Revolutionary Bodies: Chinese Dance and the Socialist Legacy by Emily Wilcox

Abstract

Reviewed by: Revolutionary Bodies: Chinese Dance and the Socialist Legacy by Emily Wilcox Liang Luollu222@uky.edu Emily Wilcox. Revolutionary Bodies: Chinese Dance and the Socialist Legacy. Oakland: University of California Press, 2019. 304 pp. $34.95 (paper), open access at https://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.58. In Revolutionary Bodies, Emily Wilcox infuses a deep ethnographic sensibility into an exciting historical project, powerfully asserting the relevance of dance in modern Chinese cultural studies and in the cultural history of the People's Republic of China (PRC). She uses "Chinese dance" to refer to "a contemporary concert genre that developed during the mid-twentieth century," often encompassing "Chinese classical dance" (中国古典舞 Zhongguo gudian du) and "Chinese national folk dance" (中国民族民间舞 Zhongguo minzu minjian wu) (2). Consequently, the subtitle of the book, "Chinese Dance and Socialist Legacy," refers to the socialist legacy of Chinese dance in this specific usage, as a dance genre developed during the mid-twentieth century in China and parallel to ballet and modern dance, among others. Wilcox argues that three core commitments: "kinesthetic nationalism," "ethnic and spatial inclusiveness," and "dynamic inheritance," have defined the genre of Chinese dance throughout its history of innovation. "Kinesthetic nationalism" emphasizes Chinese dance's focus on its artistic form and its bringing together of the local and the contemporary; "ethnic and spatial inclusiveness" is the idea that Chinese dance should include styles and artists from all ethnic communities and geographic regions across China, while "dynamic inheritance" is a theory of cultural transformation that compels Chinese dance artists to research existing performance forms while also generating original interpretations of these forms (6–7). These core commitments, I would argue, are also the core of the socialist legacy of Chinese dance Wilcox uncovers in this book: its focus on connecting local and contemporary artistic forms, its radical representation of marginalized, diverse communities, and its continuous emphasis on creativity and innovation in order to transform existing performance forms. Centering on the path Trinidad-born and European-educated Dai Ailian (戴爱莲 1916–2006) followed from ballet to modern dance to Chinese dance, the first chapter of the book sets the tone for a deep inquiry into the transition from a vision of modernity as represented by assimilating into Euro-American culture to one of asserting distinctive local identities. Wilcox regards Dai as the first to systematically reflect on what new aesthetic forms Chinese dance should take from the 1940s onward, both in writings and in performances. According to Wilcox, Dai's "Frontier Dance," among others, embodies the three core commitments of kinesthetic nationalism, ethnic and spatial inclusiveness, and dynamic inheritance, which drew on local sources from across the country, bridging geographical, religious, and ethnic divides. Making extensive use of Chinese-language dance scholarship produced in China, Wilcox presents the Korean dancer Choe Seung-hui (崔承喜 최승희1911–1969) in chapter 2 as another foundational figure in the history of Chinese dance, particularly in the fields of Chinese classical dance and Chinese Korean dance. Choe's unique contribution, according to Wilcox, lies in her creation of a new dance style by studying and adapting elements of traditional-style xiqu (戲曲) performance. As a result, the Chinese dance curriculum of the leading dance school in China, Beijing Dance School, "skillfully united what were now the three established streams of Chinese dance—Han folk dance (inherited from New [End Page E-36] Yangge [新秧歌; a wartime dance movement]), minority dance (inherited from "Frontier Dance"), and xiqu dance (inherited from Choe's program)" (76). In chapter 3, Wilcox convincingly argues that the late 1950s and early 1960s constituted the golden age of Chinese dance as that era witnessed continued innovations in choreographic form with the emergence of a new, full-length, narrative Chinese dance form, the "national dance drama" (民族舞剧 minzu wuju), as well as the expansion of the genre to global visibility through circulations of Chinese dance abroad. What impresses this reviewer particularly is Wilcox's sensitive approach to the details in the narrative dance form and expert dance analysis of its use of Chinese dance choreography, while recognizing the propagandist nature of these works (without naming them that way). Only someone of Wilcox's background, a dance scholar and practitioner trained as an anthropologist...