Inter-Asia in Motion: Dance as Method

International scholars contributing to a special issue of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies journal titled “Inter-Asia in Motion: Dance as Method” bring dance research to the fore to highlight embodied practices and dance in the Inter-Asia framework. By attending to specific dance practices and choreographic methods, the symposium speakers from various cultural and disciplinary backgrounds seek to uncover how dance, by virtue of its visceral, processual, and dialogic nature, centers contingency and movement to a degree unrivaled by many other cultural practices.

Because dancers are often employed or interpolated by state and local politics, including sometimes violent nation-building projects and international diplomacy, their actions offer a concrete lens for confronting internal conflicts and power hierarchies that manifest in the cultural amplifications of Inter-Asia. Simultaneously, the featured presentations also elucidate how dancers in Asia have routinely experimented with citational and hybrid performance as a result of cultural amalgamation across borders. Speakers will explore how dancers have sought to build relationships across disparate sites and communities over cultural, regional, and ideological differences.

The symposium invites the audience to consider: What new forms of movement and creative relations does Inter-Asia activate? How do dance artists use Inter-Asia not just as a referential and conceptual framework but also as a choreographic method? How does dance both embody and reformulate the theory and practice of “Asia as method,” in turn offering its own methods for Inter-Asia cultural studies?

This two-day symposium consists of three online panels open to the public and a closed workshop (not open to the public) for reading and sharing feedback on manuscripts among the speakers.