathway for the arms, a type of bodily rhythm. Looked at on its own, it is simple—even a little plain. But it is precisely when these elements are combined, repeated and varied that a complete ethnic dance grows out of them.

Take Tibetan dance: the drag step and knee bend-and-stretch

Two particularly typical elements in Tibetan dance are the drag step and knee bend-and-stretch.

The drag step, as the name suggests, is a step in which the foot drags. When one foot passes the other, it does not lift and step out; instead, it brushes and drags along the ground, and the weight follows. Underfoot there is a steady, continuous feeling. When you see Tibetan dancers who seem to be “shuffling along the ground” all the time, that is the drag step at work.

Knee bend-and-stretch is about the knees. In Tibetan dance the knees are almost constantly bending and stretching with elasticity—sinking a little, rising a little, sinking again, rising again, like a spring, continuously. It is not a stiff squat-and-stand; it is a resilient up-and-down rhythm that carries weight, and it works together with the breathing and shifts in the centre of gravity.

Each of these elements looks simple on its own. But put them together, add the characteristic Tibetan posture (a slight forward lean, a lower centre of gravity), the arm movements and the rhythm of the music, and that steady, weighty, earth-close feeling emerges. You do not need to be able to dance a whole piece. Once you see someone coming forward with drag steps and continuous knee bend-and-stretch, you can probably recognise it: this tastes Tibetan.

Elements determine style

This is why we say that dance elements constitute the stylistic identity of an ethnic dance.

Every ethnic group has a different living environment, way of working, beliefs and customs, and so the movement elements that grow out of them are different too. Tibetans live on the high plateau, where people need to walk steadily and keep their centre of gravity low; the drag step and knee bend-and-stretch carry that sense of solidity. Mongolian dance has hard shoulder movements and fine, quick shoulder shivers, which are connected to riding horses and shaking reins on the grasslands. Dai dance has undulating breathing and a hooking, kicking step, connected to a waterside rhythm of life. Different elements, different style. Style is not held up by costume and music alone; it is built up from movement elements, one by one.

So if you are just starting out with dance, there is no need to try to learn a whole dance straight away. First get to know a few core elements of the style—what its steps are, how the knees move, what the body posture is, what pathway the arms take. Once you understand these “genes”, and then go on to learn combinations and repertoire, you will suddenly find that the movements have a logic to them, and you will be able to see why they are danced in that way.

Dance elements are the underlying language of dance. Learn a few words, and you can understand what the language is saying.