In the Zhou Dynasty, six kinds of "small dances" were used as "teaching materials" for music and dance education, namely "cloud dance", "human dance", "emperor dance", "feather dance", "Xi dance" and "dry dance".

The names of the Six Little Dances are named after the Six Big Dances (namely "Six Generation Dances"). Like "big dance", "small dance" is also a kind of sacrificial music and dance. There have always been different opinions about the specific performance forms and sacrificial objects of these six "small dances", and later Confucian scholars also outlined a general outline for us.