Emily Wilcox - Böcker

In Corporeal Politics, leading international scholars investigate the development of dance as a deeply meaningful and complex cultural practice across time, placing special focus on the intertwining of East Asia dance and politics and the role of dance as a medium of transcultural interaction and communication across borders. Countering common narratives of dance history that emphasize the US and Europe as centers of origin and innovation, the expansive creativity of dance artists in East Asia asserts its importance as a site of critical theorization and reflection on global artistic developments in the performing arts.Through the lens of “corporeal politics”—the close attention to bodily acts in specific cultural contexts—each study in this book challenges existing dance and theater histories to re-investigate the performer's role in devising the politics and aesthetics of their performance, as well as the multidimensional impact of their lives and artistic works. Corporeal Politics addresses a wide range of performance styles and genres, including dances produced for the concert stage, as well as those presented in popular entertainments, private performance spaces, and street protests.

In Corporeal Politics, leading international scholars investigate the development of dance as a deeply meaningful and complex cultural practice across time, placing special focus on the intertwining of East Asia dance and politics and the role of dance as a medium of transcultural interaction and communication across borders. Countering common narratives of dance history that emphasize the US and Europe as centers of origin and innovation, the expansive creativity of dance artists in East Asia asserts its importance as a site of critical theorization and reflection on global artistic developments in the performing arts.Through the lens of “corporeal politics”—the close attention to bodily acts in specific cultural contexts—each study in this book challenges existing dance and theater histories to re-investigate the performer's role in devising the politics and aesthetics of their performance, as well as the multidimensional impact of their lives and artistic works. Corporeal Politics addresses a wide range of performance styles and genres, including dances produced for the concert stage, as well as those presented in popular entertainments, private performance spaces, and street protests.

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.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.

This book explores dance and choreography as sites for the articulation of new theoretical and historical paradigms in inter-Asia cultural studies.The chapters in this volume cover a wide range of dance works, artists, genres, and media, from Kathak to K-pop flash mob dance, from Cold War diplomacy to avant-garde dance collaborations, and from festival dance to dance on screen. Working against the Western-centric category of “Asian dance” and Western-centric theorizations of intercultural performance that foreground “East-West” relationships, each contribution shows how dances in Asia make one another as their key aesthetic references beyond Eurocentric influences, as well as how inter-Asia relations emerge from cultural, geographical, and aesthetic diversity within the region. This book is the first of its kind in both cultural studies and dance studies. It will contribute greatly to readers’ understanding of how performance shapes and transforms the cultural and political dynamics of inter-Asia, with a focus on dance circulations in and across East, South, and Southeast Asia.Inter-Asia in Motion: Dance as Method will be a key resource for academics, researchers, and advanced students of Dance Studies, Performance Studies, Cultural Studies, Asian Studies, International Relations and Politics, History, and Sociology. The chapters included in this book were originally published in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies.

This book explores dance and choreography as sites for the articulation of new theoretical and historical paradigms in inter-Asia cultural studies.The chapters in this volume cover a wide range of dance works, artists, genres, and media, from Kathak to K-pop flash mob dance, from Cold War diplomacy to avant-garde dance collaborations, and from festival dance to dance on screen. Working against the Western-centric category of “Asian dance” and Western-centric theorizations of intercultural performance that foreground “East-West” relationships, each contribution shows how dances in Asia make one another as their key aesthetic references beyond Eurocentric influences, as well as how inter-Asia relations emerge from cultural, geographical, and aesthetic diversity within the region. This book is the first of its kind in both cultural studies and dance studies. It will contribute greatly to readers’ understanding of how performance shapes and transforms the cultural and political dynamics of inter-Asia, with a focus on dance circulations in and across East, South, and Southeast Asia.Inter-Asia in Motion: Dance as Method will be a key resource for academics, researchers, and advanced students of Dance Studies, Performance Studies, Cultural Studies, Asian Studies, International Relations and Politics, History, and Sociology. The chapters included in this book were originally published in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies.

This is the first book in English exploring the quadrille as danced among the Skolt Saami, one of the indigenous Saami peoples in Northern Europe.The Skolt quadrille - the focus of this book - offers a fascinating case of transnational movement of dance forms, as well as insights on a living dance tradition in a specific indigenous culture. Today, the Skolts’ quadrille is a social dance with six figures, and it is most often danced by four couples. The dance resembles quadrilles in northern Russia, but its historical roots are in the imperial French quadrille. This book traces the history of the Skolt Saami through the lens of their dance and what is known of the Skolt quadrilles from historical sources. This is contrasted with contemporary narratives and practices, including interview materials with practitioners. The Skolt quadrille is examined as embodied action and as performance, taking place amid changing historical, social and cultural discourses. The book considers how the dance represents issues attached to the Skolt people's identity as a religious minority, both among the Finnish majority and the Saami; an evacuated community, living amid other Saami groups and Finns; and as Finnish citizens, most speaking Finnish as their first language.

The first comprehensive work in English on the three major regional styles of Uzbek women’s dance – Ferghana, Khiva and Bukhara – and their broader Silk Road cultural connections, from folklore rootsto contemporary stage dance.The book surveys the remarkable development from the earliest manifestations in ancient civilizationsto a sequestered existence under Islam; from patronage under Soviet power to a place of pride for Uzbek nationhood. It considers the role that immigration had to play on the development of the dances; how women boldly challenged societal gender roles to perform in public; how both material culture and the natural world manifest in the dance; and it illuminates the innovations of pioneering choreographers who drew from Central Asian folk traditions, gestures and aesthetics – not Russian ballet – to first shape modern Uzbek stage dance. Written by the first American dancer invited to study in Uzbekistan, this book offers insight into the once-hidden world of Uzbek women’s dance.

Essays for teaching Chinese film, history, and societyThis volume brings a diverse range of voices—from anthropology, communication studies, ethnomusicology, film, history, literature, linguistics, sociology, theater, and urban geography—into the conversation about film from the People's Republic of China. Essays seek to answer what films can reveal or obscure about Chinese history and society and demonstrate how studying films from the PRC can introduce students to larger issues of historical consciousness and media representation. The volume addresses not only postsocialist fictional films but also a wide variety of other subjects including socialist period films, documentaries, films by or about people from ethnic minority groups, film music, the perspectives of female characters, martial arts cinema, and remakes of South Korean films. By exploring how films represent power, traditions, and ideologies, students learn about both the complexity of the PRC and the importance of cross-cultural and cross-ideological understanding.This volume contains discussion of Beijing Bicycle; The Big Shot; Cai Chusheng; Chasing the Carp; Jackie Chan; Children at a Village School; Cui Zien; Fan Lixin; Fish and Elephant; Five Golden Flowers; Hero; Ann Hui; Ip Man; Jiang Hu: Life on the Road; Jiang Nengjie; Last Train Home; Li Shuangshuang; Li Yu; Lou Ye; Meishi Street; New Women; 1911; Ou Ning; The Postmodern Life of My Aunt; Queer China, Comrade China; Red Detachment of Women; River Elegy; The Road Home; Shadow Magic; Shower; Soul Haunted by Painting; Su Xiaokang; Suzhou River; To Live; The Wandering Earth; Wang Bing; Wang Luxiang; Wang Xiaoshuai; West of the Tracks; The White-Haired Girl; Wolf Warrior 2; Wu Bai; Wu Jing; Wu Wenguang; Xia Jun; Xie Jin; Yellow Earth; Ying Yunwei; Wilson Yip; Yu Hua; Zhang Li; Zhang Yang; and Zhang Yimou.