Mit Assoz. Prof. Dr. Ruard Absaroka von der Universität Salzburg

Dienstag, 19. Mai 2026 | 15:15–16:45 Uhr | Forum Asia Pacific | Sigmund-Haffner-Gasse 18, 3. Stock, HS 888 | 5020 Salzburg | Austria

The Chinese “dance drama” known as wǔjù (舞剧), is a modern hyper-mediated form of grand spectacle that cannot easily be pigeon-holed. It draws on long traditions of performing arts that include multiple forms of Chinese opera (such as jingju and kunqu) and narrative song (shuochang yishu), but also on more recent developments from ballet, modern dance, experimental and avant-garde theatre, music theatre, even acrobatics, the “model operas” of the Cultural Revolution era, and now digital arts. While directed primarily at an audience in China itself, the grandiosity of both content and form speak to a widespread nostalgia-inflected need in 21-century China to re-discover if not re-invent a cultural past. This all also tends to be entirely consonant with the soft power cultural projection and geopolitical ambitions of a state that is keen to support a strengthening of cultural self-confidence. Both popular interest and state patronage guarantee lavish productions, full venues, impactful performances in contexts of state/sport/tourist ceremony, and ubiquitous mass-media dissemination (especially TV/streaming).

Wuju is now a very prominent fixture in the landscape of contemporary Chinese performance arts. The rapidly expanding output of recent years testifies to the fact that the form is a flourishing site of major creative endeavour and innovation to which the most esteemed directors, composers, choreographers and artists contribute. The complex polysemic cultural texts that arise (on topics deemed both “classical” and contemporary) are embedded in local, national and global histories. Curiously, the contexts and arts genealogies are little-known internationally. Indeed, wuju as a phenomenon has yet to garner the focused academic attention necessary to tease out the rich panoply of artistic heritage, transnational influence and cultural reference. What motivates wuju’s public and how is reception shifting? How might wuju “perform the nation,” “perform place” or indeed the global order? In what ways does wuju represent a new chapter in a long history of politics on stage? This lecture investigates the cultural ecology (yishu shengtai quan) of wuju as part of a wider burgeoning arts production industry.

Ruard Absaroka is a Post-Doc researcher and lecturer in the Department of Music and Dance at the University of Salzburg, Austria. As an active musician he performed with the London Jingkun Opera Association for over ten years in performances of the most prestigious forms of Chinese opera: jingju and kunqu. His own AHRC-funded doctoral work on urban musical geographies and musical ‘Rights to the City’ in Shanghai, China, included fieldwork with ‘piao you’ Chinese opera enthusiasts. In the course of doctoral studies, he studied at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and also worked in parallel on the Leverhulme/AHRC-funded ‘Sounding Islam in China’ project. More recently he has been a contributor to the joint Routledge and Waxmann handbooks on Music and Migration.His current research focuses on agnotological perspectives within musicology and on globalizing histories of the performing arts.

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