Title: The folkloric, the spectacular, and the institutionalized: touristifying ethnic minority dances on China's southwest frontiers
Abstract: This article examines the upsurge of producing ethnic minority dance spectacles for tourists in contemporary Yunnan, southwest China. This new wave, along with the shift from the folkloric to the spectacular and professional, indicates a distinct scenario of transformation as the productions of these performances are shaped by the intriguing collaboration among capitalist tourism enterprises, regional governments, and art professionals who are engaged in the state-promoted institutionalization of ethnic minority dances. This article questions what scripts underlie this collaboration and how the collaboration itself structures the artistic presentations and the politics of representation on the stage. Through a case study of Mengbalanaxi, a large-scale ethnic minority dance show in Xishuangbanna, this article argues that this trend transforms the produced dance spectacles into regional–cultural brands under the state and local governmental discourses of cultural industry and regional development. It also forms a powerful channel of institutionalizing ethnic minority dances outside the mainstream art institutions as well as on a larger scale. The re-configured dance presentations on the stage promote a nuanced narrative of the embodied ethnic cultures, transmitting and simultaneously re-shaping the tourist imaginary of China's national other in this era.
Publication Year: 2012
Publication Date: 2012-03-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 9
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