The concept of Inter-Asia (Chen Reference Chen2010a; Chen Reference Chen2010b; Chua Reference Chua, Johnson Carol, Mackie and Morris-Suzuki2015; Niranjana Reference Niranjana2006; Ong Reference Ong2011) has developed as a corrective to the Western-centric and colonialist concept of “Asia,” in particular in response to criticisms of area studies’ role in US (neo)imperial expansion. The first US interdisciplinary area studies programs strategically sought to elevate understanding about other parts of the world in reaction to perceived geopolitical threats fueled by the world wars and the Cold War (Shih Reference Shih2019). Inter-Asia moves past a nation-state model of relationship and aligns with decolonial perspectives. Inter-Asia in Motion: Dance as Method re-publishes twelve articles from the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies journal, two by the co-editors and ten that were curated by the co-editors in an issue devoted to Inter-Asia dance studies. In the introduction to the book, co-editors Emily Wilcox and Soo Ryon Yoon describe how they view the project as an “initial foray” (4) into, rather than a comprehensive look at, all that encompasses Inter-Asia dance studies. Even so, the book is ambitious, both in scale and intent. By turning a journal issue into a book, the co-editors emphasize the importance of the content and their intention to establish a sub-field (or perhaps a “super-field”) that moves to integrate dance studies and Inter-Asia cultural studies by treating dance as “a fertile space for emergent methodologies, one that supports diverse forms of expertise and multiple ways of knowing and conducting research” (3). The editors make transparent their process as well as their backgrounds in anthropology and performance studies. Of note is the book’s focus on dance artists, embodied epistemologies, performance description, and choreographic experimentations as they ask, “How do artists use Inter-Asia both as a referential and conceptual framework and as a choreographic method?” (1).
By opening this interdisciplinary conversation, the book answers clarion calls to scholars in both cultural studies and dance studies to recognize the multiplicity of cultural production, identity formation, and power dynamics associated with the geographic imaginary of “Asia.” The scope of this book’s case studies works against geo-politically inaccurate notions of “Asian dance” as well as what dance scholar Ananya Chatterjea has highlighted as the homogenization of contemporary dance performance in Asian contexts (2013, 12). Chatterjea writes, “Repeatedly I have bemoaned the erasure of difference under the wonderfully unifying and legitimizing aesthetic category of ‘contemporary dance’ (really meaning Euro-American modern/contemporary dance) that seems to dominate much of what is seen of ‘Asian’ choreography in these fora that currently represent the global stage” (10). Moreover, many authors of Inter-Asia in Motion: Dance as Method directly engage cultural studies scholar Kuan-Hsing Chen’s influential book Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization, which advocates for undoing imperialization, colonization, and Cold-war power dynamics in Asia by removing the “West” as default referent. For instance, scholars should consider Japanese imperialism and Chinese hegemony in Asia, not only frame colonialism within an East-West rubric. The book also dovetails with Shu-mei Shih and Françoise Lionnet’s book Minor Transnationalism, which highlights case studies of minoritarian expressive culture that relate to majoritarian culture through multi-directional flows of global capital and colonial power. These overarching theoretical thrusts of Inter-Asia in Motion: Dance as Method make it essential for any scholars working on dance in East, South, and Southeast Asia and/or Global Asias/Asian diasporas. Echoing the expansive intent of Inter-Asia as a framework, the authors speak from multiple cultural and national positions; they are currently based in academia in London, Indonesia, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, Korea, Australia, China, Hong Kong, and the United States.
While undermining traditional geographical boundaries and rejecting comparative analyses that treat national or regional dances as homogenized forms, this book successfully demonstrates the broad range of methodologies and genres that can encompass Inter-Asia dance studies. In terms of methodologies, the book showcases ethnography, historical archival analysis, film and media analysis, choreographic analysis, discourse analysis, and practice-as-research methods. The range of dance forms subverts traditional/contemporary binaries that are often ascribed to Asian dance forms. Not only are the genres diverse, but the inclusion of dance forms in Inter-Asia that dialogue across cultures and nations successfully accomplish the editors’ goals to communicate Inter-Asian dance as heterogeneous. While many of the chapters address dance in relation to national identity, colonial imperialism, expansion of capitalism, World War II, and the Cold War in the twentieth century, others address dance performance, festival, or screendance that has occurred in the twenty first century. This is another way that the book refuses Orientalist conceptions of Asian dance forms as inherently traditional. A particular strength is that several chapters address how artists themselves are navigating these issues. Due to the book’s legibility, range of content and methodologies, and the article-length chapters, this book is an accessible teaching tool. Where departments and instructors are invested in decolonizing curricula, the chapters could be assigned to undergraduate or graduate students in dance studies courses, as well as dance-making courses.
