When Folk Dance Was Radical: Cold War Yangge, World Youth Festivals, and Overseas Chinese Leftist Culture in the 1950S and 1960S
China Perspectives 2020-1 | 2020 Sights and Sounds of the Cold War in Socialist China and Beyond When Folk Dance Was Radical: Cold War Yangge, World Youth Festivals, and Overseas Chinese Leftist Culture in the 1950s and 1960s Emily Wilcox Electronic version URL: https://journals.openedition.org/chinaperspectives/9947 DOI: 10.4000/chinaperspectives.9947 ISSN: 1996-4617 Publisher Centre d'étude français sur la Chine contemporaine Printed version Date of publication: 1 March 2020 Number of pages: 33-42 ISSN: 2070-3449 Electronic reference Emily Wilcox, “When Folk Dance Was Radical: Cold War Yangge, World Youth Festivals, and Overseas Chinese Leftist Culture in the 1950s and 1960s”, China Perspectives [Online], 2020-1 | 2020, Online since 01 March 2021, connection on 02 July 2021. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ chinaperspectives/9947 ; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/chinaperspectives.9947 © All rights reserved Special feature china perspectives When Folk Dance Was Radical: Cold War Yangge, World Youth Festivals, and Overseas Chinese Leftist Culture in the 1950s and 1960s EMILY WILCOX ABSTRACT: This article challenges three common assumptions about Chinese socialist-era dance culture: first, that Mao-era dance rarely circulated internationally and was disconnected from international dance trends; second, that the yangge movement lost momentum in the early years of the People’s Republic of China (PRC); and, third, that the political significance of socialist dance lies in content rather than form. This essay looks at the transformation of wartime yangge into PRC folk dance during the 1950s and 1960s and traces the international circulation of these new dance styles in two contexts: the World Festivals of Youth and Students in Eastern Europe, and the schools, unions, and clan associations of overseas Chinese communities in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and San Francisco.
[Show full text]