DANC 015: Choreographing Chineseness in Sinophone Spaces

2020 by Emily Wilcox. Chapter 3 of the book "Faces of Tradition in Chinese Performing Arts" which "examines the key role of the individual in the development of traditional Chinese performing arts such as music and dance. These artists and their artistic works-the "faces of tradition"--Come to represent and reconfigure broader fields of cultural production in China today. The contributors to this volume explore the ways in which performances and recordings, including singing competitions, textual anthologies, ethnographic videos, and CD albums, serve as discursive spaces where individuals engage with and redefine larger traditions and themselves. By focusing on the performance, scholarship, collection, and teaching of instrumental music, folksong, and classical dance from a variety of disciplines-these case studies highlight the importance of the individual in determining how traditions have been and are represented, maintained, and cultivated"-- Provided by publisher.

2018 by Emily Wilcox. "Revolutionary Bodies is the first English-language primary source-based history of concert dance in the People's Republic of China. Combining over a decade of ethnographic and archival research, Emily Wilcox analyzes major dance works by Chinese choreographers staged over an eighty-year period from 1935 to 2015. Using previously unexamined film footage, photographic documentation, performance programs, and other historical and contemporary sources, Wilcox challenges the commonly accepted view that Soviet-inspired revolutionary ballets are the primary legacy of the socialist era in China's dance field. The digital edition of this title includes nineteen embedded videos of selected dance works discussed by the author."

2016 by Shih-Ming Li Chang and Lynn E. Frederiksen. "A comprehensive multimedia resource for the study of Chinese culture through dance As China becomes increasingly important in world relations, many components of the country's cultural arts remain unknown outside its borders. Shih-Ming Li Chang and Lynn E. Frederiksen's Chinese Dance: In the Vast Land and Beyond undertakes the challenge of discovering the relationship between Chinese dance in its many forms and the cultural contexts of dance within the region and abroad. As a comprehensive resource, Chinese Dance offers students and scholars an invaluable introduction to the subject. It serves as a foundation of common knowledge from which Chinese and English-language communities can begin a cross-cultural conversation about Chinese dance. The text, along with a comprehensive glossary of key terms, gives English-language readers a chance to understand the development of Chinese dance as it is officially articulated by historians and dance scholars in Asia. An online database of video clips, an extensive bibliography, and Web-based appendices provide a broad collection of primary source materials that invite interactive and flexible engagement by a range of users. The inclusion of interviews with Chinese dance practitioners in North America offers a view into the Asian diaspora experience."

2016, edited by Yutian Wong. "The definition of Asian American dance is as contested as the definition of "Asian American." The contributors to this volume address such topics as the role of the 1960s Asian American movement in creating Japanese American taiko groups, and the experience of internment during World War II influencing butoh dance in Canada. Essays about artists such as Jay Hirabayashi, Alvin Tolentino, Shen Wei, Kun-Yang Lin, Yasuko Yokoshi, Eiko & Koma, Sam Kim, Roko Kawai, and Denise Uyehara look closely at the politics of how Asian aesthetics are set into motion and marketed. The volume includes first-person narratives, interviews, ethnography, cultural studies, performance studies, and comparative ethnic studies."

2013 by SanSan Kwan. "In Kinesthetic City, author SanSan Kwan explores the contentious nature of Chineseness in diaspora through the lens of moving bodies as they relate to place, time, and identity. She locates her study in five Chinese urban sites - Shanghai, Taipei, Hong Kong, New York's Chinatown, and the SanGabriel Valley in Los Angeles - at momentous historical turning points to parse out key similarities and differences in the construction of Chineseness. The moving bodies she considers are not only those in performances by some of the most well-known Chinese dance companies in these cities, but alsoher own as she navigates urban Chinese spaces.By focusing primarily on kinesthesia - the body's awareness of motion - to gather information rather than more traditional modes of sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste, she highlights the importance of motion in the determination of space. In examining in these specific places at these precisehistorical moments, Kwan illuminates how moving bodies contribute to the production of those places and those moments. For Kwan, Chinese communities in diaspora provide particularly salient examples of how when and where our bodies are help to determine who we are. Whether engaged in otherwiseunremarkable walking or in highly choreographed acts of political protest, human movement exists in dialogue with the kinesthetic of these city spaces, helping Chinese communities make meaning of themselves away from mainland China.As a whole, Kinesthetic City offers dance studies ways to extend movement analysis to study not only concert, folk or social dance, but also quotidian movement and urban flow."