After a concise and clear introduction that states the inspiration for creating the book as well as definitions of Inter-Asia and Inter-Asia dance studies, the co-editors lay the foundation for the rest of the book with well-researched and thoroughly argued chapters. In the chapter “‘Gangnam Style’ in Dhaka and Inter-Asian Refraction,” Soo Ryon Yoon argues that a flash mob dance with “easy-to-mimic choreography” (18) is not necessarily apolitical or inherently liberatory, and endures beyond its assumed physical and discursive ephemerality. Via a case study in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Yoon shows how “Gangnam Style,” taken out of its American viral context, functioned in a disruptive flashmob that led to online debate about Bangladeshi national culture. Yoon’s theoretical frame of refraction works well to consider the redirections and transformations of the South Korean music video.
This chapter dialogues well with chapters that analyze very recent dance examples off the proscenium stage, from workshop, festival, and film dance settings that, taken together, ask about understandings of authenticity; rubrics of the classical; and practice as dance history research. Kristin Rudisill summarizes the components of authentic Bollywood according to Japanese interlocutors at the Namaste India Festival in Tokyo. Ping-Hsiu Alice Lin asks: “What happens when the classical moves?” (66) while examining Indian Kathak teaching and learning contexts in Hong Kong—a center of global capital and commercial culture—where Kathak represents ethnicized folk identities. Jihoon Kim analyzes Nam Hwayeon’s intermedial artwork that confronts ephemerality by reviving and complicating Korean dancer Choi Seung-hee’s choreographic methods (which integrated Chinese, Japanese, and Korean traditions).
The chapters that explore earlier histories establish the historical precedent of these transnational movement flows within Asia as well as interculturalism not defined by East/West relations. For example, in the chapter “Performing Bandung: China’s dance diplomacy with India, Indonesia and Burma, 1953-1962,” Emily Wilcox states the important contribution of presenting pre-Cultural Revolution dance as a mode of cultural diplomacy to undermine narratives of Mao-era China as culturally isolated. Wilcox studies a series of exchanges between China and Burma, Indonesia, and India in the 1950s through historical materials, including rare photographs that add to the explanation of the chapter. In order to reject Western imperialism more generally and Eurocentric notions of dance, Chinese leaders promoted mutual learning from other Asian countries. Of particular interest in this chapter is the fact that Chinese state leaders required dancers to study these other forms seriously despite dancers’ cultural prejudice. The process often involved ethnic impersonation–a phenomenon which Wilcox analyzes appropriate to its context, ultimately arguing for the sincerity and labor involved in such cultural exchange.
Dance as cultural diplomacy is a common framework for Inter-Asian dance throughout this book. Yukiyo Hoshino writes about how Taiwanese and Japanese dancers performed for soldiers in the Japanese occupied Burmese area during the Sino-Japanese War in the 1940s. Darlene Machell de Leon Espena looks to the “theatricality of diplomacy” (51) from 1953-1970 when the Cambodian Royal Ballet and Khmer dance troupes entertained Asian diplomatic visitors. She frames dance as integral to understanding postcolonial Cambodian national identity. All of these chapters, along with Wilcox’s, would dialogue well with scholarship on US dance and cultural diplomacy (Croft Reference Croft2015; Prevots Reference Prevots1998) for a dance studies course syllabus. In addition, dance history course syllabi would benefit from Priyanku Basu and Beiyu Zhang’s chapters on how traveling dance artists established national identity surrounding Pakistan and Singapore’s independence from British colonial rule.
Some chapters would especially enrich dance-making courses that tend to privilege “Western” dance forms and conceptions of choreography. Aparna R. Nambiar, drawing from her insights as a dramaturg and dancer, puts forth the notion of choreographic reassembly (a selection process) that Bharatanatyam artists conduct in order to negotiate Singaporean state funding and Indian classical dance audience expectations. I-Wen Chang asserts a South-South choreographic coalition between Taiwanese artist Wu-Kang Chen (contemporary dance) and Thai artist Pichet Klunchun (Thai Khon dance and contemporary dance) as they question performance conventions. Sadiah Boonstra and Paul Rae find evidence of intra-Indonesian and Indo-Australian creative processes by conducting close readings of Indonesian authored dance commissioned for Melbourne’s 2020 Asia-Pacific Triennial of Performing Arts.
Inter-Asia in Motion: Dance as Method exemplifies how scholars can move beyond US-centric and Euro-centric research to learn about danced relationships without the “West” as a constant referent. In doing so, this book dovetails well with Ananya Chatterjea’s decolonial work that centers artists of the Global South who challenge the hegemony of white aesthetics and undermine pervasive traditional/contemporary binaries (2020). When taken together as a book, the coupling of larger theoretical throughlines with specific movement description and choreographic analysis, archival evidence, and ethnographic observations and interviews, demonstrates the potential of Inter-Asia dance studies to capitalize on the strengths of dance studies. Because these authors engage cogently with theory, scholars of Asian studies and Global Asias can understand how dance is both content and method of research. The book format advocates strongly for a burgeoning scholarly subfield and makes an inspiring collection for courses on dance and Asian diasporas, dance histories, dance and space, and dance and politics.
