Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 Dancing Through the Revolution:Performing Revolutionary Women in China and North Korea Performing Revolutionary Women in China and North Korea

Description

How do Confucian patriarchy and socialist imaginary form a complicit partnership in shaping women’s corporeal practices in China (PRC) and North Korea? And how do media in those states create a seamless continuity between the stage and everyday life through bodily practices such as dress codes and dance? This talk explores the ways in which China and North Korea invented revolutionary women by propagating idealized female bodily images through pervasive media practices. Although China and North Korea share a long living tradition of Confucianism and struggle against colonialism, each state took a distinctive path in promoting revolutionary ideals through women’s bodies—militaristic ballet in the case of China and traditional dance in the case of North Korea. This talk will address how performance theory and national history can ultimately account for such discursive development of propaganda practices in two East Asian socialist states.

Suk-Young Kim is Assistant Professor of Theater and Dance at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Her research has been acknowledged by the International Federation for Theatre Research New Scholar’s Prize (2004), the American Society for Theater Research Fellowship (2006), the Library of Congress Kluge Fellowship (2006-7), and the Academy of Korean Studies Encouragement of Research Grant. She is currently completing a book project titled Illusive Utopia: Theater, Film, and Everyday Performance in North Korea (University of Michigan Press, forthcoming), which explores how state produced propaganda performances intersect with everyday life practice in North Korea. Another book project, Long Road Home: Testimony of a North Korean Camp Survivor (coauthored with Kim Yong) is forthcoming from Columbia University Press.