Lecture with Emily Wilcox (3/31 @ 4:30PM, Kohlberg 226)

LECTURE: “Dancing Against Euro-American Imperialism: Socialist Culture, Third World Leftism, and the Making of a Chinese Body”

When: Monday, March 31, 2014, 4:30-6:00pm

Where: Kohlberg 226

Emily Wilcox, PhD, will speak on the common misperception that dance in Mao-era China was dominated by the importation and adaptation of Soviet ballet. The lecture will include an examination of historical sources in corroboration with Chinese-language dance scholarship suggesting that China’s pre-Cultural Revolution socialist period (1949-1966) witnessed Chinese dance artists’ widespread efforts to create Chinese dance styles that would serve as alternatives to foreign dance forms.

Emily Wilcox is assistant professor of modern Chinese studies in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan. She received her PhD in 2011 from the Anthropology Department at the University of California, Berkeley. Her essays and articles have appeared in Asian Theatre Journal, Journal of the Anthropological Study of Human Movement, TDR: The Drama Review, and other venues. She is currently writing a book on dance and the construction of a national culture in the People’s Republic of China.