How can art shape historical memory and national identity? And how can cultural heritage and historical references be used to enact a vision of a nation? In Staging Tianxia: Dunhuang Expressive Arts and China’s New Cosmopolitan Heritage (Indiana University Press, 2024), Lanlan Kuang explores these questions through the lens of Dunhuang expressive arts — a twentieth-century music and dance performance style inspired by the images, music descriptions, and narratives found in the Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes. Through these performances, Dunhuang expressive arts presents a vision of China as a historically multiethnic and cosmopolitan nation.

Staging Tianxia is an ambitious and interdisciplinary book, weaving together ethnography, ethnomusicology, performance studies, history, and philosophy. It is also rich with episodes from Kuang’s own fieldwork in Dunhuang and rehearsal studios, and through such moments Kuang offers intriguing insights on the way that heritage is constructed and embodied. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of ethnomusicology, performance studies, Chinese classical dance, and Dunhuang studies.

Listeners (and readers!) should also check out the multimedia components of the book on Kuang’s website, here.

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Matthew Beecher, Matthew Beecher, CEO of Neocova