CSS Noon Lecture Series - China's Contemporary Dance Scene

Emily Wilcox, Assistant Professor of Modern Chinese Studies, Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Michigan

China's contemporary dance scene is one of the most dynamic and diverse in the world. Boasting styles as varied as military dances, historical costume dramas, minority dance productions, and modern experimental works, “concert dance” in China is a wide category that must itself be interrogated to begin to gain any understanding of dance in China in the 21st century. In this talk, I introduce major dance works presented in Beijing during the summer of 2013, together with the broader category each work represents, to provide an outline of the basic genres and institutions that currently constitute China's contemporary dance scene.

Emily Wilcox received her PhD in Medical Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley and USCF, in 2011, with a doctoral dissertation entitled The Dialectics of Virtuosity: Dance in the People's Republic of China, 1949-2009. In September 2013 Emily joined the University of Michigan as Assistant Professor of Modern Chinese Studies in the Department of Asian Languages of Cultures. Before joining UM, Emily was Adjunct Instructor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Davis, Visiting Assistant Professor of Chinese Studies at the College of William and Mary, and Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Shanghai Theatre Academy. She has conducted extensive field research among professional dancers in China, and she publishes regularly in both English and Chinese.