2010, by Yutian Wong. "A critical study of Asian American performance and creative process Poised at the intersection of Asian American studies and dance studies, Choreographing Asian America is the first book-length examination of the role of Orientalist discourse in shaping Asian Americanist entanglements with U.S. modern dance history. Moving beyond the acknowledgement that modern dance has its roots in Orientalist appropriation, Yutian Wong considers the effect that invisible Orientalism has on the reception of work by Asian American choreographers and the conceptualization of Asian American performance as a category. Drawing on ethnographic and choreographic research methods, the author follows the work of Club O' Noodles--a Vietnamese American performance ensemble--to understand how Asian American artists respond to competing narratives of representation, aesthetics, and social activism that often frame the production of Asian American performance."

2006, by Beida Li. "Among the dances of the minorities in China, there are those originating in the labor of primitive society, wars between different tribes, and primitive religious activities, as well as those manifesting productive activities and social life in different development stages. Part of the Ethnic Cultures of China series, the book has three chapters introducing the dances of the Chinese minorities: A Survey of the Dances of the Chinese minorities, Dances of Minorities in the North such as Dances of Riding and Shooting, and Dances of the Ethnic Groups in South China such as Dances Showing Charm and Grace. Each dance describes its history, costume and movements

1995, Edited by John and Ruth Solomon.
Ch. 3. From 'Beasts' to 'Flowers': Modern Dance in China / Ou Jian-ping, p. 29
Ch. 4. Bringing Modern Dance to China / Yang Mei-qi, p. 37
Ch. 5. Some Reflections on Modern Dance in Guangzhou / Claudia Gitelman, p. 51
Ch. 6. A Lifetime in Dance, a Moment in Guangzhou / Lucas Hoving, p. 59
Ch. 8. Chinese/Japanese Roots and Branches / Ruby Shang, p. 73
Ch. 9. Faces in the Moon / Sarah Stackhouse, p. 85
Ch. 10. Dance at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, and Some Thoughts on International Networking / Carl Wolz, p. 99
Ch. 11. From Helsinki to Hong Kong / Betsy Fisher, p. 119
Ch. 12. The Emerging Contemporary Dance Companies of Hong Kong and China / Willy Tsao, p. 125
Murgiyanto, p. 165
Ch. 29. Dance and Society in Taiwan: A Culture in Transition / Lin Hwai-min Ping Heng, p. 265
Ch. 30. Dance Education in Taiwan / Chou Su-ling, p. 283
Ch. 31. Ballet in Taiwan / Leon Koning, p. 291
Ch. 32. Great Expectations: The Training of Taiwanese Dancers / Lo Man-fei, p. 297
Ch. 33. On Teaching Choreography in Taiwan / Doris Rudko, p. 307
Ch. 34. New Beginnings: Taiwan and the United States / Wang Yun-yu, p. 313

2005, edited by Selma Jeanne Cohen. "To survey the dance traditions of China, this entry comprises six articles: An Overview, Folk and Minority Dance, Dance in Opera, Classical Dance, Contemporary Theatrical Dance, Dance Research and Publication.
The first article presents a historical overview of traditional dance and the introduction of Western forms of social and theatrical dance styles; the following four articles explore various genres of Chinese folk and theatrical dance; the concluding article provides a brief history of scholarship and writing."

2005, edited by Edward L. Davis. "This is the first reference book to digest this vast cultural output and make it accessible to the English-speaking world. It contains nearly 1,200 entries written by an international team of specialists, to enable readers to explore a range of diverse and fascinating cultural subjects from prisons to rock groups, underground Christian churches to TV talk shows and radio hotlines. Experimental artists with names such as 'Big-Tailed Elephants' and 'The North-Pole Group' nestle between the covers alongside entries on lotteries, gay cinema, political jokes, sex shops, theme parks, 'New Authoritarians' and 'Little Emperors'. While the focus of the Encyclopedia of Contemporary Chinese Culture is on mainland China since 1980, it also includes longer, specially commissioned entries on various aspects of contemporary culture in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Including full and up-to-date references for further reading;this is an indispensable reference tool for all teachers and students of contemporary Chinese culture. It will also be warmly embraced as an invaluable source of cultural context by tourists, journalists, business people and others who visit China."