"Embodied Teaching": The Aesthetic Experience and Value Resonance of Environmental Yue Opera——A Case Study of Yue Opera New Dragon Gate Inn 

Xu Xichen

JiangSu Normal University KeWen College, Xuzhou China, 221000;

Abstract: In the context of the new era’s emphasis on “cultivating people through culture and education,” research on the educational function of traditional Chinese opera has predominantly focused on “entertaining while educating” and “moral edification.” This paper introduces embodied cognition theory to propose a new interpretive framework: the educational function of opera does not rely on conceptual “moral teaching” but is rooted in the audience’s bodily “perception.” In traditional opera performance, the “embodied expressions” constructed through actors’ “four skills and five methods” already provide a fundamental basis for the integration of “beauty” and “virtue.” In recent years, a wave of popular environmental Yue operas has transformed audiences from “spectators” into “participants” through spatial reconstruction, interactive participation, and sensory immersion. This enables aesthetic pleasure and value identification to be simultaneously accomplished in an “embodied” process, offering a new reference path for the development of traditional opera and the realization of its educational function.

Keywords: Embodied cognition; environmental Yue opera; opera education

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