Choreographing Asian America

1. Situating Asian American Dance Studies

- 27 1 SITUATING ASIAN AMERICAN DANCE STUDIES To understand the disciplinary stakes in terms of what it means to write about dance in the context of Asian American studies and Asian America in dance, this chapter begins with an analysis of Sue Li-Jue’s Rice Women (2000) and The Nature of Nature (2001). Questions of aesthetics, questions of politics, and questions of the pleasures of watching dancing bodies all come together in Sue Li-Jue’s self-described ‘‘Asian American dance company’’; her work offers an opportunity to reflect upon conflicting definitions of what constitutes ‘‘good art’’and‘‘goodpolitics’’withindanceandAsianAmericanstudies.Topropose a model for theorizing Asian American dance, the rest of the chapter investigates the relationship between art and politics in a two-part narrative—(1) Locating Dance in Asian American Studies and (2) Locating Asian America in Dance—to situate the particular ways in which both dance and Asian America are marginalized sites of inquiry in relationship to each other. The program notes for the September 29, 2000, performance of Facing East Dance and Music’s production of Rice Women (2000) describe the company ’s work as ‘‘expressed through modern dance with an Asian aesthetic.’’ The premiere of Sue Li-Jue’s evening-length work featured an ensemble of Asian American women working in a Limon-Humphrey modern dance vocabulary punctuated by Li-Jue’s signature barrel turns. The dancers’ bodaies were athletic, fluid, precise, and articulate as they executed the different sections of Li-Jue’s choreography that depicted, reflected upon, or embodied the experiences of Asian American women past and present—a present including that very moment of dancing itself. In an interview, Li-Jue, the artistic director of the company, pointed out that reviews of Rice Women focused the majority of their comments on a twominute section of her choreography that offered what she thought was an easy-to-read critique of stereotypical representations of Asian female sex- 28 - Choreographing Asian America uality.∞ This section of an evening-length work featured Li-Jue’s all–Asian American female dance company performing as a group of stiff-jointed dancing dolls dressed identically in glittery magenta wigs, short shorts, and tank tops. The dancing doll as a symbol of female subjugation has been a recurring role in Western concert dance since the late nineteenth century. In Arthur Saint-Léon’s Coppélia (1870) and Michel Fokine’s Petrouchka (1911), the role of the dancing doll as a nonsentient object makes visible the interchangeability of desire for live female bodies with that of mechanical bodies that magically come to life. The dolls are novel in that they can be ‘‘turned on’’ to move in public, but their real worth is their ability to come to life in the privacy of libidinal dreams. Dr. Coppelius believes his doll has come to life in what he thinks is the privacy of his workshop; and Petrouchka, alone in his room, away from the crowd at the fair, anguishes over the dancing ballerina doll. In Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov’s The Nutcracker (1891), Clara’s nutcracker, a gift from the mysterious uncle/family friend/party guest, turns into a prince who escorts her into a romantic, preadolescent dreamworld. Accompanied by a poem about China dolls and other infantilizing terms, Li-Jue’s dancing dolls do the additional work of confronting racialized mechanisms of control over and desire for Asian women and girls. Li-Jue herself appeared on stage in the persona of a young girl playing with a stack of identical blond Barbie dolls while the chorus of ‘‘live dolls’’ returned to dance behind her. This was a humorous and witty critique of the ways in which Asian American girls and women are gendered and sexualized through mass media and consumerism—and, as Li-Jue pointed out, the reviewers ‘‘got it.’’ ‘‘Getting it’’ has long been the bane of modern dance and its audiences. It is at the historical root of the antagonistic relationship between the belief that dance is supposed to act as a universal language and the not-uncommon perception of modern dance as inaccessible. Which is why I was so surprised when Li-Jue complained that the reviewers got it. Li-Jue’s point of contention was that reviewers focused their attention on the short but funny Barbie doll section of the dance and failed to write anything substantial about longer sections of what she considered complex choreography. According to Li-Jue, with...