UCLA

This dissertation project investigates the aesthetics and cultural-political implications of new experiments in screendance carried out by four different generations of dance artists in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) since the early 1990s. This rapidly developing and ever diversifying field of kinesthetic and cinematic practices is often referred to in Chinese as wudao yingxiang (舞蹈影像 dance-moving image). Circulating at local or international dance film festivals and exhibitions, in museums and gallery settings, on television, on the Internet, and through social media platforms, these experimental dance-moving image productions take part in the expanding global screendance scene and contribute to shaping imaginaries of Chinese identities and lived experiences in and beyond postsocialist China.

Through film analysis, choreographic analysis, ethnography and archival research, this study sheds light on the unique role of dance-moving image in engaging with and intervening in China’s social cultural transitions through both filmic representation and corporeal embodiment. This project focuses on three specific modes of dance-moving image productions, namely dance television, experimental dance documentary, and experimental dance shorts, each embodying a diverse range of artistic imagination or conceptual innovation. These case studies complicate the dominant narrative of screendance in English-language literature by delineating different historical processes taking place in mainland China.

This dissertation presents three key arguments. First, wudao yingxiang in China is not a monolithic art genre nor should it be seen as merely a Western import. Rather, different modes of dance-moving image practice emerged out of interconnected yet distinct artistic genealogies and respond to different sets of social historical conditions in China. Second, I reveal how the growing dance film practices are not isolated from the global screendance scene but take part in transnational cultural flow. In this exchange, dance filmmakers negotiate with the productive tension between establishing culturally distinct expressions of screendance and adopting Euro-American aesthetics in particular. Third, this project, while presenting both works created by male and female choreographers, highlights the significant contribution of female artists in shaping the field of screendance in the PRC and in constructing the imaginaries of Chinese cultures and memories through screen choreography.