18 minute read
A love for Chinese dance in diaspora with Alissa Elegant, Emily Wilcox and Jessica Jone
by Shanny Rann
In October 2022, the Dance Studies Association held their annual conference in Vancouver, Canada for the first time. Postponed since 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the meeting gathered dance scholars and practitioners from around the world to share information and ideas, to attend performances, and to engage one another on the state of the field. One of the conference committee members and prominent Chinese dance scholar, Emily Wilcox, reached out to me about local Chinese dance groups and immediately I thought of Lorita Leung Dance Academy (LLDA), the longest running Chinese dance company in Metro Vancouver. As packed as conference schedules are, Emily, her protégé, Alissa Elegant, and myself managed to squeeze in a visit to the dance studio of LLDA in Richmond, and were greeted warmly by the directors, Jessica Jone and Chengxin Wei.
SR: This is a lovely gathering of minds around Chinese dance. I am glad we can be together again as practitioners and scholars to talk and debrief after our visit to Lorita Leung Dance Academy (LLDA). Can we start by briefly introducing ourselves?
JJ: My name is Jessica Jone. I was born and raised in Vancouver. My mother, Lorita Leung, came to Canada in 1970. When she got here, she wanted to continue pursuing her lifelong passion in Chinese dance, so she started teaching in our home basement. It gradually grew into what is now the Lorita Leung Dance Academy.
Jessica performing in China in 1988
© Jessica Jone
I have always been a part of Chinese dance. When I was young, I used to go downstairs and watch my mom teach classes. I had the opportunity to go to Beijing Dance Academy in my teenage years to further my studies. To be completely honest, I did not expect Chinese Dance to be my career, but things happen for a reason. I have now taken over the mantle of the school. I met my husband, Chengxin Wei, at Beijing Dance Academy. He is also my partner in guiding the school.
This year will mark our 53rd anniversary. One of the things we are really proud of is our thirty-year-partnership with Beijing Dance Academy. We are the first dance academy to bring their syllabus to North America. It offers a very thorough and systematic way of training in Chinese dance, and has been a good resource that anchors us. We are honoured to be able to plant the seed here, to allow students to stay connected with Chinese dance.
AE: My name is Alissa Elegant. I grew up as a ballet dancer in the San Francisco Bay Area, where there has been a long tradition of Chinese dance. It was Professor Emily Wilcox who took me to my very first Chinese dance class when I visited her in Beijing when I was studying abroad in Shanghai. When I returned home from China, there was a dance teacher, Ah-Lan 阿岚, who had just opened up a dance studio in my community. I trained with Ah-Lan from 2008 until 2014, at which point, I went on to do a Fulbright Fellowship in the dance department of 中央民族大学 Central Minzu University of China. After that, I got my MFA in Dance and I'm now working on my PhD in Dance at Ohio State University. My research focuses on dance related to the People’s Republic of China.
Alissa teaching a dance class to children in China
© Alissa Elegant
EW: My name is Emily Wilcox. I'm an Associate Professor of Chinese Studies and Director of the Chinese Studies program at William & Mary. I grew up taking ballet classes and became serious about dance in college. I went to Harvard University where they have a competitive ballroom dance program, through which I became more aware of dances around the world. I also started studying Chinese in college. During my senior year, my ballroom dance team was invited to perform in China for two weeks. That was the first time I had ever been to Asia.
I became interested in the possibility of pursuing Chinese language and studies. For my PhD, I wrote about dance in China and spent several summers as well as a full year doing Chinese language training there. While in Beijing, I started going to Chinese dance classes, meeting people in the Chinese dance world and seeing a lot of performances. I was fortunate to get a Fulbright Fellowship to study at Beijing Dance Academy for three semesters. I studied Chinese classical dance, Chinese folk and ethnic dance, Chinese dance history and theory, as well as dance criticism. I mainly focused on ethnographic methods; I did about two hundred oral history interviews with dancers in China to understand their life experiences. I have also written and edited publications on Chinese dance history.
Emily Wilcox with classmates at Beijing Dance Academy
© Emily Wilcox
I decided to devote my career to developing Chinese dance studies as a more established field in the United States, because it was still relatively new at that time. There were other scholars who had done research on dance in China, but it was not as recognized as an academic field. That is what I have been doing for the past ten years: publishing and training students.
