Art-full collaboration: Chinese forms and motions.

Abstract

Two programs designed in collaboration with a Chinese-American dance company for New Jersey students revolved around cultural themes embedded in traditional Chinese calligraphy and dance. The programs took place in two different settings. The first was in an elementary public school that adopted an integrated world curriculum to include Chinese language and culture, and the second was at The City Museum in Trenton, which hosted a workshop titled "Forms in Motion," combining both Chinese calligraphy and dance scheduled during Black History Month for fifth graders.

Introduction

In an interview with Bill Moyers, the Confucian scholar Tu Wei-ming, identified two seemingly contradictory forces in operation in the global village at the dawn of the twenty-first century: interdependence or interconnectedness, along with a strong desire for individual roots. At the same time, there is no single global culture. Instead, there are various global cultures, with their own languages, codes, and world-views (Bradford, 2000). If community can be defined "by modes of participation and engagement, through local gatherings in a specific physical space or through the electronic media of the World Wide Web, then though there is not a single global culture,"(Pitman, 1999) it could be said that there is a New World Community.

As educators in the twenty-first century, the challenge will not only be how to prepare our students for the borderless Electronic--marketplace, but to instruct on humanity, both of the individual and of community which will be vital in forming a "global consciousness." American values stress individual autonomy, personal success in a competitive free-enterprise system. However, the American competitiveness paradigm has created widespread distrust abroad about this country's motives and practices which has resulted in trust barriers. Seen as an important core competence, trust is not only important among individuals, but within and among organizations from education institutions to governments. The competitiveness paradigm tends to reinforce a survivor mentality that is present-time oriented, whereas international and intercultural education stands clearly for change that should be future oriented. In one way, product quality can be less important than trust. For the New World Community to survive and thrive, a new consciousness will need to be nurtured in students in order to gain the higher order thinking and behaving.

Arts Collaborations

In the United States, partnerships and collaborations between arts organizations and educational institutions are a key for connecting arts standards to national goals. For example, museum-school collaborations have formed in major cities with museums and galleries that house permanent Asian collections and host special temporary exhibits. Collaborative ventures between professional arts institutions and arts professionals introduce techniques that energize school curricula, enhance teacher professionalism, and engage students in imaginative projects and hands on learning. (Piro, 1997)

This discussion will center on the artistic and cultural contributions of The Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company, a Chinese American company in two settings: one in an elementary public school in Elizabeth, New Jersey and the other at an inner city museum, which hosted a workshop titled "Forms in Motion," combining Chinese calligraphy paired with dance for fifth graders during Black History Month.

In both collaborations, cultural themes deeply embedded in traditional Chinese art were introduced to the students. While the six arts (propriety, music, charioteering, archery, calligraphy, and mathematics) were considered integral to self-cultivation, Confucians and Taoists alike shared the belief that artistic creativity surfaced desirable aspects of moral character (Tu, 1985). This discussion focuses on the way in which the arts of China can convey the humanistic elements in Chinese culture. In the school setting, non-Asian students, who are for the most part Latino and African American students, learn Chinese, a language that is foreign to most children. In addition, visiting Chinese folk craft artists, musicians and dancers ensures that the students are introduced to the diversity of the culture and the ideas rooted in China's 5000-year-old history (see Guggenheim link).

Social Capital

Because both settings involved a student population of inner-city minority students, this paper includes a brief discussion on social capital from a review of Gene I. Maeroft's Altered Destinies: Making Life Better for Schoolchildren in Need. The notion of social capital originates with James Coleman "who argued that strong families and social networks improved children's performance in the classroom" (Race, 2000). According to Coleman, social capital resides in forms of social organization that produce something of value for the individuals involved. Just as investment in the personal skills and resources embodied in human capital improves individuals' labor market prospects, so investment in the social resources contained in social capital improves individuals' life chances. For this reason, Maeroff stresses the importance of social capital outside the family as key to youth development, stressing the need for enhancement programs--such as collaboration and changes to school curriculum. Through the linking of school and community, students can experience caring and connectedness--a sense of well being that increases self-confidence and academic initiative. Finally, through a "sense of knowing," students can build knowledge, which will assist them not only in the classroom, but also eventually in the workplace (Race, 2000).

Westminster Academy 

Prior to its collaboration with the Elizabeth School District's Westminster Academy, the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company created a work titled Peach Flower Landscape, an eight-part dance commissioned by the Lincoln Center Institute for Arts in Education, New York City, in 1995. Working with teaching artists, the company's artistic director introduced concepts of Taoist and Confucian thought expressed through movement. Subsequently, the Lincoln Center workshop teachers created a study guide and curriculum for the purpose of introducing Chinese traditional values through art that could be integrated into classroom life.

