UC Riverside

This thesis addresses (inter-)cultural ruptures in perceiving Chinese modern dance. I examine how the history of representing Chinese-ness on American stages, U.S. mainstream rhetoric about the inception of modern dance, as well as U.S. Orientalist constructions about Chinese opera/ China's ethnicity and Asian American exploitations of such have affected the reception of Chinese modern dance today. I further illustrate by reading particular Chinese modern works as circulated in the U.S. culture, including those by companies that tour in the U.S., in particular, the Beijing Dance/ LDTX Modern Dance Company, and one piece by a Chinese choreographer based in the U.S.--Shen Wei. I focus on the structures of the gaze and the position of the audience by comparing my readings with those of several mainstream reviewers as the works circulated in the U.S..

The thesis formulates two central issues encompassing my research project --the Chinese modern dancing body as agent as well as the mobilization of its "immobile audience." I attempt to theorize how, on the one hand, an exclusively kinesthetic mode (or "muted" speech) helps negotiate political visibility in China for most Chinese dancing moderns, and how, on the other, rehabilitating the dancer's voice on stage can to some extent theorize the Chinese dancing body as complex agent. By means of the endeavors envisioned above, I hope to credit the agency of the Chinese modern dancing body and to open up a forum for discussing the possibility of alternative modernity or subversive authenticity for Chinese modern dances circulated in the U.S.

Seeing dance/ the body as a flexible, creative site for negotiating ethnic, cultural identity and political force, I employ kinesthetic analysis to parse the politics in some LDTX works--drawing on my dance and choreographic training in both countries--so as to fulfill part of the interpretative tasks. Further, traveling to Purchase NY in October 2008 to witness LDTX perform in front of a U.S. audience, as well as collecting interviews and critical reviews, I look at the circulation of Chinese modern dance from a transnational perspective. I pose questions about reception, that is, ethno-racial construction of Chinese bodies inside the Chinese border as viewed from outside.