Corporeal Politics

NEW PUBLICATION: Corporeal Politics: Dancing East Asia, edited by Katherine Mezur and Emily Wilcox

The new book Corporeal Politics: Dancing East Asia, edited by Katherine Mezur and Emily Wilcox, was published by the University of Michigan Press in September 2020. It is part of the Studies in Dance History book series and is the first book-length academic study of multiple genres of dance across the East Asia region. Contributors come from across the US and East Asia and include leading scholars of East Asian dance and performance studies, history, and literary studies.

Corporeal Politics investigates the development of dance as a deeply meaningful and complex cultural practice across time, placing special focus on the intertwining of East Asia dance and politics and the role of dance as a medium of transcultural interaction and communication across borders. Countering common narratives of dance history that emphasize the US and Europe as centers of origin and innovation, Corporeal Politics demonstrates the expansive creativity of dance artists in East Asia and asserts the region’s importance as a site of critical theorization and reflection on global artistic developments in the performing arts. Corporeal Politics addresses a wide range of performance styles and genres, including dances produced for the concert stage, as well as those presented in popular entertainments, private performance spaces, and street protests.

Link: https://www.press.umich.edu/11521701/corporeal_politics

Table of Contents

Introduction: Toward a Critical East Asian Dance Studies
Emily Wilcox

Part 1: Contested Genealogies
Chapter 1. Sexuality, Status, and the Female Dancer: Legacies of Imperial China

Part 2: Decolonizing Migration
Chapter 4. Murayama Tomoyoshi and Dance of Modern Times: A Forerunner of the Japanese Avant-garde
Kazuko Kuniyoshi
Chapter 5. Korean Dance Beyond Koreanness: Park Yeong-in in the German Modern Dance Scene
Okju Son
Chapter 6. Diasporic Moves: Sinophone Epistemology in the Choreography of Dai Ailian
Emily Wilcox
Chapter 7. Choreographing Neoliberal Marginalization: Dancing Migrant Bodies in the South Korean Musical Bballae (Laundry)
Ji Hyon (Kayla) Yuh

Part 3: Militarization and Empire
Chapter 8. Masking Japanese Militarism as a Dream of Sino-Japanese Friendship: Miyako Odori Performances in the 1930s
Mariko Okada
Chapter 9. Imagined Choreographies: Itō Michio’s Philippines Pageant and the Transpacific Performance of Japanese Imperialism
Tara Rodman
Chapter 10. Exorcism and Reclamation: Lin Lee-chen’s Jiao and the Corporeal History of the Taiwanese
Ya-ping Chen

Part 4: Socialist Aesthetics
Chapter 11. Choe Seung-hui Between Classical and Folk: Aesthetics of National Form and Socialist Content in North Korea
Suzy Kim
Chapter 12. The Dilemma of Chinese Classical Dance: Traditional or Contemporary?
Dong Jiang
Chapter 13. Negotiating Chinese Identity through a Double-Minority Voice and the Female Dancing Body: Yang Liping’s Spirit of the Peacock and Beyond
Ting-Ting Chang

Part 5: Collective Technologies
Chapter 14. Cracking History’s Codes in Crocodile Time: The Sweat, Powder, and Glitter of Women Butoh Artists’ Collective Choreography
Katherine Mezur
Chapter 15. Fans, Sashes, and Jesus: Evangelical Activism and Anti-LGBTQ Performance in South Korea
Soo Ryon Yoon
Chapter 16. Choreographing Digital Performance in Twenty-First-Century Taiwan: Huang Yi & KUKA
Yatin Lin

Coda: To Dance East Asia
Katherine Mezur