The State of the Festival: Performing Politics and Cultural Exchange (original) (raw)
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Dance Age Politics: Proceedings of the 30th Symposium of the ICTM Study Group on Ethnochoreology: Szeged, Hungary 28 July -3 August 2018, 2021
I examine how the concept of ‘place’ in the midst of a crisis of Spanish nationalist politics impacts on Mallorquin dance as a site for redefining public and personal cultural identities. For the Mallorcan people declaring an allegiance to one of two factions of political views, either for the Union of Spain, or its counter-part for Independence of Catalonia, dance as a social activity brings a sense of normality but also a means to stand together as a community in uncertain times. The Escola de Música i Danses de Mallorca, one of my field sites has now included contradansa (country dances) in their repertoire of traditional improvised Mallorquin dances that have in contrast many influences from England, Ireland, France and Spain. These popular dances are being taught and performed by the local community at a time when the majority of Mallorcan people are becoming more aligned with the Spanish peninsular. An exploration is undertaken on how the use of banners, emblems and slogans reinforce symbolic sites of identity in demonstrations on the streets of Mallorca, a Catalan speaking region with an autonomous status.
Dance Age and Politics: Proceedings of the 30th Symposium of the ICTM Study Group on Ethnochoreology: Szeged, Hungary. July 28 - 3 August 2018., 2021
I examine how the concept of place in the midst of a crisis of Spanish nationalist politics impacts on Mallorquin dance as a site for redefining public and personal cultural identities. For the Mallorcan people declaring an allegiance to one of two factions of political views, either for the Union of Spain, or its counterpart for Independence of Catalonia, dance as a social activity brings a sense of normality but also a means to stand together as a community in uncertain times. The Escola de Música i Danses de Mallorca, one of my field sites, has now included contradansa (Mallorqui/Catalan spelling of a term used to describe country dance) in their repertoire of traditional improvised Mallorquin dance, even though it bears many influences from England. Under the category of contradansa, lost dances are being collected as part of a project of recuperation that are being taught, performed and popularized by the local community at a time when the majority of Mallorcan people are becoming more aligned with the Spanish peninsula. An exploration is also undertaken on how the use of banners, emblems and slogans reinforce symbolic sites of identity in demonstrations on the streets of Mallorca, a Catalan speaking region with an autonomous status.
The Cultural Development of Folk Dance Festivals and the Sustainability of Tradition, 2018
This chapter explores the question of what is considered as an (ideal) international folk dance festival by drawing from longitudinal ethnography among festival organisers in Romania, participants in international folk dance in festivals within Romania and Romanian participants in festivals elsewhere, as well as from archival and published sources. It explores the roles of interaction and change in international folk festivals and investigates problems faced by organisers and the experiences of the participants focussing specifically on a long term case study of the international Festivalul Inimilor, held in Timișoara, Romania. It concludes that since the first international folk dance festival was held around eighty years ago, surprising relatively little has changed in the experiences of the organisers and participants in these events. REFERENCE: Mellish, Liz (2018). “What is an (ideal) international folk dance festival? Voices of participants and organisers in international folk dance festivals in Romania and beyond.” Liz Mellish; Mehmet Öcal Özbilgin (editors), The Cultural Development of Folk Dance Festivals and the Sustainability of Tradition:111-126. İzmir, Turkey: Ege University Press. ISBN: 978-605-338-238-6.
Embodying Cultural Identities and Creating Social Pathways through Mallorquin Dance
A new emphasis in the revival of dance on the Spanish Balearic Island of Mallorca at the beginning of the 1980s focused on improvisation, and challenged the Mallorcan dancers’ notions of tradition and previous choreographed dance practices of the Sección Femenina. This chapter explores the practice of improvisation at the ballada (a new social dance event), and considers why Mallorcan music bands were instrumental to its formation. The transient and transitional nature of the ballada creates a network of social pathways across the Mallorcan landscape, where individuals negotiate nationalist politics, gender relations, and their cultural identities through improvised dance practices. In this way a new sense of community is articulated in the politics of the spatial environment of the ballada. (2014, in Linda E Dankworth and Ann R David (eds), Dance Ethnography and Global Perspectives: Identity, Embodiment and Culture: Palgrave Macmillan)
Tánc és Nevelés, 2020
The ‘Tango of Argentina and Uruguay’ was inscribed in the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of the UNESCO in 2009 to be safeguarded as one of humanity’s outstanding cultural achievements. Controversies and shortcomings related with the inscription have been pointed out by several scholars working on tango as a social phenomenon. Criticism about the nomination document and the decision about the inscription targeted two principal focus areas and were expressed from two different standpoints both of which miss the inclusion of living grassroots tango communities and what they stand for from the heritage definition of tango. This paper intends to connect academic and community reactions given to its heritagization with personal observations of recent trends in the international, and especially in the European world of tango; particularly with the increasing presence of two-three-day international tango dance occasions commonly referred to as tango marathons or encuentro milongueros....
Staging Authenticity: Theorizing the Development of Mexican Folklorico Dance
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