Opera Loses Its Leading Role

Wartime circumstances ended the modernizing impetus given to American Cantonese Opera by the innovators of the Great China Theatre. Even in San Francisco Chinatown, by the mid-1950s, audiences were too small to sustain daily opera performances by even one troupe. All the opera houses became cinemas.

The younger generation of American-educated Chinese American found more congenial entertainment in radio, T.V. and the theatres of the larger society in all their rich variety. Cantonese Opera's popularity waned. Its role as almost sole entertainment and educational and community center in the Chinese American communities ended.

The Pacific War and the following break in Sino-American relations stopped visits by mainland Chinese Opera troupes from 1949 to 1980.

The Dancers

Chen Si-lan,one of the early Chinese American modern dancers of New York, a pupil of Ruth St. Denis, toured America in the 1930s and 1940s with her dances on Asian and Chinese themes. She was soon joined by Caroline Ng.

The Chinese American dancers and groups which have followed these pioneers mostly combine Chinese classical and folk dance and modern American dance forms in their art.

Chinese Americans in the performing arts began to cut paths toward their own performing art that is American even as it is Chinese, not only in the traditional forms, but in entirely new forms. Some found the means of expression they sought in modern dance, spoken drama and continuation of the operatic reforms pioneered by the Great China Theatre in the 1920s.