1 - Dancing Sino-African Solidarities in the 1960s: Anti-Colonial Perceptions of Black Bodies in Revolutionary China

After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, efforts by the United States to suppress communist movements around the world created barriers for China’s international relations. Beginning in the mid-1950s, the Chinese government employed cultural exchanges, including dance, as one way to facilitate relations outside of formal diplomacy. This was known as “people’s diplomacy.” It was in this context that the PRC sent its first arts and culture delegation to Africa in 1956, visiting Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia, followed by an acrobatic troupe to Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, and Ghana in 1957, a song and dance group to Egypt in 1958, and another acrobatic troupe to Sudan, Ethiopia, Guinea, and Morocco in 1960. African countries reciprocated by sending an Algerian art troupe to China in 1960, cultural delegations from Sudan and Ethiopia in 1961, a Guinean national dance ensemble in 1964, and a song and dance ensemble from the Republic of Congo in 1964.

This paper examines the reporting of these exchanges in Chinese media, with a focus on how dance mediated Chinese experiences of Africa and knowledge about African people, society, and culture during this crucial era of Sino-African relations. Scholarship in dance studies has often emphasized how perceptions of African dancing bodies reinforce colonial and racist stereotypes of Black people in European and US contexts. Here, I look at how Chinese representations of Black dancing bodies differed from these patterns, instead identifying in them positive values such as anti-colonial aesthetics, revolutionary power, and cultural complexity.