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  2. Corporeal Politics: Dancing East Asia

Corporeal Politics: Dancing East Asia

Katherine Mezur and Emily Wilcox, Editors 2020
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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.

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Series
  • Studies in Dance: Theories and Practices
ISBN(s)
  • 978-0-472-07455-6 (hardcover)
  • 978-0-472-12694-1 (ebook)
  • 978-0-472-05455-8 (paper)
Subject
  • Asian Studies
  • Theater and Performance
  • Dance
Citable Link

  • Table of Contents

  • Resources

  • Stats

  • Cover
  • Title Page
  • Copyright Page
  • Dedication
  • Contents
  • Acknowledgments
  • Note on Translation and East Asian Names
  • Introduction
  • Part 1: Contested Genealogies
    • Chapter 1. Sexuality, Status, and the Female Dancer
    • Chapter 2. Mei Lanfang and Modern Dance
    • Chapter 3. The Conflicted Monk
  • Part 2: Decolonizing Migration
    • Chapter 4. Murayama Tomoyoshi and Dance of Modern Times
    • Chapter 5. Korean Dance Beyond Koreanness
    • Chapter 6. Diasporic Moves
    • Chapter 7. Choreographing Neoliberal Marginalization
  • Part 3: Militarization and Empire
    • Chapter 8. Masking Japanese Militarism as a Dream of Sino-Japanese Friendship
    • Chapter 9. Imagined Choreographies
    • Chapter 10. Exorcism and Reclamation
  • Part 4: Socialist Aesthetics
    • Chapter 11. Choe Seung-hui Between Classical and Folk
    • Chapter 12. The Dilemma of Chinese Classical Dance
    • Chapter 13. Negotiating Chinese Identity through a Double-Minority Voice and the Female Dancing Body
  • Part 5: Collective Technologies
    • Chapter 14. Cracking History’s Codes in Crocodile Time
    • Chapter 15. Fans, Sashes, and Jesus
    • Chapter 16. Choreographing Digital Performance in Twenty-First-Century Taiwan
    • Coda
  • Contributors
  • Index

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Figure 2.1. Mei Lanfang as legendary Chinese beauty Yang Guifei. He wears flowing garments with bare arms striking a dance gesture uncharacteristic of traditional Peking opera.

Mei Lanfang in The Unofficial Biography of Taizhen [Yang Guifei], circa 1925

From Chapter 2

Fig. 2.1. Mei Lanfang in the role of Yang Guifei in the new opera The Unofficial Biography of Taizhen [Yang Guifei]” [Taizhen waizhuan 太真外傳], created circa 1925. Mei’s flowing garments and bare arms are completely foreign to Peking opera. Source: Liang She-Ch’ien, ed., Mei Lanfang; Foremost Actor of China (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1929), 6. Available at https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11521701.cmp.3.

Figure 2.2. In a crown of jewels and finely embroidered garment, Mei Lanfang strikes a dance pose wielding two swords, one held high and the other low. Long sashes float behind him.

Mei Lanfang in Hegemon King Bids Farewell to His Concubine

From Chapter 2

Fig. 2.2. Mei Lanfang in Hegemon King Bids Farewell to His Concubine (Bawang bieji 霸王別姬), created circa 1922. Photo courtesy Kyushu University library. Available at https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11521701.cmp.4.

This is a page from a Chinese-language magazine article illustrating the sword movements used in Chinese opera as demonstrated by Mei Lanfang. The page includes a title and three blocks of text, all of which are in Chinese. Four black and white photographs show a man in a western suit performing four different postures with a sword. In all four photographs, the man’s legs are slightly bent, usually with the weight on one foot and the other foot touching the toe to the floor with the heel raised. The hand holding the sword is always raised to a position next to or slightly above or below head level. The man’s torso is never square to the camera but instead twists across the line of the camera or turns to the side, with the head facing forward, down, or to the side. Three simple sketches show an empty square with a dot inside that is connected to a hatched arrow that curves away from the dot. The sketches appear to represent a stage position with the arrow representing the direction of the actor’s movement. In the top sketch, the arrow curves to the right and down. In the middle sketch, the arrow moves to the left and then sharply reverses direction to the right. In the bottom sketch, the arrow curves slightly up.

Mei Lanfang demonstrates the dance steps in “Hegemon King Bids Farewell to His Concubine”

From Chapter 2


 Open external resource at https://open.bu.edu

Final dance scene in the film “Hegemon King Bids Farewell to His Concubine” performed by Mei Lanfang

From Chapter 2

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