This thesis explores the creative processes of intercultural performance in an Asian context, through projects undertaken with Vietnam Opera Ballet Theatre, the national dance company in Hanoi. Background research to the study has enabled previously elusive research areas to be made available to English-language scholars and artists - namely, contemporary preservation of Vietnamese dance traditions and professional practice of Vietnamese dance in the đổi mới (open door policy) period. This contextual background highlights the importance of cultural specificity in intercultural performance practice, revealing insights into how and why artistic and aesthetic sensibilities shift when choreographic processes are transferred from an Australian to a Vietnamese setting. The study began with a premise of intercultural performance practice as an equitable sharing of ideas and has ended with the experience of intercultural collaboration as a transforming process, involving cultural translation to and by the local context - in this study through a process of Vietnamisation. Transformations are seen to occur via alteration of professional practices and the metamorphosis of meaning, metaphor and myth, providing substantially new readings of the original ideas. Importantly, the study points to the body as the central site of cultural difference, cultural commonalities and complex intercultural sensibilities. A dual methodology for the research combined artistic practice with theoretical reflection, resulting in a polyphonic text of written, visual and kinetic data. From the extant practice of the researcher/choreographer, a model of intercultural performance was devised which was refined as the two research projects of the pilot and case studies progressed. Reflective analysis of the model was undertaken through the framework of intercultural performance theories, parallel to the artistic practice. Throughout the research process, privileging the voices and bodies of the Vietnamese artists in both their practice and their perceptions of that practice have been fundamental to the outcomes of the study. This is the first in-depth study of contemporary professional dance practice in Vietnam and of intercultural performance practice between Australia and Vietnam.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/265733 |
| Date | January 1999 |
| Creators | Stock, Cheryl F. |
| Publisher | Queensland University of Technology |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Detected Language | English |
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