I have also become interested in Chinese dance in diaspora, because of amazing schools like Lorita Leung Dance Academy in Vancouver. I've gotten to know more dancers in the United States and in Canada who are doing amazing things, putting on festivals and training students. I think it's something that deserves research and attention in Chinese dance studies as well.
SR: Thank you for your introductions. I would like to bring us back to LLDA where we had the opportunity to sit in a Chinese dance class with Jessica and Chengxin. As someone who knows very little about the dance form, I was still emotionally fed. I felt it was a privilege for me to be able to witness the passion that is being transmitted by the teacher up close through the beautiful movements and gestures. Emily, would you like to share your experience?
EW: I felt the same way. It was so fulfilling to watch the class. Beijing Dance Academy is known for its Chinese classical dance tradition, having been the place where the original Chinese classical dance syllabi were created back in the 1950s and 1960s. It was gratifying for me to see that specific aesthetic in Canada, that kind of attention to the nuances of the movement, which I could instantly recognize.
The teacher brought a high level of expectation to the classroom. It seemed she wasn't simplifying things. I felt as if I were at Beijing Dance Academy or another professional classroom in China, where the standards are high. She was doing the demonstrations in a full way and expecting the students to grasp every detail, and the students were doing an amazing job embodying it. As artists, we love seeing the art practice in its fullest form. It was really amazing to witness the beauty that was being transmitted. Thank you, Jessica!
AE: I share many of the same thoughts. I could not take my eyes off the teacher. There was an incredible beauty in her movements... her breath came with a serenity.
It was a unique experience, especially in the diaspora, because a lot of dance institutions in the states, even the most prestigious ones, do not necessarily include Chinese dance. Having such a teacher who can fully embody and impart the incredible beauty of classical Chinese dance is sometimes overlooked when it happens in a diasporic space. From my experience in the US, it would be challenging for most Chinese dance students to turn professional because of the structural issues, but Chinese dance is not any less prestigious just because it is seen as amateur in this part of the world.
Alissa Elegant performing the Chinese dance 'Jasmine Flower' with Ah-Lan Dance in the San Francisco area
© Anna An
I have been working with some dancers at Ohio State University and I was getting frustrated over not being able to express certain concepts sufficiently. After watching that class, I was able to articulate better to my students There was something searing in my memory about the way the teacher embodied the dance that was just so powerful and inspiring.
JJ: Alissa, you bring up an important point around the challenging division between amateur and professional. Yes, we are amateur because we do not do this for a living. Our dancers are full-time students or they have full-time careers in other fields. We only spend a certain number of hours every week training, yet we strive to achieve professional standards.
When it comes to Chinese dance in the diaspora, as you mentioned, it is very hard to pursue a traditional career because of the lack of infrastructure. There is no outlet for a student to study Chinese dance professionally in this country. So, for us, what is most important is the end results. Some audiences, including those from China, who see our performance videos on YouTube for example, have commented that we are “ 好专业 (very professional)!” That for me is the goal—that we show what is fitting to represent Chinese dance outside of China when we go on stage.
Lorita Leung Dance Company in Embroidery of Spring
© Happy Man
We are very lucky to have such good teachers who can bring us to that kind of standard in a relatively short amount of time compared to professional training. Of course, we are not exactly on par with professional Chinese dancers in China. I think that would be very difficult, not only due to the time invested in training, but also in terms of the type of physique that is required in China and so forth.
When Shao Weiqiu came to Vancouver, she commented that what we are doing outside of China is closer to the essence of Chinese dance. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, my mother studied with Tang Mancheng and Ma Lixue, the pioneers, 老老师 (old teachers), and she continued to teach what she had learned from them in Canada.
Photo of Jessica Jone with Lorita Leung in Beijing with prominent teachers including Tang Mancheng, Gao Dakun, Wang Peiying, Liu Youlan, Feng Xiufang, Hu Erdong and Wang Liancheng
© Jessica Jone
AE: Within the past decade in the San Francisco Bay Area, there has been an influx of young teachers, who recently graduated from premier institutions of dance training in China (such as Beijing Dance Academy or Minzu University of China), and bring with them embodied knowledge shaped by a different era of Chinese dance. Is there a similar phenomenon happening in Vancouver? If so, are we having multiple temporalities of Chinese dance occurring in Vancouver?
