Forum promotes dance as an art form bridging cultures

The Beijing Dance Academy hosted the seventh annual BDA Dance Forum on Oct 25, bringing together scholars, artists and cultural leaders from across the globe to explore the evolving role of dance in international cultural exchanges.

This year's forum, "Dance's Shared Future: Identity, Integration, and Transcendence", addressed the intersection of dance with cutting-edge technologies, such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality, examining the new opportunities and challenges these innovations bring to the art form.

The forum, established in 2019, has become an influential platform for high-level artistic discourse and cultural exchange. Since its inception, the forum has attracted over 900 experts and scholars from more than 20 countries and regions, sparking extensive dialogue on topics such as the future of Chinese dance, the global significance of dance, and its role in human society.

This year's forum explored how dance, as a universal language of human emotion and culture, can transcend traditional boundaries and foster mutual understanding among diverse cultures. The theme "Identity, Integration, and Transcendence" explored how dance can be a powerful tool in bridging cultural divides and promoting peace and cooperation within the context of the global "community of shared destiny".

In his keynote speech, Xu Rui, president of the Beijing Dance Academy, presented the concept of a "Dance Culture Community" as a means of translating the idea of a shared global future into tangible cultural practices. Xu highlighted how, through interdisciplinary research, including digital body philosophy, dance can be integrated with new technologies while preserving its artistic integrity. This fusion of art and technology, he suggested, offers new pathways for global governance and cultural collaboration.

The opening ceremony and main forum were livestreamed on multiple platforms, attracting nearly 110,000 viewers worldwide.