Choreographing and Reinventing Chinese Diasporic Identities - An East-West Collaboration

In demonstrating Eastern- and Western-based Chinese diasporic dances as equally critical and question-provoking in Chinese identity reconstructions, this research compares choreographic implications in the Hong Kong-Taiwan and Toronto-Vancouver dance milieus of recent decades (1990s 2010s). An auto-ethnographic study of Yuri Ngs (Hong Kong) and Lin Hwai-mins (Taiwan) works versus my own (Toronto) and Wen Wei Wangs (Vancouver), it probes identities choreographed in place-constituted third spaces between Chinese selves and Euro-American Others. I suggest that these identities perpetrate hybrid movements and aesthetics of geo-cultural-political distinctness from the Chinese ancestral land ones manifesting ultimate glocalization intersecting global political economies and local cultural-creative experiences. Echoing the diasporic habitats cultural and socio-historical specificities, they are constantly (re) appropriated and reinvented via translation, interpretation, negotiation, and integration of East-West cultural-artistic and socio-political ingredients. The event unfolds such identities placial uniqueness that indicates the same Chinese roots yet divergent diasporic routes. In reviewing Ngs balletic and contemporary photo-choreographic productions of post-British colonial Hong Kong-ness alongside Lins repertories of Chinese traditional, Taiwan indigenous, American modern and Other artistic impacts noting Taiwanese-ness, the study unearths cultural roots as the core source of Chinese identity rebuilding from East Asian displacements. It traces an ingrained third space between Chinese historic-social values, Western cultural elements, and Other performing artistries of Hong Kong and Taiwanese belongings. Juxtaposing my Chinese traditional-based and transcultural Toronto dance projects with Wangs Vancouver balletic-contemporary fusions of Chinese iconicity, Chinese-Canadian identities marked by a hyphenated (third/in-between) space are associated as varying North American self-generated routes of social and artistic possibilities in a Canadian mosaic-cosmopolitical setting the persistent state of Canadian becoming. My conclusion resolves the examined choreographic cases as continually developed through third-space instigated East-West cultural-political crossings plus interpenetrative local creativities and global receptivity. Of gains or losses, struggles or rebirths, the cases of placial-temporal significations elicit multiple questions on Chinese diasporic cultural infusions, social sustenance, artistic integrity, and identity representations amid East-West negotiations my experiential reflection on the dance role and potency in the reimagining and remaking of Chinese diasporic identities

Dance, Culture and Nationalism: the Socio-cultural Significance of Cloud Gate Dance Theatre in Taiwanese Society

The socio-cultural significance of Cloud Gate Dance Theatre (est. 1973) in Taiwan is manifested in the interconnection of political nationalism and the representation of a diasporic postcolonialist cultural nationalism in its dance creations. The hybrid nature of Taiwanese society and its struggle between Chinese and Taiwanese nationalism are reflected in the motive behind the creation of the company, the evolution of its repertoire and changes in its nationalist stance. The creation of Cloud Gate, the first Taiwanese contemporary dance company, was stimulated by its founder Lin Hwaimin's enthusiasm for Taiwan Chinese nationalism. The name Cloud Gate Dance Theatre not only relates to Chinese dance history and the formation of Chinese mythological nationalism, but also indicates the hybrid nature of Taiwanese society. In brief, Cloud Gate's multi-cultural dance creation is generated by diasporic Chinese for diasporic Chinese. In the light of intensifying Taiwanese nationalism on the island the evolution of the Cloud Gate repertoire (between 1973-1997), which began by juxtaposing Chinese and Western dance elements before integrating Chinese, Western, Taiwanese, Taiwanese indigenous and various Asian dance elements, reflects the company and Taiwanese society's search for a Taiwanese cultural and political identity. Among the Cloud Gate repertoire, Legacy (1978) and Nine Songs (1993) are considered to exemplify most this distinct socio-cultural phenomenon-the interaction and interconnection between dance, culture and nationalism in the context of the formation of Taiwan as a postcolonial society in opposition to Chinese nationalist hegemony. A research methodology for the socio-cultural analysis of dance is developed, with specific relevance to the Cloud Gate repertoire, which incorporates methods originating in sociology of dance and choreological studies. This is supported by a documentary research method which draws on theories and analytical methods of sociology and dance history. Zelinger's (1979) theory of semiotics of theatre dance is applied to bring together sociological and choreological methods. The examination of Thomas' (1986) sociological analysis of dance, Adshead's (1988) and Sanchez-Colberg's (1992) dance structural analysis leads to the development of a new method of analysis. Geertz's (1973) concept of `Thick description' provides the theoretical ground for the interpretation of data collected through the analysis of extrinsic and intrinsic features of cultural phenomena. Consequently the significance of the dance in question can be addressed in terms of the complex network of interpretations of it within its socio-cultural context

Taiwanese identity and the performing arts: the development of programming at the National Performing Arts Centre

