I wanted to follow the post on cultural appropriation with a contrasting highlight of cultural expression. While this entry involves a different medium from fashion, namely dance, I’m sharing a video of a solo I choreographed last spring. 春天醒了 | Spring Awakenings is a hybrid of classical Chinese dance’s expressive canon and contemporary movement, with an intent to explore and celebrate an emerging dance style rooted in Asian American identity.
春天醒了 | Spring Awakenings also became the finale to my micro-documentary, Dance and Identity: An Exploration of Contemporary Asian American Dance. In the micro-doc (included below), I investigated contemporary Asian American dance as a genre first by examining distinctions stemming from technical differences between classical ballet and traditional Chinese dance, including hand gestures, footwork, and balance positions. These differential techniques then become infused in contemporary dance generally versus contemporary Asian American dance. Next, I explored the specific inspirations in contemporary Asian American dance that make this style distinct within modern and contemporary dance. These references range from the fun and lighthearted, such as anime, to more historically- or culturally-rooted elements like martial arts or the Thousand Hand Guanyin (an incarnation of Buddha in China), a formation that often appears in traditional Chinese dance and can also be used with great effect and cultural flair in a hip hop group piece, where the dancers line up behind one other while their arms extend in varied positions. Finally, contemporary Asian American dance may express the unique themes echoed in other mediums—literary, musical, or artistic—by Asian American creators, whether a search for self or home, a reflection of a group’s particular experience in diaspora, or a specific cultural valence.
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