Shortly thereafter, the Dance Company met with Elizabeth School District representatives. At that time, the Elizabeth School District was already considering introducing Chinese language instruction as part of the world language curriculum for its new K-8 school. Acknowledging the city of Elizabeth's unique role as an international port, the district wished to identify with world cultures, particularly that of China, which has one-sixth of the world's population. Elizabeth administrative leaders envisioned an in-depth understanding of Chinese culture, language, and values as an effective tool of empowerment for the young students in this urban community.

According to school records, Westminster Academy, Elizabeth's magnet for multi-disciplinary learning and first New Jersey School selected for educational reform, has a student representation of 52% Hispanic, 35% African American, 13% other ethnic categories. The Community for Learning (CFL) centerpiece is an integrated design framework based on collaborative process to sustain a high standard of academic achievement for each student. According to CFL literature, this framework is achieved by linking schools with resources, expertise, and energies of other learning environments (homes, churches, libraries, the workplace, higher education institutions, and community organizations). Westminster Academy, a school for students in Pre-K through eighth grades, is designed to support the belief that all students can succeed. The program accommodates varied learning styles while providing a firm foundation on which students may build life skills. The education of the whole child is key to the success of students becoming viable, caring, creative, innovative members of their community and of the world. This holistic approach further encourages the students to become continuous and collaborative learners and is an integrated approach to the curriculum that students make connections between and among the disciplines. Moreover, these curricular intersections help students to come to a deeper and more meaningful understanding of subject matter and its real-world application.

The arts, world languages, and technology are used as common threads of learning throughout the program. The languages offered are Spanish and Chinese. Spanish and Chinese are taught to Pre-K through fifth grade. Eventually, all Westminster Academy students will study both languages. In addition to art, music, and music theory, Chinese culture is also integrated into the curriculum in the language arts, social studies, as well as physical education.

Lantern Festival at Westminster Academy

Traditionally, Lantern Festival was held 15 days after the Chinese New Year celebration, which marks the arrival of spring. During Lantern Festival, villages celebrated the return of their resident scholars who are absent during the Chinese New Year Celebration. Because the relationship of teacher to student has been highly esteemed since antiquity, students paid their respect to their teachers by giving them gifts at this time of the year. The teachers in return tested their students by composing riddles. In keeping with this long tradition, riddles were posted on a board in the Westminster Academy lobby for the students to solve and to earn a prize.

In honor of The Year of the Dragon, Westminster Academy Lantern Festival opened with the traditional Dragon dance performed by students and members of the Dance Company. Each year the fourth graders are featured, and this particular year the girls performed the Lantern Dance after studying with the principal dancers, Nai-Ni Chen and Gabriel Hernan, a native of Peru, South America. The boys performed a martial arts style Fan Dance that was directed by Chien-Hui Shen, a former martial arts gold medallist in his native Taiwan. The importance of music in Confucian education cannot be overstated, for as ritualization disciplines the body, music harmonizes the body so it can appropriately express human emotions in tune with rhythm of life (Tu, 1985). In addition, there were songs in Chinese by the lower grades, performances by Chinese musicians, and solo dance numbers by members of the Dance Company. In the lobby, a Chinese calligrapher demonstrated the art of the brush and created Chinese names for the students and their parents before and after the performances. He needed assistance from the company members to supply the many requests from students and family members.

Parents at both afternoon and evening performances related how pleased they were with their children's studies of Chinese language and culture. Immigrant mothers, with the assistance of their eldest children as interpreters, also expressed their enthusiasm for their children's knowledge of Chinese culture. The dancers reported that they too felt a bonding with their dance students. The language teacher and her assistant, when asked how they felt about seeing American children perform Chinese dances and songs, exclaimed "we love it."

The Trenton City Museum

The setting for the second collaboration took place a few years earlier than the one at Westminster Academy. From December 10, 1995 to February 25, 1996, the Trenton City Museum hosted an exhibit on the theme of the Five Chinese Elements: Metal, Wood, Water, Earth, and Fire.

