Productive misapprehensions: Artscross as a cross-cultural collaborative zone of contestation of contemporary dance practice

Artscross, an initiative by Beijing Dance Academy, ResCen at Middlesex University, Queen Mary University of London and Taipei National University of the Arts, brought together dance practitioners from Beijing, London and Taipei to engage in choreography-making, observed by academics. From this observational perspective I challenge a thinking of the collaborative practices that took place in terms of an East/West binary, instead conceiving of them as a ‘zone of encounter’, which I further define as a zone of contestation and re-negotiation of contemporary dance practice, which is productive in the sense of being transformative to each individual engaged. Drawing on research from Philosophy as well as Translation Studies, I moreover stress the positive aspect of miscommunication and misapprehensions, and specifically their role in evolving practice.