Kinaesthetic empathy through the screen: what televised Chinese classical dance teaches dance movement therapy online

In the present reflection I revisit an experience that began as academic analysis and became an embodied awakening. Writing as a Chinese classical dance practitioner and performing arts researcher in Malaysia, I studied six years of dance broadcast on the Hunan Spring Festival Gala between 2020 and 2025, and found my own body responding to dancers reached only through a screen of augmented reality and LED imagery. Drawing on kinaesthetic empathy, mirror-system research, body memory, and the liveness debate, I compare watching dance on screen and live, and consider what screen-mediated resonance may mean for dance movement therapy as it moves online. I argue that the screen can dilute weight, touch, and co-regulation, yet can extend witnessing, amplify metaphor, and carry culturally rooted gesture to distant bodies. The reflection closes with proposals for practice, training, and research, including an approach to ancestral breath for practitioners to test.