UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Dancing Cross-cultural Misunderstandings: The American Dance Festival in China’s New Era A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Culture and Performance by Fangfei Miao 2019 © Copyright by Fangfei Miao 2019 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Dancing Cross-cultural Misunderstandings: The American Dance Festival in China’s New Era by Fangfei Miao Doctor of Philosophy in Culture and Performance University of California, Los Angeles, 2019 Professor Susan Leigh Foster, Chair This dissertation explores the embodiment of cross-cultural misunderstandings in a key transitional period in modern China—the late 1980s, during the country’s economic reformation and cultural opening to the West after the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). From 1987 to 1991, teachers from the American Dance Festival (ADF), at the invitation of the Guangdong (Canton) Dance School, trained the first group of professional modern dancers in China, known as the “Guangdong Modern Dance Experimental Program,” profoundly altering the history of Chinese modern dance in the New Era (1978–). Based on this program, China established its first modern dance company in 1992—the Guangdong Modern Dance Company. Under the guidance of ADF teachers, Chinese students created two new genres of Chinese modern dance that differed from the previous realism style. Some of ii the students later became internationally acclaimed artists—Shen Wei, Jin Xing, and Wang Mei. Contesting existing accounts of the Guangdong program as a complete success in America’s and China’s dance histories, this dissertation instead argues that misunderstandings and miscommunications repeatedly occurred in both directions throughout this corporeal exchange. These misunderstandings and miscommunications revealed different conceptualizations of aesthetics, kinesthesia, pedagogy, individuality, freedom, tradition, and the modern. This research takes a microcosmic perspective to examine the program’s establishment, curriculum, and the reception of the dance it created as a case study to explore the macrocosmic transnational US–China relationship under globalization. Different political agendas nurtured the contradictory expectations of the ADF and the Guangdong Dance School. When the young Chinese traditional dancers changed their expertise and accepted a new dance system, differences in aesthetics, kinesthesia, pedagogy, and concepts of individuality and freedom created confusion among ADF teachers and Chinese students. Different understandings of Chineseness, the traditional, and the modern in the US and China shaped American and Chinese critics’ contrasting receptions of the pieces produced in the Guangdong program. This dissertation is the first to take a cultural misinterpretation perspective to study dance in China, and the first to apply a critical dance studies lens to scrutinize cultural production in the context of US–China relations. By decoding these embodied misunderstandings, this dissertation aims to allow perspectives from the US and China to be heard in both countries and contribute to cross-cultural understandings on a global scale. iii The dissertation of Fangfei Miao is approved. Anurima Banerji Janet M. O'Shea Victoria E Marks Susan Leigh Foster, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2019 iv Table of Contents Abstract ……………………………………………………………………... ii Vita ……………………………………………………………………... vi Introduction ……………………………………………………………………... 1 Chapter One Modern Dance Fever and China’s New Era……………………….. 17 Chapter Two Contradictory Expectations and the Establishment of the Guangdong Modern Dance Experimental Program…….................. 67 Chapter Three Miscommunications and Misunderstandings: Teaching and Learning Modern Dance…………………………………………… 106 Chapter Four Chineseness, the Traditional, and the Modern: Contrasting Receptions of Situation, Square Bottom Basket and Bamboo, and Tide………………………………………………………………… 144 Conclusion Beyond Cross-cultural Misunderstandings………………………... 195 Endnotes ……………………………………………………………………... 207 References ……………………………………………………………………... 226 v Vita EDUCATION Beijing Dance Academy, Beijing, China M.F.A., Choreography B.A. with Honors, Dance History and Theory SELECTED PRESENTATIONS AND PUBLICATIONS Publications Book Review of Revolutionary Bodies: Chinese Dance and the Socialist Legacy, by Emily Wilcox, Dance Research Journal, Vol.51, No.1. Spring 2019. pp. 103-105. Book Review of Chinese Dance—In the Vast Land and Beyond, by Shih-Ming Li Chang and Lynn E. Frederiksen, Asian Theater Journal, Vol. 35, No 1. 