Luminos is the Open Access monograph publishing program from UC Press. Luminos provides a framework for preserving and reinvigorating monograph publishing for the future and increases the reach and visibility of important scholarly work. Titles published in the UC Press Luminos model are published with the same high standards for selection, peer review, production, and marketing as those in our traditional program. www.luminosoa.org Revolutionary Bodies Revolutionary Bodies Chinese Dance and the Socialist Legacy Emily Wilcox UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Oakland, California © 2019 by Emily Wilcox Suggested citation: Wilcox, E. Revolutionary Bodies: Chinese Dance and the Socialist Legacy. Oakland: University of California Press, 2019. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.58 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Wilcox, Emily, 1981- author. Title: Revolutionary bodies : Chinese dance and the socialist legacy / Emily Wilcox. Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Wilcox, emily 2019 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses | Identifiers: LCCN 2018023689 (print) | LCCN 2018031703 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520971905 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520300576 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Dance—China—History. | Socialism and dance—China—History. | Choreography—China—History. Classification: LCC GV1691 (ebook) | LCC GV1691 .W55 2019 (print) | DDC 792.8/0951—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018023689 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For my dance teachers CONTENTS List of Illustrations and Audiovisual Media ix Acknowledgments xi Intr oduction. Locating Chinese Dance: Bodies in Place, History, and Genre 1 1. From Trinidad to Beijing: Dai Ailian and the Beginnings of Chinese Dance 13 2. Experiments in Form: Creating Dance in the Early People’s Republic 48 3. Performing a Socialist Nation: The Golden Age of Chinese Dance 78 4. A Revolt from Within: Contextualizing Revolutionary Ballet 119 5. The Return of Chinese Dance: Socialist Continuity Post-Mao 156 6. Inheriting the Socialist Legacy: Chinese Dance in the Twenty-First Century 186 Glossary of Chinese Terms 215 Notes and References 232 Index 286 List of Illustrations and Audiovisual media MAP 1. Locations in China and surrounding regions mentioned in this book xvi FIGURES 1. Photograph of Dai Ailian 9 2. Photograph of Choe Seung-hui 11 3. Photograph of New Yangge in National Day Parade 27 4. Photograph of Wu Xiaobang 29 5. Photograph of “Ba’an xianzi” 35 6. Photograph of Qemberxanim 41 7. Photograph of Long Live the People’s Victory 49 8. Photograph of Braving Wind and Waves to Liberate Hainan 53 9. Photograph of Peace Dove 56 10. Photograph of Qemberxanim on Northwest Nationality Cultural Work Troupe tour 62 11. Photograph of Choe Seung-hui with students at the Central Academy of Drama 70 12. Photograph of Beijing Dance School graduates and teachers 74 13. Photograph of “Lotus Dance” in National Day Parade 79 14. Photograph of “Lotus Dance” on China Art Ensemble tour 82 15. Photograph of China Experimental Opera Theater Dance Team in training 96 ix x List of Illustrations, Audiovisual Media 16. Photograph of Magic Lotus Lantern 101 17. Photograph of Five Red Clouds 110 18. Photograph of Dagger Society 113 19. Photograph of Hu Rongrong 125 20. Photograph of Lady of the Sea 129 21. Photograph of Red Detachment of Women 147 22. Photograph of Yang Liping 165 23. Photograph of peacock dance performed with traditional props 168 24. Photograph of Zhao Shutun and Nanwuluola 171 25. Photograph of Dunhuang Mogao cave reconstruction 176 26. Photograph of “Apsaras” 181 27. Photograph of Gulmira Mamat 187 28. Photograph of Dances of the Great Land 191 29. Photograph of “Rouge” 205 30. Photograph of Fat Tang Thin Song 209 VIDEO CLIPS 1. Clip from “The Mute Carries the Cripple” 14 2. Clip from “Yao Drum” 15 3. Clip from “Plate Dance” 63 4. Clip from “Red Silk Dance” 72 5. Clip from “In the Rain” 87 6. Clip from “Reba on the Grassland” 88 7. Clip from Magic Lotus Lantern 100 8. Clip from Five Red Clouds 109 9. Clip from Dagger Society 115 10. Clip from “Spring, River, and Flowers on a Moonlit Night” 142 11. Clip from “Fires of Fury Are Burning” 143 12. Clip from “Female Civilian Soldiers” 144 13. Clip from “Sunflowers Face the Sun” 148 14. Clip from “Spirit of the Peacock” 166 15. Clip from Peacock Princess 172 16. Clip from Flowers and Rain on the Silk Road 178 17. Clip from “Girl in Bells” 189 18. Clip from “Rouge” 204 19. Clip from Fat Tang Thin Song 210 Acknowledgments This book has been a long time in the making and would not have been possible without the help of many generous people and institutions. I first visited China in 2002 as an undergraduate student dancer on a tour with the Harvard University Ballroom Dance Team. I am thankful to James Wang, who organized the tour, and to the U.S.