Leung, Ming Fai (2019) Ballroom dance in Hong Kong: culture and politics of appearance. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

Ballroom Dance in Hong Kong: Culture and Politics of Appearance analyses how ballroom dancers in Hong Kong transform themselves and the city with their bodies in motion. Ballroom dance is both the subject of study and a method in this research. The changing dance tradition and practices encapsulate the collective subjectivity of the city dwellers, their creative agency and everyday life as a transformative process. The analytic approach in the thesis acts, in part, as a counterargument to cultural theorist Akbar Abbas’ claim that Hong Kong culture appears in the form of dis-appearance. Formerly a British colony and currently under Chinese rule, Hong Kong’s existence is often imagined and narrated in terms of and in relation to the two powers. The persisting colonial structure of this reality, he argues, also prevents the everyday life and practices of the local dwellers to accumulate and be consolidated into social infrastructures and systems. By showing how local dancers transform the city through transforming themselves by participating in and creating a dance tradition, this research calls for a progressive understanding of Hong Kong that sees the city as built by its ordinary dwellers in their everyday life. The research employs archival materials from newspapers, journals, literary works, films and interviews to construct a cultural history of ballroom dance. Critical cultural theories are used to shed light on the contradictions and possibilities. Chapters of this research are chronologically aligned but periodized by the change internal to the dance tradition. Each chapter portrays a specific form of development in ballroom dance and interrogates particular political issues in its cultural production. This process of transition is, this research argues, propelled by the aesthetics of ballroom dance which constantly evolve in dancers’ active embodiment and seeps out of its original social and cultural contexts and physical spaces, thus transgressing the predefined demarcations.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GV Recreation Leisure H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Ballroom dancing -- Hong Kong (China), Ballroom dancing -- Social aspects, Hong Kong (China) -- Politics and government
Official Date:	May 2019
Dates:	Date Event May 2019 UNSPECIFIED
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	School of Theatre, Performance and Cultural Policy Studies
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Haedicke, Susan C. ; Shewring, Margaret
Format of File:	pdf
Extent:	vii, 250 leaves : illustrations
Language:	eng

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