Translating Dunhuang Mural Imagery into Dance through Evidence-constrained Embodied Reconstruction

How can Dunhuang mural imagery inform continuous dance without turning modern choreographic choices into historical claims? This study develops a claim-level framework through two contrasting cases: the back-playing pipa figure in Mogao Cave 112 and the dancer groups on the north wall of Cave 220. Official digital images and cave records are read alongside dance-notation scholarship, pedagogical texts, and accounts of Silk Road Flowers and Rain. A supplementary documentary check examines the south-wall music-and-dance scene in Cave 220. Qualitative image and documentary analysis distinguishes direct evidence, constrained inference, modern choreographic construction, and indeterminate content. The principal cases support descriptions of depicted bodily and spatial relations but do not establish unique transitions, rhythms, or dynamics. Notation supplies a different kind of temporal evidence without a verified correspondence to these mural figures. Evidence-constrained embodied reconstruction makes these boundaries explicit through source-specific decision rules and alternative-pathway checks. The contribution is a transferable procedure for auditing movement claims, provisionally demonstrated within a limited corpus; independent coding reliability and wider applicability remain untested.

Dunhuang dance; Dunhuang murals; movement translation; dance iconography; evidence-constrained embodied reconstruction

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