Traditionally, the month of February is dedicated to Black History and exhibits are mounted featuring African American artists. In the months leading up to February, the museum initiated a dialogue with some black artists asking how they felt about the museum's policy to feature black artist exhibits during the month of February. The African American artists responded frankly that while it was nice to be recognized, the fact is, they are artists the rest of the year as well. It was decided instead to use the theme of the five Chinese elements and to invite diverse artists to exhibit works based on the materials artists use to express their ideas. The possibilities of various mediums from combinations of the five elements could range from woodcuts, stone sculptures, clay, and works on paper to oil painting consisting of powdered pigments mixed with vegetable oils and applied to cotton canvas and so on. As a result, a mixed-media exhibit was produced featuring works by African American, Latino, Caucasian and Asian American artists.

While the exhibit was still in the planning stages, the museum was approached by the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company about a workshop called "Forms in Motion," which combines Chinese calligraphy and dance. The museum saw this as an ideal program to accompany the exhibit and decided to host the workshop for fifth graders from all five inner city schools that were studying world cultures. That February, three hundred students came to the museum for a guided tour of the exhibit by one of the participating African-American artists, a retired biochemist and to participate in the workshop. A master Chinese calligrapher taught students about the origins of Chinese characters and the "Four Treasures" of brush, ink, ink stone, and paper. After he demonstrated the proper way to hold the brush and paint the characters, the children sat with paper, ink and brush and imitated the calligrapher brushing their own Chinese characters in ink on paper.

The dancers then gathered the students into a large open gallery and instructed the children to think of their bodies as the brush and the space around them as the paper in order to interpret their "written" strokes into gesture. The children easily gave themselves over to the universal language of dance, as their limbs seem to float along with the notes of the Chinese dance music. Watching the children perform so effortlessly brought to mind Professor Tu's explanation that "all authentic music is said to arise from the heart and is capable of shaping the movements of the body into a graceful manifestation of the inner self" (Tu, 1985).

As a finale, the professional dancers performed the colorful and sinuous ribbon dance that resembles "dancing ink." Then, the children saw the "dancing ink" again as the calligrapher, assisted by a student volunteer, brushed an enormous Zen-like character representing a dragon on paper. In queuing to prepare to leave the museum, the children wanted to know if they would see the dancers again. They were instructed to say "zai jian" which is Chinese for "see you again," to the dancers, and left the museum content that they would reunite with the dancers in the future.

Conclusion

In the first example, the collaboration culminated in a school-and community-wide festival and in the second, a Chinese brush and dance workshop. In ancient China, festivals were a time for people to come together for family reunions. In the same way, gatherings of primary groups, such as the clan, were very significant as the means of self-cultivation, rectifying social customs, and stabilizing society whereby the people respected their origins, through following the principle of nature (Wang Liu, 1959). Though kin relationships are of utmost importance in China, one historian has pointed out that the Chinese do not know racism, because invaders were of the same anthropological stock as the Chinese. "Long historical experience had therefore conditioned Chinese thinking to a sort of culturalism (not racism or nationalism) where even foreign rule could be legitimate, if it kept to traditional values" (Franke, 1978).

In a similar way, the diaspora Chinese have carried their culture, promoting through the arts, a love of learning and other traditional values of Confucian self-cultivation. Though self-cultivation engenders respect for authority and acceptance of societal norms, it has also been criticized for imposing a rigid obedience (Strunkel, 1981). But according to contemporary Confucian scholar Tu Wei-ming, self-cultivation is much more: Decorum and right moral conduct lead to realizing another aspect of one's nature, which is referred to as xin, the Chinese word for the "heart-mind." Even though the "heart-mind" constitutes only a part of the person, Tu explains that it is also the source of profound spiritual significance that distinguishes him or her from the physical nature of animals (Tu, 1985).

Finally, both these collaborations illustrate an important point: Art is a form of communication that goes beyond the individual artist and the particular audience. It also can be an essential kind of communication of nation to nation--as these dancers move, they afford Americans a window into China's vast and ancient past.

Note

The legend of Peach Flower Village, the perfect utopian world, was written by the poet/philosopher Tau Yuan Ming in the fourth century and has since become a symbol of hope for the Chinese people over the centuries. The Chinese often refer to those who seek economic or social refuge as "seeking the land of Peach Flower Village".

References

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China 5000 Years Online Exhibition. Solomon S. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY. http://www.guggenheim.org/exhibitions/past_exhibitions/china/index.html

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Wang Liu, Hui-chen, "An Analysis of Chinese Clan Rules; Confucian Theories in Action" in Confucianism in Action. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959. Page 65.

McNichol is an Asian Art Historian, the former director of The Trenton City Museum and founder of Ren Associates in Princeton NJ. This article is adapted from a presentation to the 14th Annual Conference Education in the 21st Century for the US-Sino Consortium of Chinese and American Professors held in Xian, China.