This article provides a close analysis of Dance on Hands (《掌上舞》, Zhangshang wu), performed by the Chinese popular gewu tuan (song and dance troupe) Meihua shaonü gewu tuan (梅花少女歌舞团, Plum Blossom Girls’ Song and Dance Troupe). In this article, I analyze twelve photographs of Dance on Hands alongside literary descriptions of the Han Dynasty empress Zhao Feiyan’s dance of the same name. Drawing on newspaper reports from the 1930s and 1940s, as well as intersecting secondary sources on literature, theater, and physical culture of the period, I situate Dance on Hands within China’s colonial modern context. I argue that the performance negotiates a dynamic interplay between tradition and modernity, as well as Chinese and Western femininity, while also traversing racialized, classed, and gendered boundaries between the popular and the avant-garde.