The History Of Chinese Dance

At publication date, a free ebook version of this title will be available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Revolutionary Bodies is the first English-language primary source–based history of concert dance in the People’s Republic of China. Combining over a decade of ethnographic and archival research, Emily Wilcox analyzes major dance works by Chinese choreographers staged over an eighty-year period from 1935 to 2015. Using previously unexamined film footage, photographic documentation, performance programs, and other historical and contemporary sources, Wilcox challenges the commonly accepted view that Soviet-inspired revolutionary ballets are the primary legacy of the socialist era in China’s dance field. The digital edition of this title includes nineteen embedded videos of selected dance works discussed by the author.

A History of Ancient Chinese Music and Dance describes the history of music and dance in ancient China in the past five thousand years in the forms of poems, music and dance. It includes court music and dance, music and dance in drama and folk music and dance. It covers historical and professional knowledge such as music, dance, poetry and drama. The book consists of eleven chapters, from ancient times to the Ming Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty. In each chapter, there are historical background, music and dance works, people, events, and related poetry and images. The Yellow Emperor created tonality for wind instruments. Emperor Yao and Emperor Shun invented musical instruments qin and se. Duke of Zhou made system of rites and music. Apart from these, music, dance and acrobatics in the Qin Dynasty and the Han Dynasty, grand compositions in the Tang Dynasty and the Song Dynasty and music and dance in drama in the Ming Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty can all lead us to the long developing process of ancient music and dance. The book was the Project of 2003 National Tenth Five-Year Plan for Art Science in China. It was co-funded by the National Publishing Fund and “China Classics International” of the General Administration of Press and Publication.

As China becomes increasingly important in world relations, many components of the country’s cultural arts remain unknown outside its borders. Shih-Ming Li Chang and Lynn E. Frederiksen’s Chinese Dance: In the Vast Land and Beyond undertakes the challenge of discovering the relationship between Chinese dance in its many forms and the cultural contexts of dance within the region and abroad. As a comprehensive resource, Chinese Dance offers students and scholars an invaluable introduction to the subject. It serves as a foundation of common knowledge from which Chinese and English-language communities can begin a cross-cultural conversation about Chinese dance. The text, along with a comprehensive glossary of key terms, gives English-language readers a chance to understand the development of Chinese dance as it is officially articulated by historians and dance scholars in Asia. An online database of video clips, an extensive bibliography, and Web-based appendices provide a broad collection of primary source materials that invite interactive and flexible engagement by a range of users. The inclusion of interviews with Chinese dance practitioners in North America offers a view into the Asian diaspora experience.

This accessible, illustrated introduction explores the history of Chinese music, an ancient, diverse and fascinating part of China's cultural heritage.