Asian City Crossings: Pathways of Performance through Hong Kong and Singapore

Asian City Crossings is the first book to explore the relationship between the city and performance from an Asian perspective, using Hong Kong and Singapore as case studies. It highlights the diversity, vibrancy, and complexity of creative projects that destabilize notions of identity, belonging, and nationhood through strategies of collaborative conviviality and transnational mobility across multi-sited networks of cities in Asia.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 256 pages
Publication date: 09 January 2023
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Asian City Crossings is a groundbreaking volume that delves into the intricate relationship between cities and performance from an Asian perspective. This comprehensive collection introduces the concept of "city as method" as a novel framework for exploring practices of city-based performing arts collaboration and city-to-city performance networks across East and Southeast Asia and beyond. By examining the shared and distinct histories of global cities like Hong Kong and Singapore as postcolonial, multiethnic, multicultural, and multilingual sites, this book showcases how city as method fosters a comparative analytical space that emphasizes the in-betweenness and fluid positionalities of contemporary performance.

The study situates inter-Asian relationality and inter-city referencing as crucial dynamics in the exploration of the material and ideological conditions of contemporary performance and performance exchange in Asia. Through scholarly analyses and practitioner reflections drawn from the fields of theatre, performance, and music, this book captures the vibrant creative dialogue that traverses city-based pathways along the Hong Kong-Singapore route and between Hong Kong, Singapore, and other cities.

This book combines essays by scholars of Asian studies, theatre studies, ethnomusicology, and human geography with reflective accounts by Hong Kong and Singapore-based performing arts practitioners to showcase the diversity, vibrancy, and complexity of creative projects that challenge notions of identity, belonging, and nationhood through strategies of collaborative conviviality and transnational mobility across multi-sited networks of cities in Asia. By filling a significant gap in global scholarly discourse on performance and the city, as well as on the production and circulation of performance, Asian City Crossings contributes to our understanding of the dynamic and multifaceted relationships between urban spaces and artistic practices in the region.

Weight: 508g
Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780367515591