Dance and politics in China: interculturalism, hybridity, and the ArtsCross project

Kolb, Alexandra (2017) Dance and politics in China: interculturalism, hybridity, and the ArtsCross project. In: The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Politics. Kowal, Rebekah J., Siegmund, Gerald and Martin, Randy, eds. Oxford Handbooks . Oxford University Press, pp. 347-370. ISBN 9780199928187, pbk-ISBN 9780190052966. [Book Section] (doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199928187.013.57)

Abstract

This chapter contextualizes stage dance developments in China in the 20th and 21st centuries (through Republican, Maoist and reformist periods) against the backdrop of the country’s changing socio-political conditions and relationships with the Western world. It explores, in historical terms, the interface between Chinese dance and politics to suggest that westernizing impulses lay behind many of China’s attempts at modernization, leading to hybrid performance practices which are quite unique. The chapter then focuses on the intercultural ArtsCross initiative (2009-2013), a series of projects between the Beijing Dance Academy, Middlesex University London and Taipei National University of the Arts, which exemplifies the quest for a more equitable form of East-West exchange in the context of globalisation and China’s reformist ideological agenda. This section includes a comparative reading of Chinese and Western training and devising processes, as witnessed in these projects, and analysis of Guo Lei’s hybrid choreography Mask.

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