Choreographing “One Country, Two Systems”: Dance and Politics in (Post)Colonial Hong Kong

This dissertation analyzes choreographic negotiations of Hong Kong’s (post)colonial political situation of “one country, two systems” since the end of British colonialism in 1997 to the present. Each chapter addresses a distinct institution and its particular navigation of this political proposal for semi-autonomy in relation to Chineseness, British colonialism, Western imperialism, and the international. Chapter one analyzes the development of the dance curriculum that trains each dancer major in Chinese dance(s), modern/contemporary dance, and ballet at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. I argue that this dance education expresses overlapping colonial, Chinese national, Cold War, and Western imperialist ideologies. The curriculum cultivates neoliberal bodies that can shift easily between cultural forms and can be hired across the globe, mirroring the city’s branding as “Asia’s World City.” Chapter two asserts that Hong Kong theater director Danny Yung levels the playing field for China and Hong Kong through collaborations with Nanjing kunqu artists. Yung’s work presents the flexible intercultural Chinese body on the Hong Kong stage by employing postmodern pedestrian movement and Western avant-garde methods of excerpting, subtracting, and reversing gender roles alongside traditional kunqu movement vocabulary. Via Yung’s curation of the Toki festival in Nanjing, kunqu performers participate in inter-Asian exchanges that allow both Hong Kong and China to participate in Chinese cultural heritage, thereby subverting nation-state heritage logic. Chapter three argues that the i-Dance improvisation festival deploys Somatic training of the “natural body” and its discourse of pre-culturality as a strategy for connecting Hong Kong to the international. Through collective workshops and improvised performances, dancers who cultivate this natural body experience a reorientation of their national identities whether from Hong Kong, China, or Taiwan. The festival neither emphasizes Chinese-Hong Kong collaboration nor neglects China completely, but rather, incorporates China into its vision of precultural harmony. It also permits pre-devised choreographic presentation that critiques Chinese cultural sources and expresses ambivalence about Chineseness, thereby undermining the strength of “one country” and Chinese masculinist agendas. The epilogue gestures to the future of dance in Hong Kong after the national security law of 2020 and the subsequent end of “one country, two systems.