Asian Futures initiative event
The concept of Third World unity emerged in the mid-twentieth century as a way of forging political alliances and solidarities among Asian, African, and Latin American people, by focusing on shared experiences of colonial history and decolonial struggle and imagining possibilities for global interaction beyond the bipolar Cold War framework. In this talk, Wilcox explores uses of performance, especially dance, to build and enact Third World solidarities. Through examples such as the 1930s Central Asian dances of Chinese-Trinidadian dancer Sylvia Silan Chen and the 1960s Asia-Africa-Latin America programs of China’s Oriental Song and Dance Ensemble, Wilcox asks what it means to choreograph solidarity.
Emily Wilcox is Associate Professor, Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, and Program Director of Chinese Studies at William & Mary. Wilcox’s first book, Revolutionary Bodies: Chinese Dance and the Socialist Legacy (University of California Press, 2018), won the 2019 de la Torre Bueno Prize© from the Dance Studies Association. Wilcox is co-editor of Corporeal Politics: Dancing East Asia (University of Michigan Press, 2020) and co-creator of the University of Michigan Pioneers of Chinese Dance Digital Image Archive. Wilcox is a 2021 Wilson Center China Fellow and 2021-2023 Public Intellectuals Program Fellow at the National Committee on US-China Relations.
To attend this event in person, please register here.
To attend via Zoom, register here.
If you require an accommodation such as live captioning or interpretation to participate in this event, please contact HCC. Requests made at least 7 days before the scheduled event will allow us to provide seamless access.
