Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)—a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries. Learn more at the TOME website, available at: openmonographs.org.
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.
"Ultimately, Revolutionary Bodies makes an incredible mark on the disciplines of dance studies and Chinese cultural studies. Wilcox’s scholarship is a model of thorough research, accessible writing, and sharp argumentation. More important, it introduces us to the field of Chinese dance by following its birth and growth in concert with the dynamics of contemporary Chinese history and offering us a complex picture of an important world genre."
"Wilcox’s extensive survey leaves room for reflecting on contentions emerging from the role of Chinese dance in promoting state interests both nationally and abroad. . . . In lieu of directly addressing the political tension, Wilcox’s conclusion remains open for readers to consider the socialist legacy that has transformed the artists’ worldview and the need to reinvigorate the radical possibility of pluralism espoused by it for twenty-first-century post-socialist China."
“Revolutionary Bodies offers foundational scholarship on Chinese dance, a critical component of the PRC’s cultural landscape that has, thus far, been a fascinating yet obscure picture. It is an exemplary study with sharp analyses, solid sources, and engaging composition. . . . As we cast our gaze on the performances through Wilcox’s descriptions and analyses, we learn not only what and how to watch, but also the aesthetics and joy of watching Chinese dance.”
"At every turn the book benefits from Emily’s background as an anthropologist turned cultural historian. With the benefit of first-hand ethnographic research, she brings a rich understanding of the dance world to her prose."
"Revolutionary Bodies has helped not only to establish modern Chinese dance studies as a mature field of study in Anglophone scholarship, with Wilcox one of its leading authorities, but also to revolutionize our understanding of socialist cultural productions during the PRC era, taking seriously their radical inclusivity, artistic innovations, and dynamic inheritances."
Acknowledgments
Introduction. Locating Chinese Dance: Bodies in Place,
History, and Genre
1. From Trinidad to Beijing: Dai Ailian and the Beginnings of
Chinese Dance
2. Experiments in Form: Creating Dance in the Early People’s Republic
3. Performing a Socialist Nation: The Golden Age of Chinese Dance
4. A Revolt from Within: Contextualizing Revolutionary Ballet
5. The Return of Chinese Dance: Socialist Continuity Post-Mao
6. Inheriting the Socialist Legacy: Chinese Dance in the
Twenty-First Century
Glossary of Chinese Terms
Notes and References
Index