As a multi-ethnic ancient civilization, the development of China dance has a long history. The origin of China dance is the primitive society in the early stage of human society. Its formation and development have gone through several different historical stages, from totem dance culture to witchcraft dance culture, acrobatic dance culture, and then to independent dance art culture. As a form of cultural expression, dance has a profound relationship with social development. The social ideology of historical development determines the development of dance culture and the form of dance art in China to some extent. In the process of combing the different historical development stages of China dance, this paper explains some characteristics of the historical development of China dance.

First, the "entertainment" characteristics of early China dance.

The origin and development of any art have different historical tracks and laws. As one of the most brilliant art forms in China, China Opera has dual functions of "entertaining people" and "entertaining gods" in its original form. Different from China opera, China dance has only a single function of "entertaining the gods" in its initial form, and its prototype structure is the primitive "religious custom". These characteristics can be seen from the dance pictures of ancient rock paintings found in China at present.

In primitive society, dance is a part of primitive life, not for aesthetics, but for the needs of primitive life. At that time, dance was mainly manifested in totem worship, sacrifice to God, reproductive worship and hunting ceremony. Totem is the symbol of primitive ancestors' clan gods, and each clan has its own totem worship and totem belief. Totem worship penetrated into all fields of primitive ancestors' lives, and primitive ancestors living under totem worship used dances to express their own pictures. ...