Abstract
In the late 1910s and early 1920s, a new modern self as a cosmopolitan subject grew aware of the universalized space of modern culture, in which Japan coexisted with other European countries. Though cosmopolitan and outward-looking, it was also an era of reflecting on the self as an individual before thinking about one’s relationship with society. Intellectuals actively sought to embrace the spiritual and cultural aspects of Western thought, philosophy, and literature; German idealism, Marxism theory, and Russian humanism of Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky fused in one spatiotemporal framework. In parallel with the Jazz Age in the United States and Les Années folles in France, the Age of the Dancefloor (odoriba no jidai) in Japan saw an expansion of urban lifestyle and mass consumption as well as the cultural and social transformation. I argue that in opposition to the commodification of dance, modernist dance or dance art (buyō geijutsu) emerged as an independent art medium with its radically different forms of expression and ways of looking at the world. This talk is based on unpublished and ongoing research.
Dr. Daria Solignac (Melnikova) | View
Frieberg Post-Doctoral Fellow
18/01/2023 - WED 16:30 - Room 5318