JJ: Definitely. We hear a lot of different teachers arriving from China and starting up classes. The Chinese dance community in Vancouver is very strong, vibrant and active. There are probably at least twenty teachers from not only Beijing, but also different cities in China, such as Shanghai. We are very spoiled in Vancouver in terms of access to dance professionals from China.
I would say that the aesthetics of Chinese dance are constantly evolving even in Beijing Dance Academy, which I'm most familiar with. A lot of times, when we look at new choreographies, we feel, in a way, we are the roots of Chinese classical dance. Nowadays, the value is placed at times on athleticism and other times, we lose track of what the essence of Chinese classical dance really is. Emily, have you ever had this experience when you are looking at the more contemporary Chinese dances coming out of China?
EW: Part of why watching the class was so fulfilling for me was because the dance teacher came from the same cohort who had trained directly with Li Zhengyi and Tang Mancheng, that pioneer generation of Chinese dance.
When I was studying at Beijing Dance Academy, I remember one of my teachers, Su Ya, would invite Li Xin, who would then invite another much older teacher, Peng Alan, to come demonstrate and teach her students because she was worried that she was already losing some of the core aesthetics. She wanted to reinject that essence of what you were talking about into her students’ dance training.
Emily Wilcox with Shao Weiqiu at Beijing Dance Academy
© Emily Wilcox
Shao Weiqiu was one of my favorite teachers when I was at Beijing Dance Academy. I think I remember when she came back to Beijing from teaching in Vancouver, she said she had such an amazing experience because the students there truly appreciated her way of teaching. That is very validating as a teacher. It is interesting how the diaspora is able to maintain that kind of appreciation for a more traditional way of doing things.
I agree with you. There are many new directions happening in Chinese classical dance. As a scholar, I'm excited by that, because I see how different choreographers are reinterpreting the practice to maintain the vitality of the field. But, as a dancer, I really love and appreciate the style which is more focused on the basic steps and body movements. That's where the beauty or cultural value resides...I think there is tension between the two.
JJ: Yes, there is tension as Chinese dance evolves. The values of society are reflected in the dance. I am more traditional in the sense that I think it is important to know the root and understand the essence of something before one contemporizes it.
SR: Alissa found a 1988 pamphlet of your dance company’s China tour at the archives at the University of Michigan. Can you tell us more about it?
Pamphlet of Lorita Leung Dancers 1988 China tour at University of Michigan Chinese Dance Collection
© Alissa Elegant
JJ: We were in fact the first overseas Chinese group to be invited by the Ministry of Culture to perform in China since 1949. In recent years, our students have also gone to China to perform at Beijing Dance Academy in celebration of the 30th anniversary of their 考级院 School of Graded Examination. There were also dance groups from Malaysia, Taiwan and Hong Kong but we were the only group from North America.
EW: I remember when we were at your studio, you had a display cabinet full of competition trophies, including 海外桃李杯 Taoli World Dance Competition.
JJ: 海外桃李杯 Taoli World Dance Competition is great. It is a very positive thing for Chinese dance in North America. We have participated in two of them and we are hoping to send more students to participate. It is a worthwhile event for us because the adjudicators give feedback directly to the students and they also offer workshop masterclasses to all the participants.
Lorita Leung Dance Association, established in 1984, is a registered Canadian charity and non-profit society. Its mandate is to preserve, enhance and promote Chinese dance culture in Canada and North America. We used to organize the North American Chinese dance competition, which ran from the early 1990s to 2006. Participants came from the US and other parts of Canada. We would invite one adjudicator from China alongside two Canadian adjudicators. At that time, there was not any form of dance competition, specifically for Chinese dance, so we wanted to create a platform for dancers to have access to knowledgeable judges, who could give them meaningful feedback. It would help enhance their Chinese dance training in North America and fill a gap. As we discussed already, it is not easy to pursue a Chinese dance education outside of China.
