The Asian Performing Arts Forum was founded in June 2010 as a strategic partnership among the Centre for International Theatre and Performance Research at Royal Holloway, University of London, Roehampton University’s Centre for Dance Research and the East Asian Performance Research Group at the University of Reading, with the support of the Centre for Creative Collaboration. It brings together UK-based scholars, visiting academics, artists and community members to discuss current research and issues related to the performing arts of Asia as practiced and theorised internationally to generate and support new research, disseminate the work of UK and international researchers to relevant communities of interest and transfer knowledge between the arts industry and academia.

It is intended that each the Forum will focus on a different theme of relevance to Asian performing arts. The theme for the academic year 2010-11 was ‘Traditional Performing Arts in Modern Asia’. A talk series was held, with lectures and seminars examining examine inventions of performance traditions, relations between traditional performance practice and identity politics, rural-urban negotiations, training and education, heritage management, detraditionalization and mediatisation of performance, transnational flows of performing arts, interculturalism, tensions between modernity and residual performance practices and emergent post-traditional performance formations in the context of modern Asia.

The year-long investigation concluded with an international conference on 6-9 July 2011 titled Performing Arts in Contemporary Asia: Tradition and Travel, co-sponsored with CHIME, the European Foundation for Chinese Music Research, and hosted by Royal Holloway, University of London.

Please check this website for plans for the academic year 2011-12 and announcements of forthcoming events.