-China Media and Publishing Association, its sponsor, as it was this two-week trip that opened my eyes to the world of dance in China. At Harvard I benefited from the mentorship of several professors, notably anthropologists Arthur Kleinman and Michael Herzfeld and performance scholar Deborah Foster, who guided my initial forays into dance ethnography. In 2003–4 a John Eliot Scholarship from the Harvard-Cambridge Foundation supported my year of study at the University of Cambridge, where historians of science Andrew Cunningham and Simon Schaffer advised me in historical methods. In 2005–8 I benefited from intensive language training at Princeton in Beijing and the Inter- University Program for Chinese Language Study at Tsinghua University. This was made possible by generous grants from the UC Berkeley Center for Chinese Stud- ies, the UC Berkeley Anthropology Department, the US Department of Education Foreign Language and Area Studies Program, and the Blakemore and Freeman Foundations. While living in Beijing, I also had the chance to begin training in Chinese dance, thanks to community outreach programming at the BeijingDance/ LDTX Dance Center. My teachers there, Wang Zhuorao and Chen Jie, inspired me to embark on this journey. In 2008–9 I had the amazing opportunity to spend three semesters as a visit- ing graduate student at the Beijing Dance Academy (BDA), China’s premier pro- fessional dance conservatory. This experience provided the basis for my doctoral xi xii Acknowledgments dissertation and was generously supported by scholarships from the Fulbright Institute of International Education and the University of California Pacific Rim Research Program. I am eternally grateful to the administrators and staff at BDA, who supported my application and granted me this rare chance to study alongside China’s most elite dance students. No words can express the deep gratitude I have to my professors at BDA, whose classes in many ways planted the seeds for this book. They include my water sleeve professor, Shao Weiqiu; my sword dance pro- fessor, Zhang Jun; my bare-handed shenyun professor, Su Ya; my Dunhuang dance professor, He Yanyun; my Uyghur and Han folk dance professor and Chinese national folk dance pedagogy professor, Jia Meina; my Chinese classical dance pedagogy professor, Xiong Jiatai; my Han-Tang Chinese classical dance history and theory professor, Du Le; my Chinese dance basic training professor, Yang Ou; my dance pedagogy theory professor, Lü Yisheng; my xiqu theory and history pro- fessor, Li Jieming; and my dance criticism professor, Xu Rui. Others who provided me invaluable training in Chinese dance during and after this period include Chen Jie, who taught me Han-Tang Chinese classical dance; Surongna and Wu Dan, who taught me Mongol dance; Liang Yujian, who taught me sword dance; Li Mei, who taught me Korean dance; Wang Jie, who taught me Dai and Tibetan dance; and Jin Ni, who taught me Shangdong Jiaozhou yangge and Korean dance. While I was studying at BDA, I conducted short-term field research in a vari- ety of institutions in Beijing and other places across China, including Chongqing, Fujian, Guangdong, Inner Mongolia, Liaoning, Shaanxi, Shandong, and Sichuan. The aid of countless individuals made these projects possible. A few who went above and beyond, even hosting me in their own homes, were Mandy Xia, Zheng Qu, and Zhao Yuewei. In the course of this research, over one hundred and fifty professional dancers of various ages and backgrounds graciously shared their life stories with me through formal interviews. The stories they shared inspired my interest in Chinese dance history, igniting many of the questions that fueled the research for this book. The result of my initial field research was a doctoral dissertation submitted in 2011 to the Anthropology Department at the University of California, Berkeley, for a degree in the UC Berkeley/UCSF Joint PhD Program in Medical Anthropology, supported by the faculty research group in Critical Studies in Medicine, Science, and the Body. Although the dissertation bears little resemblance to this book, it was formative in making the research for this book possible. Thus, I am tremen- dously grateful to my dissertation chair, anthropologist Liu Xin, as well as to my dissertation committee members: anthropologists Vincanne Adams and Alexei Yurchak, performance scholar Shannon Jackson, and historian Michael Nylan.