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<p>“Guangchangwu,” or what is literally translated as “square-dancing,” is a form
of public dance that has been exceedingly popular, albeit controversial, in China
over recent years. Most of the participants are elderly women in their late-50s or
above, who roughly fall in the category called “dama” (“big-mother”). Usually, a dancing
group assembles in the evening and dances on a daily basis to the music played through
a portable loudspeaker. Yet, because many dancing sites are in or close to residential
compounds, the music played, or, the alleged “noise pollution,” have caused numerous
conflicts nationwide. During the summer 2014, I conducted a three-months fieldwork
on the dance in China. In this thesis, I first demonstrated how a specific guangchangwu
dancing group organized in relation to the space it occupied, then I traced the media
discourse of guangchangwu and showed how it became linked with elderly women, dama.
I argue that this seemingly new and overwhelmingly women-dominated public dance emerges
from a series of long existing activities, the embedded gender politics of which articulates
China’s recent and ongoing revision of policies and laws regarding birth control and
the retirement age. Moreover, it is precisely against the backdrop of such social
discourse that the practice and persistence of individual dancing groups becomes meaningful:
through an effective organizational structure, these elderly women made their existence
visible, audible, and their stories irreducible.</p>
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