Chinese Dance: National Movements in a Revolutionary Age, 1945-1965

The University of Michigan Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies and the University Library are pleased to announce a new exhibition, Chinese Dance: National Movements in a Revolutionary Age, 1945-1965, to be held in the Hatcher Graduate Library Gallery and Asia Library Reference Room, March 1-May 15, 2017. Featuring materials from the University of Michigan Library’s Asia Library, home of North America's largest collection of research materials on Chinese dance, the exhibition introduces modern Chinese dance history through issues of ethnicity, nation, gender, and class. It tells the stories of individual dancers and choreographers, exploring the relationships among dance, popular media, and global exchange during a time when China and the United States had little direct cultural contact.

 

The exhibition is co-curated by Emily Wilcox (Department of Asian Languages and Cultures) and Liangyu Fu (Asia Library) and co-sponsored by the U-M Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies and the University Library. Materials on display include digitized photographs, performance programs, archival materials, books, and videos.

 

In tandem with the exhibition, the Library is launching the Pioneers of Chinese Dance Digital Archive, a digital photograph collection designed to make the history of twentieth-century Chinese dance accessible to international researchers. Currently including more than 1,500 digital images, the project was started at the U-M Asia Library in 2014, with support from the Center for World Performance Studies, the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, and the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies.

 

If you would like additional information about the exhibition and digital archive, please contact Liangyu Fu (liangyuf@umich.edu).