Twice a week, about two-dozen retirees meet at the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association for two hours of ballroom dance. Women slip into glittery heels as men sort the sign-in sheet and song selection. As the music starts to reverberate into the old wooden floorboards, feet begin to shuffle to the rhythms of foxtrot, waltz and rumba.
There is a wide regional variety in language, cultural practices and socioeconomic status present in the dance hall, reflecting the size and diversity of China itself. Among the dance patrons, there are retired accountants, engineers, professors, doctors, restaurant owners, day laborers, and housewives. People hailing from two of the largest migrant-sending regions to Boston—Guangdong Province and Hong Kong—constitute more than half of the dancing population. The rest come from various other provinces including those in northern China, as well as Shanghai and the island of Taiwan. |
“We all come from different parts of China, from Beijing to Shanghai to Guangzhou. We all speak different languages.
At ballroom you don’t need words you just need dance.” – Jing Chen |
As is typical in Boston Chinatown, the air is dominated by exchanges in Cantonese, though other languages that fill the hall include Mandarin (the official language of the People’s Republic and Taiwan) and Taishanese, a dialect from Guangdong Province. Most dancers corral with friends from their same tongue, though language does not hinder any dancing among the group as a whole.
While the variety of dances may be similar to commercial social dance halls in China, the Boston Chinatown dance hall is a hodgepodge of regional variations of styles. As such, the Chinese “national consciousness” being played out on the dance floor is an old-fashioned, cultural mishmash. Ballads by Taiwan’s Deng Lijun (Teresa Tang) and PRC songs idolizing Chairman Mao bring about the same amount of nostalgia.
As an art form and as a practice, Chinese ballroom dance is a paradox of collective and individual identity expression. In a predominantly Anglo-Saxon city outside of the dance hall—these participants are used to being labeled, in the most blanket of terms, as immigrant Chinese. And in one sense, the dance hall patrons reinforce this homogenous national concept—they come to the weekly sessions to find company among their Chinese friends, to listen to Chinese music, and to speak Chinese.
While the variety of dances may be similar to commercial social dance halls in China, the Boston Chinatown dance hall is a hodgepodge of regional variations of styles. As such, the Chinese “national consciousness” being played out on the dance floor is an old-fashioned, cultural mishmash. Ballads by Taiwan’s Deng Lijun (Teresa Tang) and PRC songs idolizing Chairman Mao bring about the same amount of nostalgia.
As an art form and as a practice, Chinese ballroom dance is a paradox of collective and individual identity expression. In a predominantly Anglo-Saxon city outside of the dance hall—these participants are used to being labeled, in the most blanket of terms, as immigrant Chinese. And in one sense, the dance hall patrons reinforce this homogenous national concept—they come to the weekly sessions to find company among their Chinese friends, to listen to Chinese music, and to speak Chinese.
“My generation is a very awkward generation. We carry the new and old together. We have a responsibility to the old generation, and also we have a responsibility to the new generation. We’re stuck in-between.”
– Ginny Chang |
And yet like the hodgepodge of songs that float through in the air—this awkward mixing of Chinese aesthetics allow the dancers to celebrate their different backgrounds and experience. Through slight variations in song and dance, the patrons are able to express the tremendous linguistic, political and ethnic discrepancies that make each of them unique. Ballroom dancing is both a locus for collective memory and a platform for personal identity building.
The nature of contemporary ballroom dancing lacks any fixed identity or national custom. No country can claim authority over the practice of modern, competitive ballroom dance. When Boston Chinatown’s retirees are waltzing on the floor, they are not longing to escape communism, or hastening to become ‘‘Westerners.” Rather, they are embracing a transitory identity. Ballroom dancing is the very attempt to respond to intercultural existence through the body. The very act of ballroom dance reflects and resists cross-cultural values simultaneously. This is the universality of ballroom dance. |