ASIAN COMMUNICATION APPROACH

Asian Communication Approach

Asian Communication Approach

Introduction

Since antiquity, performance traditions from Asia and North Africa have influenced theatre created in civilizations to the West. Though the extent of influence is debated, the culture of ancient Greece was clearly indebted to Egyptian, Canaanite and Phoenician precedents (see Middle East). The Furies-turned-Eumenides of Aeschylus Oresteia are variants of an apotropaic tradition long shared between Greece and India (connected by Phoenician trade routes). Dionysus - the god honoured by the Athenian tragic festival - had himself arrived from the East (most likely from Phrygia, via Thrace); the ecstatic dancing of the new 'Asian' religion depicTed in Euripides The Bacchae gives evidence that, from ancient times, performative traditions, along with gods and goods, have moved between Asia and Europe.

These early encounters - like many of those that folva lowed - were framed by war as well as by trade. The first extant play of classical Greek tragedy, Aeschyluss The Persians (472 BC), has arch-enemy Xerxes as its protagonist, while the centrality of the Trojan War in the Greek sense of history made Asia Minor a pivotal locus in Euripidess antiwar plays of the late 5th century BC. The Asian peoples of Persia and Phrygia were thus depicted both as exotically 'other' - irrational, autocratic, opulent, excessive, and somehow more 'feminine' - even as they were embraced as sharing a common humanity through their capacity to suffer. This conception of Asia as both familiar and irreducibly strange - at once threatening and alluring - was enhanced by the conquest and occupation of lands in Southwest Asia and North Africa by Alexander the Great and the legions of Rome; and was hardened in the long struggle between Islam and Christianity that began soon after the fall of the Roman Empire and persisted throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

These same qualities appealed to the artists who were to create the modern dance movement of the early 20th century. While Isadora Duncan was more directly inspired by impressions of classical Greece, Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, who was developing eurythmics in Switzerland, combined this predilection with an interest in Indian philosophy and aesthetics obtained through his association with the philosopher and educator Rudolph Steiner. Loie Fuller, Ruth St Denis, Ted Shawn and Martha Graham created the vocabulary and direction of modern dance in large part from their impressions of the gestural forms and spiritual underpinnings of Indian and Japanese theatre and dance. Their interest in the work of Jaques-Dalcroze and Françoise Delsarte (whose codification of emotions through gesture mirrored classical Indian aesthetics) helped provide pathways linking Indian traditions with their modernist agendas.

Intergroup Communication Over Time

Kimberly, N. , Gudykunst, W. , and Guerrero, S. (1999), Intergroup communication over time. International Journal of Intercultural Relations vol. 22 no. (4) pp. 1-34.

This article talks about communication aspects which are vital characteristics of culture to take into account when venturing into a foreign working environment. As different countries have specific gestures and emotions that will appear to look similar, cultural differences will affect the meanings ...