ABSTRACT
The concept of kongling 空靈 deserves attention because it reframes, in an exemplary manner, older ideas on aesthetics within a modern context marked by the interweaving of Chinese and European performance cultures. Although the basic ideas originated many centuries ago, kongling has been applied to the performing arts only since the twentieth century. It is one of several comparable concepts—like the more prominent →xieyi 寫意 (on this term, see the article by Siyuan Liu in this volume)—that Chinese stage artists and theoreticians have since then deployed to describe an aspect they see as unique about their country’s tradition and, at the same time, to formulate an aesthetic principle that allows them to continue creating a distinctive kind of performing arts.
