Eva Chou

Eva Chou has written on the great eighth-century poet Tu Fu (Cambridge University Press) and the seminal twentieth-century writer Lu Xun (Association for Asian Studies Publications). Now researching ballet in China, she has published many articles on the subject and frequently reviews dance performances. Her work has been supported by the Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University, Library of Congress, Japan Foundation, H.F. Guggenheim Foundation, NEH, ACLS, and Radcliffe Institute; she has held visiting positions at University of Cambridge and Charles University, Prague.

While in residence Eva will be working on a history of the project to create Chinese ballets, a project that developed in parallel to, and sometimes in rivalry with, the classical ballet repertory received from Soviet advisors. Its most long-lived works are "Our Red Army Girls" and "White-Haired Girl" from the 1960s while recent notable works were premiered in 2022 for the Communist Party’s 100th anniversary. Their development is used to show how creative works negotiated the state’s cultural policies; their dance analyses reveal the compromises and solutions that, taken together, make for a complex record that will be continuing.