Inventing the Tradition: Hybrid Gudianwu Training and Ambiguous Chineseness

Abstract: Since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, Chinese dance pioneers have experimented with creating a national dance form, Zhongguo gudianwu 中国古典舞 (Chinese classical dance), to promote Chinese national and cultural identity. In the 1950s, dance pioneers drew upon the training method of Soviet ballet and movements from xiqu 戏曲 (traditional Chinese theatre) to institutionalize a gudianwu training system at Beijing Dance School. While the practice of gudianwu was paused during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), since the 1980s the school’s gudianwu pioneers aimed at reviving the national dance form to restore unique Chinese characteristics. As an invented tradition, however, the hybridity between ballet and Chinese traditional performances challenges the essentialist Chineseness and reveals gudianwu as postcolonial modernity.