In recent decades, highly heterogeneous literary and artistic articulations harking back to China's classical past have gained increasing currency in the global Sinophone space and cyberspace. Instead of dismissing them as “fetishisms” or authenticating them as “Chinese traditions,” I propose “Sinophone classicism” as a new critical expression for conceptualizing this diverse array of articulations. It refers to the appropriation, redeployment, and reconfiguration of cultural memories evoking Chinese aesthetic and intellectual traditions for local, contemporary, and vernacular uses, by agents identified or self-identified as Chinese. This essay proposes a subjective, intimate, and reflexive way to experience an individual's culturally acquired “Chineseness” that is temporal, mnemonic, and often mediated by digital media. It joins recent scholarly efforts to dismantle the view of “Chinese modernity” as a monocentric and homogenous experience by refocusing on classicism as a kind of “antimodern modernism.” It also joins the post-Eurocentric turn in global academia by hinting at a future of “global classicisms.”

In this article, Michaela Antoniou offers a close analysis of Nikos Karathanos's 2016 production of Aristophanes’ The Birds, which was staged at the Epidaurus Festival with the support of the Onassis Cultural Centre. She argues that the context embodies Eric Hobsbawm's concept of the ‘invented tradition’, and examines its often problematic relation to the Centre, which, as a powerful and economically independent organization, occupies a dominant position in the field of theatre in Greece. The essential parameters and scope of Karathanos's performance aesthetics are analyzed through the lens of Michel Foucault and Kornelius Kastoriadis, while attention is also given to the media discourse surrounding the work. Finally, the article historicizes Karathanos's The Birds in relation to Koun's renowned 1959 production in order to examine Karathanos's intention to interpret the play as a production for his and our time. Michaela Antoniou is Teaching Fellow in Acting at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She is also an actress, playwright, author, and translator, and has previously published articles on the work of Karolos Koun.

Since being listed as intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO in 2010, Kalbeliya dance from Rajasthan is now generally conceptualized as an ancient tradition from India. However, this same dance practice, also known as a form of “Indian Gypsy” or “snake charmers’” folk dance, appears to have originated as recently as the 1980s. This article gives an account of the swift development of Kalbeliya dance from its first appearance on stage in 1981 to the present. Ethnographic research with Kalbeliya dancers’ families has elucidated how this inventive dance practice was formed to fit into national and transnational narratives with the aim of commercializing it globally and of generating a new, lucrative livelihood for these Kalbeliya families. As a new cultural product of Rajasthani fusion, the dance finds itself at the crossroads of commercial tourism and political folklorism and is grounded in neo-orientalist discourses (romanticism and exoticism).

The Pierrot tradition, invented towards the end of the nineteenth century, established a prevalent but now largely forgotten mode of performance around the coastal resorts of Britain. In this article, Dave Calvert considers the relevance of this form in its historical context. Arguing that it observes the preservation of anachronism consistent with notions of invented traditions, he situates the Pierrot tradition within a symbolic network concerned with national identity and experience. This includes its declared links to the construction of royalty as the head of the imperial family, and both its schism and continuity with the tradition of blackface minstrelsy whose conventions it maintains. Its location at the seaside accentuates this network of relations and elevates it to a transcendental plane of the imaginary untroubled by the complexities of modern life. Dave Calvert is a Senior Lecturer in Drama at the University of Huddersfield. His research encompasses popular theatre, applied theatre and learning-disabled performance. He is also a member of The Pierrotters, the last remaining professional seaside Pierrot troupe.