Professor Christopher Bannerman
First posted: March 2021
Under the heading of Intercultural Dialogic Exchange we have grouped all of the material that relates to the ResCen partnership with east Asian colleagues at Beijing Dance Academy and Taipei National University of the Arts. While this features the flagship ArtsCross initiative, still called Danscross in China, it expanded to include Shift of Balance, a British Academy-funded programme designed to deepen our dialogue and to include issues such as PhD students and the ways that practice and research can be introduced into curricula.
There are also other activities that have emerged from our exchange – conference presentations, seminar contributions, written papers and video presentations; as well as artistic projects which have been inspired by the ArtsCross performances and/or by the people who have been brought together through our partnership. The richness of the exchange is evident as is the range of interests that individuals bring to the discussions – however they are all part of the attempt to know the other and to thereby know ourselves.
This is not easy and the Sinophone context presents particular challenges and richness as the East Asian region lies outside the familiar western discourses of colonial and postcolonial interactions and theorising; despite the British presence in Hong Kong. The scope of the history is also daunting for a westerner used to dealing with centuries at most, and with specific understandings of modernity and its origins which are challenged through interacting with dynamic and fast-changing East Asian contexts. These are challenges, but often they are stimulating challenges which require another response in the ongoing dialogic exchange.
Danscross Beijing: Dancing in a shaking world
The inaugural project at Beijing Dance Academy (BDA) which featured choreographic sessions spread over many months and a final performance
2011
ArtsCross Taipei: Uncertain…waiting…
The addition of Taipei National University (TNUA) and the first intensive project involving all choreographers working simultaneously, supported by TAL Foundation and AHRC (Bannerman PI, Martin Welton CI) and UK arts partner Step Out Arts.
2012
ArtsCross Beijing: Light and Water
The second project of the BDA-TNUA-ResCen partnership involving all choreographers working simultaneously, supported by TAL Foundation and AHRC (Bannerman PI, Martin Welton CI) and UK arts partners Step Out Arts and The Place
ArtsCross 5th Anniversary
At Beijing Dance Academy and the National Centre for the Performing Arts, Beijing. Featuring selected Works from the first five years.
BDA Film: Nuo – FateNuo–Fate (2017) is an award-winning documentary film by HU Xiaojiao’s about the development in China of Mask, an ArtsCross London 2013 work. The film includes footage from London performances and academic-artist seminar sessions and traces the roots of the dance work Nuo-Mask (2016) performed at China’s National Centre for the Performing Arts, back to the rituals and folk opera forms of rural China.
Shift of Balance London
These sessions included PhD student presentations, T’ai Chi as an expression of traditional Chinese thinking and a visit to English National Ballet to see a rehearsal of Akram Khan’s Giselle
2017
Akram Khan interview
Professor Christopher Bannerman in conversation with Akram Khan discussing the creation of a solo for Chinese Classical dance artist Hua Xiaoyi
ArtsCross Beijing: Beyond the Clouds
Process and performance video documentation, performer vlog & writings, academic commentaries and papers, Conference documentation, Producers Forum documentation
2020
The Producers Toolbox: The Way/Dào of the Producer
The first two video presentations by Emma Gladstone and Farooq Chaudhry in a series focused on UK producers and presenters who talk about their work
ArtsCross Memories
In the gap caused by the covid-19 pandemic, past ArtsCross participants offer their memories and reflect on the influences of the project on their work
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