Paper short abstract:

This paper examines dancing as a socio-historical process through which East Asian countries formulated projects of cultural renovation under a local version of gradually globalised ideologies and world view. It focuses on Shinbuyo, Japanese 'New Dance', which emerged in the early 20th century.

Paper long abstract:

This paper intends to delineate the intermediating dimension between Europe and Asia that dancing has created during the last few centuries in the island chains of East Asia, including Japan, Okinawa and Taiwan. Started from a dramatic record of an encounter between the British Captain Basil and the Okinawan people in the colonial epoch, the paper mainly investigates dancing as the social and historical process through which East Asia countries formulated projects of cultural renovation under a local version of gradually globalized ideologies and world view. The analysis is focused on the created genre of Shinbuyo, which means 'New Dance' in Japanese, for its connection with the Europe-based dance movement and schools, such as the Danza Nouveau and Dalcroze's Eurythmics. The artistic category of Shinbuyo and its development highlights that the input of new body techniques as cultural forms has been implied with the original and shared humanity, and hence allowed different cultural bearers to create, beyond language barriers, exchange with each other under certain social and historical context in the first half of the twentieth century.