Emily Wilcox (University of Michigan)

In 1958, the Matsuyama Ballet of Japan toured the first ever ballet adaptation of the classic Chinese land reform opera "The White-Haired Girl" in China. Examining Chinese-language sources such as newspaper and magazine reviews and rare original programs held in the University of Michigan Asia Library's Chinese Dance Collection, Professor Wilcox reconstructs the circulation and reception of this work in China, arguing that the production represented an attempt to create a leftist Sino-Japanese counter-public at a time of Cold War tensions between the two countries. She suggests that the Japanese ballet dancers' cross-ethnic performances of Chinese characters critically reconfigured pre-1945 Japanese imperialist discourses of pan-Asianism, leading them to be interpreted as acts of inter-ethnic solidarity in the context of 1950s Asian internationalism.