An Image that Resonates: Yang Liping and the Evolution of Contemporary Chinese Folk Dance
An Image that Resonates: Yang Liping and the Evolution of Contemporary Chinese Folk Dance

Author(s): Emily Wilcox
Subject(s): Anthropology, Theatre, Dance, Performing Arts
Published by: Етнографски институт САНУ
Keywords: Chinese dance; contemporary folk dance; peacock dance; Yang Liping; Yunnan
Summary/Abstract: Yang Liping (b. 1958) is China’s most successful contemporary folk dance choreographer. Beyond being famous among dancers, she has achieved the status of a mainstream popular celebrity, balancing her reputation as a fine artist and cultural purist with success in the commercial arena. Drawing on nearly two decades of ethnographic and archival research in China, as well as analysis of Yang’s dance performances, interviews, and visual media representations, this article asks how Yang achieved this unprecedented success through contemporary folk dance choreography. The paper examines Yang’s rise to fame since the late 1970s through her transformation of an iconic Chinese folk image: the peacock dance. Peacock dance uses elements of a mythological story from Buddhist literature with a type of village dance performed in one particular ethnic group in China and adapts it into a multimedia national image that gets reproduced in film, visual art, and dance choreography. The paper shows how Yang has deftly adapted the peacock dance into her own signature brand through a series of multimedia platforms, while she maintains an emphasis on dance, a charismatic public persona, and a unique yet constantly adapting contemporary folk aesthetic as the core of her appeal.

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