Dissertation Title
21st Century Global Performance Studies: Chinese Moving Bodies and International Artistic Exchange and Dancing Process from 1920s-2020s
Chair: Jhalak Kara Miller
(Proposal Defended: September 2021)
Dissertation Abstract: My dissertation examines a century of Chinese dancers’ bodily citizenship from the 1920s to the 2020s with emphasis on accounts of dance instruction and artistic exchange at the Beijing Dance Academy. Engaging with Dance and Performance theory and analyzing bodily movement practices, I explore Chinese moving bodies in and across national borders through a process of shaping how these bodies are performed with new visibility in the People’s Republic of China. Further, my comparative analysis of female body performance in the U.S. and China contributes to the expansion of body awareness and female action by advocating for education, gender equality, and bodily freedom, empowering Chinese women and their bodily movements through dance from past to present. As the first doctoral dissertation to re-stage Chinese dancing bodies at the Beijing Dance Academy based on a first-person account and experience, this work delves into historical archives, bodily memories, and socialist ideologies by uplifting embodied movement research on artistic motion in the performing arts in China.