Research Project

Emily Wilcox, a scholar of Chinese dance, defines the notions of kinesthetic nationalism, dynamic inheritance, and ethnic and spatial inclusivity, to investigate Chinese Dance as a modernist project, in dialogue with earlier and contemporary modern experiments in the U.S. I propose that the radical dance projects she discusses should be understood as an attempt to redefine dance form. Closely reading the ways in which concert dance is created, discussed, and interpreted, I argue that these dance revolutions shared three main characteristics: reformulated identities, contradictions, and the quest for modernity. First, reformulated identities positions dance as a site of development, not simply a marker of identity but a language through which it is created. I argue for two different approaches to this, of “revealing” in the West and of “becoming” in the East; ultimately both approaches do similar work in constructing these identities. Second, the contradictions between—and within—these dance forms reveal layered potentials created through abstraction and reinvention. Third, the quest for modernity in dance responds to a post-war, post-industrial, existential need for new ways of moving, seeking to define or describe the modern nation and move as appropriate for its subjects. Using the canonized works of U.S.-based choreographers Martha Graham and Alvin Ailey, in dialogue with the Chinese films Magic Lotus Lantern (1959) and Colored Butterflies Flutter About (1963), I seek to demonstrate these three characteristics as common methodologies on opposite sides of the “bamboo curtain.”