Methodological Reflections on Cross-Cultural Creation between Eastern Aesthetics and Modern Dance

Abstract

The cross-cultural creation between Eastern aesthetics and modern dance has been getting more popular; however, there are no methodological reflections until now. We take the bodily substrate of the core categories of Eastern aesthetics as our entrance for research and study how the bodily episteme was ruptured while encountering the categories such as qiyun, yijing, and liubai with modern dance. Through analyzing the structural tension between the ontology of a modern dance body and the transcendent concept of a body in Eastern aesthetics and the displacement and deformation of categories on migrating across cultures, we reveal that there exists an inner split within the creative methodology (the separation of form from spirit, the contradiction between linear and cyclical time, and the cultural unconscious conflict between geometric and resonant space). To solve these dilemmas, we propose changing from the fusion paradigm to the tension-coexistence paradigm, demonstrating the methodological significance of the negative path, emphasizing the methodological self-awareness and self-criticism of the creative subject. Not about synthesizing the categories, it's about structuring the difference and voids where meaning is generated through cross-cultural creation.