When Words Are Inadequate: Modern Dance and Transnationalism in China
When Words are Inadequate is a transnational history of modern dance written from and beyond the perspective of China. Author Nan Ma extends the horizon of China studies by rewriting the cultural history of modern China from a bodily movement-based perspective through the lens of dance modernism.

The book examines the careers and choreographies of four Chinese modern dance pioneers-Yu Rongling, Wu Xiaobang, Dai Ailian, and Guo Mingda-and their connections to canonical Western counterparts, including Isadora Duncan, Mary Wigman, Rudolf von Laban, and Alwin Nikolais. Tracing these Chinese pioneers' varied experiences in Paris, Tokyo, Trinidad, London, New York, and China's metropolises and borderlands, the book shows how their contributions adapted and reimagined the legacies of early Euro-American modern dance.

In doing so, When Words are Inadequate reinserts China into the multi-centered, transnational network of artistic exchange that fostered the global rise of modern dance, further complicating the binary conceptions of center and periphery and East and West. By exploring the relationships between performance and representation, choreography and politics, and nation-building and global modernism, it situates modern dance within an intermedial circuit of literary and artistic forms, demonstrating how modern dance provided a kinesthetic alternative and complement to other sibling arts in participating in China's successive revolutions, reforms, wars, and political movements.
1142805996
When Words Are Inadequate: Modern Dance and Transnationalism in China
When Words are Inadequate is a transnational history of modern dance written from and beyond the perspective of China. Author Nan Ma extends the horizon of China studies by rewriting the cultural history of modern China from a bodily movement-based perspective through the lens of dance modernism.

The book examines the careers and choreographies of four Chinese modern dance pioneers-Yu Rongling, Wu Xiaobang, Dai Ailian, and Guo Mingda-and their connections to canonical Western counterparts, including Isadora Duncan, Mary Wigman, Rudolf von Laban, and Alwin Nikolais. Tracing these Chinese pioneers' varied experiences in Paris, Tokyo, Trinidad, London, New York, and China's metropolises and borderlands, the book shows how their contributions adapted and reimagined the legacies of early Euro-American modern dance.

In doing so, When Words are Inadequate reinserts China into the multi-centered, transnational network of artistic exchange that fostered the global rise of modern dance, further complicating the binary conceptions of center and periphery and East and West. By exploring the relationships between performance and representation, choreography and politics, and nation-building and global modernism, it situates modern dance within an intermedial circuit of literary and artistic forms, demonstrating how modern dance provided a kinesthetic alternative and complement to other sibling arts in participating in China's successive revolutions, reforms, wars, and political movements.
42.99 In Stock
When Words Are Inadequate: Modern Dance and Transnationalism in China

When Words Are Inadequate: Modern Dance and Transnationalism in China

by Nan Ma
When Words Are Inadequate: Modern Dance and Transnationalism in China
When Words Are Inadequate: Modern Dance and Transnationalism in China

When Words Are Inadequate: Modern Dance and Transnationalism in China

by Nan Ma

Paperback

$42.99 
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Overview

When Words are Inadequate is a transnational history of modern dance written from and beyond the perspective of China. Author Nan Ma extends the horizon of China studies by rewriting the cultural history of modern China from a bodily movement-based perspective through the lens of dance modernism.

The book examines the careers and choreographies of four Chinese modern dance pioneers-Yu Rongling, Wu Xiaobang, Dai Ailian, and Guo Mingda-and their connections to canonical Western counterparts, including Isadora Duncan, Mary Wigman, Rudolf von Laban, and Alwin Nikolais. Tracing these Chinese pioneers' varied experiences in Paris, Tokyo, Trinidad, London, New York, and China's metropolises and borderlands, the book shows how their contributions adapted and reimagined the legacies of early Euro-American modern dance.

In doing so, When Words are Inadequate reinserts China into the multi-centered, transnational network of artistic exchange that fostered the global rise of modern dance, further complicating the binary conceptions of center and periphery and East and West. By exploring the relationships between performance and representation, choreography and politics, and nation-building and global modernism, it situates modern dance within an intermedial circuit of literary and artistic forms, demonstrating how modern dance provided a kinesthetic alternative and complement to other sibling arts in participating in China's successive revolutions, reforms, wars, and political movements.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780197575314
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication date: 03/17/2023
Series: OXFORD STUDIES IN DANCE THEORY SERIES
Pages: 296
Product dimensions: 9.24(w) x 6.17(h) x 0.61(d)

About the Author

Nan Ma is Associate Professor of East Asian Studies at Dickinson College. She conducts research on modern Chinese literature, film, visual culture, and dance and performance studies and has published articles on Chinese modern dance, ballet and film in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture (MCLC), China Perspectives, and the Journal of Beijing Dance Academy.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Chinese Case of Modern Dance
Chapter 1: Traveling Princess and Dancing Diplomat: Yu Rongling, Corporeal Modernity, and Isadora Duncan
Chapter 2: Transmediating Kinesthesia: Wu Xiaobang, Mary Wigman via Tokyo, and Modern Dance in Wartime China
Chapter 3: Dancing Reclusion in the Great Leap Forward: Conflicting Utopias and Wu Xiaobang's "Classical New Dance"
Chapter 4: Writing Dance: Dai Ailian, Labanotation, and the Multi-Diasporic "Root" of Modern Chinese Ethnic Dance
Epilogue: Guo Mingda, Alwin Nikolais, and the (Anti-)American Link
Index
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