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Return to the Autonomy of Art, the Classicization of the Avant-Garde — Margaret Leng Tan’s Dragon Ladies Don’t Weep

  • Journal of Popular Narrative
  • 2026, 32(1), pp.513~534
  • DOI : 10.18856/jpn.2026.32.1.014
  • Publisher : The Association of Popular Narrative
  • Research Area : Interdisciplinary Studies > Interdisciplinary Research
  • Received : January 10, 2026
  • Accepted : February 14, 2026
  • Published : February 28, 2026

Heo, Jaehong 1

1서강대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This study examines how the avant-garde is incorporated into a classicalized form within contemporary performance art through the analysis of the performance Dragon Ladies Don’t Weep (October 25, 2025, Sejong S Theater), a solo performance by Margaret Leng Tan. Focusing on the transformation of core avant-garde principles—chance and indeterminacy—into controlled necessity within the framework of theatrical direction, the research draws on Peter Bürger’s critique of “aesthetic autonomy” and Hal Foster’s concept of the neo-avant-garde as a mode of repetitive and analytical enactment. These theoretical perspectives provide the basis for investigating how Tan’s performance reconfigures and repositions the legacy of the avant-garde. The analysis identifies two central mechanisms. First, Tan’s lifelong obsessive-compulsive tendencies are transformed into core performative techniques. She appears as an embodied performer in Erika Fischer-Lichte’s sense, yet simultaneously enacts a meticulously calculated persona. Second, avant-garde music and concepts are framed and exhibited within Tan’s autobiographical narrative. Memories of John Cage are arranged as fixed lines and integrated into a highly controlled semiotic system, while her performance practices resemble guided enactments rather than moments of perceptual disruption. This mode of presentation aligns with Foster’s notion of “deferred action,” in which the avant-garde project is repeated, yet its repetition is absorbed into a disciplined and predetermined form. Ultimately, Dragon Ladies Don’t Weep functions less as an avant-garde performance than as a curated memoir that reshapes the avant-garde for 21st-century spectatorship. Although the signs of the avant-garde are abundantly deployed onstage, no contingent event emerges; every element converges within a tightly regulated structure. The work thus illustrates a contemporary cultural process in which the avant-garde returns to the realm of aesthetic autonomy and circulates as a classicized, institutionalized form.

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