Folk-dance has always been of importance in peasant communities. China, with its wide variety of climate and terrain, has an equally wide variety of regional dances. On the present record a number of these are collected in versions designed by modern Chinese composers for the piano. Included is part of the famous Mermaid Suite, a revolutionary ballet that formed part of the limited repertoire open to trained dancers in 70s.

A number of the pieces recorded here are based on dances from the remote areas of China, in particular from Xinjiang which forms part of Chinese Turkestan, and from Manchuria. There are also dances from Fujian, and an unusual attempt at Western formality in the use of a typical dance rhythm to form the subject of a fugue.

Recorded March 1979 & October 1980