Dawaz (high-wire walking)
High-wire walking. Part of China's National Traditional Games of Ethnic Minorities since 1953.
About
Dawaz is the Uyghur art of walking on a rope stretched high above the ground. Holding a balancing pole, the performer steps along the rope and performs movements such as walking, lying down and jumping. Almost no safety equipment is used in dawaz.
In 2006 dawaz was added to China's national list of intangible cultural heritage. The best-known performer is Adil Hoshur, a sixth-generation dawaz walker and holder of world records, who opened a dawaz school in Yengisar county.
History
By China's Intangible Cultural Heritage portal, dawaz is more than a thousand years old: walking on a rope is recorded in the Turkic lexicon compiled in 1072–1074, Mahmud al-Kashgari's Dīwān. The performances are given in the open air at a height of dozens of metres; the performer carries a balance pole about six metres long. He walks forwards and backwards on the rope, sits cross-legged, walks blindfolded, steps with plates tied to his feet and leaps — all to the rhythm of Uyghur folk music.
Adil Hoshur belongs to the sixth generation of a family of dawaz performers with a history of more than four hundred years. He twice renewed the world record for walking a high wire, in 1997 and in 2000. The portal writes that the art is endangered: being so hard and so dangerous, it does not easily find successors.
Peoples
Research: Vasif Namazov, Turan Games Concept
