Arts & Sciences Events

Location

Reves Hall
200 S Boundary St
Williamsburg, VA 23185Map this location

Mongolian dance is one of China's five officially promoted major minority ethnic dance styles, along with Uygur, Dai, Korean, and Tibetan dance. This talk focuses on the life and works of Siqintariha, a Mongolian woman born in 1932 who became China's most recognized female icon of Mongolian dance, and the creator of the now well-known zhongwan wu dance style, in which female performers balance stacks of porcelain bowls on their heads while dancing to Chinese-language Mongolian grassland songs. As both a Communist Party member and a role model for critically-minded minority dance artists of later generations, Siqintariha embodies the complex relationship between ethnic minority art and state authority in socialist China.