AE: There are many things that contribute to the challenges of pursuing Chinese dance in North America, but if you could imagine a different world where we could get past those challenges, what would you imagine that infrastructure to be?
JJ: First of all, there needs to be an overall increased awareness that Chinese dance exists, so that we do not get questions like “What is Chinese dance?”, “Is it lion dance?”, “Is it fan dance?”. There is definitely a need for more exposure, more visibility for Chinese dance.
Once we have that, we can start to look at whether it is possible to have professional or semi-professional dance companies in North America. Until there is an audience for Chinese dance, I do not think professional Chinese dance companies will come to fruition.
Lorita Leung Dance Company in 晨光曲 Dawn In Shanghai
© Jessica Jone
When Shanny told me that there are scholars, especially non-Chinese scholars, in the US studying Chinese dance, I was thrilled. I feel supported. This is amazing! We need to create a network where we can have the opportunity to discuss and learn from each other, exchange ideas and grow this seed in North America. I am thankful to have met all of you and that you were able to come into our space, and share this love and appreciation for the Chinese dance culture.
EW: I felt so welcomed when we came to your school. I appreciate that Shanny made it possible. I knew that Vancouver was a hub for Chinese dance. I was excited to go to Vancouver and maybe have the chance to see something. I also appreciate that you welcomed us and allowed us into your space with such openness to watch the class—just be there—and be present in the studio. I am excited to have this connection and hopefully we can do more in the future.
AE: I also want to thank you for welcoming and letting us watch the class. It was so inspiring. As a PhD student and also during my MFA, getting access to that level of Chinese dance training and research access to Chinese dance is a challenge, so it was inspiring to see the best of the best here in North America. Thank you!
Jessica Jone is a Chinese dance educator who was born in Vancouver, and received her early dance training from her mother, Lorita Leung. She received her professional training in Chinese classical and folk dance at the Beijing Dance Academy and the Guangdong Dance School in China, and is also a graduate of the contemporary dance program at Simon Fraser University. In addition to being the Director of Lorita Leung Dance Academy, Jessica is a Senior Instructor of the Beijing Dance Academy Chinese Dance Graded Examination Syllabus (CDGES), and regularly teaches the CDGES Teacher Certification program to Chinese dance teachers across Canada. Jessica is an accomplished dancer and seasoned performer who has won many awards for performance and choreography, including the Chairman’s Award at the Fourth Tao Li Competition in Beijing, Highest Overall Score, Most Promising Dancer Award and two Best Choreography Awards at the North American Chinese Dance Competition. Jessica is also a co-founder of the cross-cultural contemporary dance company, Moving Dragon.
Alissa Elegant is a dance artist and scholar researching and practicing Chinese dance and ballet. She practiced Chinese dance in the diaspora and on a Fulbright Fellowship in Beijing, taking classes at Minzu University, and participating in field research alongside local professors. Her foundational ballet training is with Ronn Guidi of the Oakland Ballet Company, who is known for reconstructing early modern ballets. She has set pieces on the dance company World Dance Fusion and shown work at Dixon Place in New York. She earned an MFA in choreography from Temple University and is working toward a PhD in dance studies at Ohio State University Her essay "Dancing Revolutionary Change: China Railway Cultural Work Troupe's Dance Drama Wang Gui yu Li Xiangxiang" won a Dance Study Association 2021 Selma Jeanne Cohen Award.
Dr. Emily Wilcox is an Associate Professor of Chinese Studies at William & Mary. She holds an undergraduate degree from Harvard University, an MPhil from the University of Cambridge, and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Wilcox publishes actively in both English and Chinese, and she frequently gives lectures around the world, especially in Asia.Wilcox is an award-winning scholar of modern and contemporary China whose work spans the fields of PRC history, inter-Asia cultural studies, Chinese ethnic minority studies, and transnational Sinophone and Chinese diaspora studies. She is a recognized international leader in the study of Chinese dance and performance. Wilcox’s first book, Revolutionary Bodies: Chinese Dance and the Socialist Legacy, was published by the University of California Press in 2018 and won the 2019 de la Torre Bueno Prize® from the Dance Studies Association.