This thesis explores the correlation between changes in Taiwanese identity and presentations of the performing arts at Taiwan’s National Performing Arts Centre, formerly the National Chiang Kai-shek Cultural Centre, an institution that operates at arm’s-length from the Government. It also investigates the way the Centre operates in relation to national cultural policy. The evolution of Taiwanese identity and government cultural policy between 1949 and 2017 is analysed with a special focus on 1987-2017 to see whether any changes are reflected in the Centre’s programmes. Senior politicians, artists and arts administrators were interviewed about the way government cultural policy is formulated and how programming at the Centre has responded. All confirm that changes in cultural policy are only related to the work of the Centre through a general understanding of the zeitgeist, rather than ministerial demands. Government policy is worded so generally that it does not dictate how the Centre should operate, so although programming has changed along with cultural policy, it is not because of it. Analysis of the Centre’s programming shows that it reflects the way the performing arts in Taiwan have developed along with its identity from traditional Chinese to multicultural Taiwanese. The Centre responds to national identity and also helps to create it. Thus, programming mirrors the development of the way both cultural policy and Taiwanese identity has changed. The Centre is responsible to a government-appointed Board, rather than to the Government itself, but this does not mean that it is free of government control. The Centre values its freedom of operation but is sensitive to the unwritten limits to its activity and to its dependency on continued government subsidy

2018 GREAT Day Program

SUNY Geneseo’s Twelfth Annual GREAT Day.https://knightscholar.geneseo.edu/program-2007/1012/thumbnail.jp

Trance as Artefact: De-Othering transformative states with reference to examples from contemporary dance in Canada

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Department of Dance Studies, University of Surrey, United Kingdom.Reflecting on his fieldwork among the Malagasy speakers of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean, Canadian anthropologist Michael Lambek questions why the West has a “blind spot” when it comes to the human activity of trance. Immersed in his subject’s trance practices, he questions why such a fundamental aspect of the Malagasy culture, and many other cultures he has studied around the world, is absent from his own. This research addresses the West’s preoccupation with trance in ethnographic research and simultaneous disinclination to attribute or situate trance within its own indigenous dance practices. From a Western perspective, the practice and application of research suggests a paradigm that locates trance according to an imperialist West/non-West agenda. If the accumulated knowledge and data about trance is a by-product of the colonialist project, then trance may be perceived as an attribute or characteristic of the Other. As a means of investigating this imbalance, I propose that trance could be reconceived as an attribute or characteristic of the Self, as exemplified by dancers engaged in Western dance practices within traditional anthropology’s “own backyard.” In doing so, I examine the degree to which trance can be a meaningful construct within the cultural analysis of contemporary dance creation and performance. Through case studies with four dancer/choreographers active in Canada, Margie Gillis, Zab Maboungou, Brian Webb and Vincent Sekwati Mantsoe, this research explores the cultural parameters and framing of transformative states in contemporary dance. I argue that trance functions discursively and is rooted in a cultural and rhetorical context which is collaboratively constructed as both an embodied state or process, and as an artefact. As a discourse, trance problematizes issues of multiculturalism, decolonization, migration, embodiment, authenticity, neo-expressionism and the commodification of trance practice in a post-modern, transnational, economically globalized world. The West’s bias exists due to its investment in maintaining philosophical authority over the non-West and its attachment to notions of “high” culture. By expanding the range of possible sites for trance experience and by investing in previously unapplied theories such as flow, the potential exists to situate and to regard trance as other than Other to the West

The Object of Platform Studies: Relational Materialities and the Social Platform (the case of the Nintendo Wii)

Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System,by Ian Bogost and Nick Montfort, inaugurated thePlatform Studies series at MIT Press in 2009.We’ve coauthored a new book in the series, Codename: Revolution: the Nintendo Wii Video Game Console. Platform studies is a quintessentially Digital Humanities approach, since it’s explicitly focused on the interrelationship of computing and cultural expression. According to the series preface, the goal of platform studies is “to consider the lowest level of computing systems and to understand how these systems relate to culture and creativity.”In practice, this involves paying close attentionto specific hardware and software interactions--to the vertical relationships between a platform’s multilayered materialities (Hayles; Kirschenbaum),from transistors to code to cultural reception. Any given act of platform-studies analysis may focus for example on the relationship between the chipset and the OS, or between the graphics processor and display parameters or game developers’ designs.In computing terms, platform is an abstraction(Bogost and Montfort), a pragmatic frame placed around whatever hardware-and-software configuration is required in order to build or run certain specificapplications (including creative works). The object of platform studies is thus a shifting series of possibility spaces, any number of dynamic thresholds between discrete levels of a system

Representing Asian-ness through Contemporary Dance: Case Studies of Five Dance Companies in Singapore

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Acculturation and nonverbal interaction patterns in the relationship between parents and their young adult children in Chinese-American immigrant families: An observational case study

Two Chinese-American families, Family J and Family K, both with young adultchildren, were studied in this mixed method collective case study. This study focuses onthe nonverbal interactions between parents and their adult children in Chinese-Americanimmigrant families. The specific purpose of this study is to derive a holistic description ofthe family’s functioning through systematic observation of the nonverbal interactionpatterns, using the Nonverbal Assessment of Family Systems (NVAFS), and the familymembers’ responses to the self-report questionnaire: FamilyAdaptability and CohesionEvaluation Scale IV (FACES IV). Observational data from the NVFAS and the self-reportquestionnaire FACES IV were considered in relation to parents’ and adult children’s levelsof acculturation as measured by the General Ethnicity Questionnaires, available inChinese (GEQC) and American (GEQA) versions. The research question: What is therelationship between levels of acculturation, intergenerational family functioning, andnonverbal communication patterns in Chinese-American families?M.A., Creative Arts in Therapy -- Drexel University, 200