Revolutionary Bodies: Chinese Dance and the Socialist Legacy by Emily Wilcox

Revolutionary Bodies: Chinese Dance and the Socialist Legacy is the first monograph by Emily Wilcox. In this book, Wilcox examines the history of Chinese dance development in the People's Republic of China (PRC) from its emergence in the 1940s. This groundbreaking research highlights the practices of Chinese concert dance and provides enormous historical sources for the reader. Before the publication of Revolutionary Bodies, Chinese dance studies (in English) were shaped by socialist propaganda and Asian performance studies which focused on Chinese revolutionary ballet and the performance practices other than dance. In this text, Wilcox, who conducted intensive fieldwork at the Beijing Dance Academy (Beijing Wudao Xueyuan 北京舞蹈学院), shifts from her previous anthropological project to primarily historical research of Chinese dance. In this innovative scholarship, Wilcox places the development of Chinese dance at the intersection of modern Chinese history and individual dance artists' narratives. She argues that Chinese dance should be seen as a complex cultural phenomenon rather than a monolithic political production. While this research is not able to cover all the details of 70-years' Chinese dance evolution, Wilcox's book crystallizes the prolonged, massive, and diverse PRC dance history into a comprehensive assessment and provides an example for scholars who research on this topic.

In the introduction, Wilcox raises three core principles that define Chinese dance as a genre: kinesthetic nationalism, ethnic and spatial inclusiveness, and dynamic inheritance (p. 6). The concept of "kinesthetic nationalism" is expanded from the Chinese language ideas of "national form" (minzu xingshi 民族形式), a discursive concept that relates to aesthetic form and nationality. The idea of "ethnic and spatial inclusiveness" explains the multiplicity of Chinese dance forms which developed from the diverse ethnic communities and geographic regions across China. The third principle, "dynamic inheritance," is the balancing of maintaining and innovating traditional performance forms. These three principles are important concepts underpinning Wilcox's arguments and analysis of Chinese dance throughout the book.

In chapter 1, Wilcox examines the personal experience and artistic contribution of the most important figure of Chinese dance, Dai Ailian, and dance groups which also contributed to the creation and standardization of Chinese dance as a national form. As a member of Chinese diaspora, Dai's interest in Chinese dance was influenced by the racial discrimination experienced during her career in England. After coming to China in the early 1940s, Dai's dance work drew upon Chinese local performances and highlighted non-Han cultures. Aside from Dai's contribution, Wilcox also recognizes the other two dance developments during wartime China. One is New Yangge, a dance project advocated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Yan'an that based on the folk dance practice of yangge, and the other is Wu Xiaobang's New Dance. Throughout the narrative of Dai's experience, Wu's New Dance, and New Yangge, Wilcox maps out the trajectory of the emergence of modern Chinese dance and the history of its development during the 1940s.

In chapter 2, Wilcox analyzes a variety of dance experiments in the early PRC. Among the experiments on stage and in the classroom, the dance program established by the Korean dancer Choe Seung-hui (Cui Chengxi) had a great impact on China's dance development. Choe's program divided traditional performance sources into two categories: Chinese folk dance that emphasized performance by peasants and Chinese classical dance that focused on training students the basic movement that based on xiqu (traditional theatre) techniques. This pedagogical method was later adopted by the Beijing Dance School which standardized and disseminated it across the country.

In chapter 3, Wilcox examines the primary development of Chinese dance from the late 1950s to the early 1960s. Internationally, Chinese dance as a predominant national dance genre was circulated on global stage through the dance competition of the World Festival of Youth and Students (WFYS). By calling for "socialist cosmopolitism" and featuring the national folk dance of socialist countries, the WFYS dance competition allowed Chinese artists to represent Chinese dance from diverse ethnicities and regions. Domestically, the creation of national dance drama proved the maturity and professionalism of Chinese dance and dancers. Modeled after Soviet ballet, national dance drama presented Chinese-themed stories and dance vocabularies. With the resources and financial support from the state, ensembles created enormous dance dramas in a variety of styles, especially during the period of the Great Leap Forward (1958–1960). While the aim of rapid macro-economic production of this period is often considered a severe failure in the PRC history, Wilcox contends that it successfully induced many large-scale dance-dramas which created the golden age of Chinese dance. In chapter 4, Wilcox examines the relationship between revolutionary ballet and other genres of Chinese concert dance and challenges a commonly held view that revolutionary ballet was always privileged in socialist China. Going beyond revolutionary ballet of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), Wilcox traces the development of ballet in China from the 1930s to the early 1960s and its subordinated status in comparison to Chinese dance forms in the early Maoist period. From early 1964, Wilcox indicates, a radical and counterrevolutionary political shift derived from the inner CCP conflict ultimately foregrounded revolutionary ballet to the exclusion of all other dance forms.

In chapter 5, Wilcox illustrates the revival and innovation of Chinese dance in the post-Mao era (beginning in 1976). After the Cultural Revolution, the return of persecuted dancers, dance institutions, and dance repertoires represented a full-scale revival of Chinese dance that was supported by the new PRC leadership. This revival also called for the restoration of local movement vocabularies and aesthetics based on xiqu and folk dance. The new dance creations in the late 1970s include Yang Liping's "peacock dance" and the development of the Dunhuang style; these demonstrated diversification of post-Mao dance culture. According to Wilcox, these dances not only inherited the local dance conventions (from Dai ethnicity and Dunhuang art respectively) but also emphasized creativity. In chapter 6, Wilcox examines how this dual approach of inheritance and experimentation continues in dance education and creation in the twenty-first century. By providing three case studies, Wilcox shows the continued principles of national dance forms and early socialist legacies in dance research and programs at conservatories as well as types of contemporary Chinese dance innovation by different artistic groups.

In Revolutionary Bodies, Wilcox shows that Chinese dance is in many ways a communist legacy of the Maoist era (which Wilcox terms the "red legacy") and an ongoing national project in contemporary China. She recognizes that the label of "red" is not simply assigned to the artistic production of the Cultural Revolution. The "decentralized historical origins," the emphasis of local aesthetic, the diversity of expression, and the dynamic political representation of Chinese dance all form the socialist red legacy (p. 213). The chronological arrangement of the book provides the reader a comprehensive understanding of how Chinese dance is preserved, transformed, and continued in the twenty-first century China. By examining eighty-years of Chinese dance, Wilcox covers almost all the aspects of the form and its connections with socialist aesthetics and politics of modern China.

Wilcox also provides an example of the study of Chinese revolutionary culture. Rather than viewing Chinese cultural productions as a monolithic entity, Wilcox utilizes the study of Chinese dance to perceive the internal complexity and multiplicity of Chinese socialist culture. Her keen observation and critical analysis of various dance productions unveil a diverse landscape of socialist dance and reaffirm the multiplicity of Chinese socialist culture by referring to more than a hundred dance pieces, artists, and almost fifty ensembles. Wilcox attentively discusses at least two dance productions in each chapter and includes historical and textual analysis, vivid dance descriptions, and rich critical records. Beyond her poetic and animated dance descriptions, the book also provides codes for readers to scan with their cell phones to watch dance videos accompanying the text. I would strongly recommend Revolutionary Bodies to readers who are interested in Chinese dance and culture, not only because of its groundbreaking research but also its eminent readability. As the first U.S.-based scholar who focuses on Chinese dance studies, Wilcox's book is exemplary scholarship that serves as a map guiding researchers who continue the studying of this field.