2018. pp. 227-229. Miao, Fangfei. “Here and Now—Chinese People's Self-Representation in a Transnational Context.” Congress on Research in Dance Conference Proceedings, Vol.2015 (Fall 2015): 111-116. Miao, Fangfei. “Modern Dance: Beauty in Ugliness.” Journal of the Beijing Dance Academy, Vol.2 (2013): 99-102. Conference Presentations Liberating the Chinese Students? Or…—The American Dance Festival at Guangzhou during China’s Reformation Period in the Dance Studies Association annual conference at Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, October 2017 From Tradition to Modernism—the Guangdong Modern Dance Experimental Program in the national SDHS/CORD annual conference at Pomona College, Pomona, California, November 2016 Modernism and Tradition—the Chinese Dancing Bodies in Luoshenfu, “Dance Under Construction XV” conference at UC Riverside, Riverside, California, April 2015 Here and Now—Chinese People’s Self-representation in a Transnational Context, SDHS/CORD annual conference at Iowa University, Iowa City, Iowa, November 2014 SELECTED HONORS AND AWARDS Dean's General Scholarship, UCLA, 2017-2018 Dean's General Scholarship, UCLA, 2016-2017 Phi Tau Phi West America Chapter Scholarship, 2015 Dean’s Department Scholarship of World Arts and Cultures / Dance, UCLA, 2014-2015 Allocation from Block Grant (Grad Division), UCLA, 2014-15 Graduate Division Award, UCLA, 2013-2014 Edna and Yu-Shan Han Award, UCLA, 2013-2014 International Studies Fellowship, UCLA, 2012-2014 Allocation from Block Grant (Grad Division), UCLA, 2012-2013 Edna and Yu-Shan Han Award, UCLA, 2012-2013 Excellent Graduate Student Awards in Beijing Dance Academy, China, 2011 Excellent Student Awards of Beijing, China, 2008 vi TEACHING EXPERIENCE Studio Courses D10 Chinese Conventional Dance independent instructor Spring 2017 UCLA D10 Chinese Conventional Dance independent instructor Winter 2016 UCLA Advanced Modern Dance Technique (Tai Chi fusion) teaching associate Spring 2010 BDA Advanced Modern Dance Technique (Tai Chi fusion) teaching associate Fall 2010 BDA Advanced Modern Dance Technique (Tai Chi fusion) teaching associate Spring 2009 BDA Dance Pedagogy teaching associate Fall 2009 BDA Lecture Courses D66 World Dance Histories teaching assistant: teach sections, grade papers Winter 2018 UCLA AA10 Arts Encounters teaching assistant: teach sections, grade papers Fall 2017 UCLA AA10 Arts Encounters teaching assistant: teach sections, grade papers Winter 2017 UCLA W100B Art as Moral Action instructor of interdisciplinary choreography sections Fall 2016 UCLA W100A Art as Social Action teaching assistant: teach sections, grade papers Spring 2016 UCLA AA10 Arts Encounters teaching assistant: teach sections, grade papers Fall 2015 UCLA W100B Art as Moral Action instructor of interdisciplinary choreography sections Spring 2015 UCLA AA10 Arts Encounters teaching assistant: teach sections, grade papers Winter 2015 UCLA Related Teaching Experience Dance instructor: Chinese folk Dance workshops, UCLA, April-June 2014 Dance instructor: Master Class of Chinese Classical Dance, UCLA, November 2013 SELECTED DANCING AND CHOREOGRAPHING EXPERIENCE Choreographer Awakening, group dance, for students in Marymount High School, March 2017 Dancer Spring Eternal, group dance, dancer, Pieter Theater, Los Angeles, December 2016 Guest artist, dancer/choreographer Here and Now, solo, Royce Hall, UCLA, March 2015 Guest artist, No Need to Critique, solo, North Campus Auditorium, UCLA, November 2014 Guest artist, Dressed in Capitalism, solo, North Campus Auditorium, UCLA, October 2014 Guest artist, dancer/choreographer Woman in Red, solo, United-Santa Clara International Dance Festival, Santa Clara State University, August 2014 Production assistant Hidden Choreographies, Lea Anderson, UCLA, Fall 2014 Dancer/choreographer Chinese Yangge, solo, Fowler Out Lord, Fowler Museum, UCLA, April 2014 Dancer/choreographer Untitled Past, solo, SDHS/CORD annual conference, Riverside, California, November 2013 Guest artist, From the New World, Harbin International Art Festival, Harbin, China, May 2011 Dancer and co-choreographer Tian Wu, group dance, Bruce Mason Centre, Auckland, New Zealand, June 2011 Dancer and co-choreographer Fading Red Memory, group dance, the Second Beijing International Modern Dance Festival, Beijing, China, April 2009 Dancer and co-choreographer New Female, group dance, the Second Beijing International Modern Dance Festival, Beijing, China, April 2009 Dancer Dance of life, group dance, the Second Beijing International Modern Dance Festival, Beijing, China, April 2009 vii Introduction I still remember the first modern dance movement I ever learned. It was a warmup movement in which we were asked to lie on the floor and stretch out, horizontally, in three different directions. At that moment, I had just become a junior year college student at the Beijing Dance Academy, China’s best professional dance conservatoire. Lying on