Physical Conversations between the East and West: An Arts Based Inquiry into the Cross-Cultural Emotional Climate during a Time of Political Tensions

This article reviews an arts based project that came to completion in Shanghai during September 2017. During this project, a group of people interested in creative arts therapies from the USA and China used physical storytelling (PS) drawn from both Eastern and Western perspectives to investigate the emotional climate of our contemporary world. In this project, participants introduced stories related to their current life experiences and a small group developed dance improvisations as an initial response to the stories. A larger group then used arts and poetry to express their reflections – leading to the development of metaphors that moved beyond the initial story material to express multiple personal and social aspects not apparent in the initial narrative. As this project was collaborative in nature, several common themes and images emerged. Although initial episodes introduced the theme of individual struggle, this expanded into a metaphorical exploration of general human struggle with larger social and natural forces. The final episode included movement, arts and fairy tale images that suggested a developing creative partnership between the East and West.