Dance and the Postcolonial Stalemate (original) (raw)
(Book Review) The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Politics, 2018
Wilbur, S. (2018). The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Politics. Dance Research Journal, 50(2), 78-87. At 656 pages wide and 31 authors deep, The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Politics collection contains a veritable who's who of US, UK, and EU dance scholarship. It also importantly documents the weight of the loss to the field of coeditor Randy Martin, whose materialist investigations of dance and politics influence the volume's contributions in powerful and explicit ways. Through the dedicated energies of Martin's fellow coeditors Rebekah Kowal and Gerald Siegmund, the volume updates an editorial burden assumed by earlier collections and field progenitors: interpreting dance's irreconcilable relationship to politics, a tension that the volume's contributors do not promise to reconcile. But what the text does, and with great urgency, is to revise and update long-standing debates on dance's politics of representation while also flagging hierarchical issues internal to dance research as areas for future investigation.
Can dance, as a non-verbal artform, effectively express political opinions? This paper examines three choreographic ways of dealing with controversial political issues, incorporating the works of artists in Germany, the US and UK. The pieces have been chosen to represent three of the main trouble spots of the 20th century: World War I, the bombings in Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1960s, and Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile. Kurt Jooss’s epoch-making "The Green Table", first performed in 1932, sets the tone. Based on the experiences of the First World War, it is a stark reminder of the cruelties of war and an almost uncanny foreshadow of the events of World War II. Jooss’s outspoken political stance forced him to leave Hitler's Germany for England as soon as 1933. American postmodernism is generally known for its rebellious and anti-establishment nature. The conflicts in Vietnam and Cambodia led to choreographies of protest in the 1960s and early 1970s. For instance, Steve Paxton, in his piece "Collaboration with Wintersoldier" (1971), collaborated with anti-war Vietnam veterans. Finally, the British choreographer Christopher Bruce tackled the issue of the military government in Chile. "Ghost Dances" (1981) uses an impressive image repertory and Latin-American folk tunes to deliver dramatic visual effects and a powerful political message. The paper investigates how the three choreographers deal with the challenge of translating politics into dance; and how specific national or political ideologies feed into their works. It analyses the ways dance artists depict political conflicts and how they manage to advocate their views to influence their audience. By comparing the different approaches, one might trace the development of politically-orientated Western stage dance through the 20th Century, considering the extent to which later choreographers built on or modified earlier forms of expression.
Contemporary dance in postcolonial Britain: charting shifts in ‘techniques’
Contemporary dance in postcolonial Britain: charting shifts in ‘technique, 2023
Autoethnographic reflections upon my experiences of dance from the late 1970s to the early twenty-first century inform consideration of the changing position of contemporary dance within British culture. I focus on those experiences that reveal shifts in the practices and related technical training that have constituted the field of contemporary dance in the UK. These are situated in relation to previous research in the fields of dance and embodi-ment to re-examine how contemporary dance practices might be understood within the broader context of postcolonial Britain. My account commences with memories of a dance concert in 2001 in South-East London which informed my later research into how dance may be understood to embody cultural values. I then look back to my experience of the dance practices that drew from American and European modern dances to develop training in dance ‘techniques’ that could provide the basis for a contemporary genre of theatre dance that challenged balletic traditions. Consideration of my experiences of studying and working in parts of South-East London with a large African diasporic population informs my particular attention to some of the challenges facing black British contemporary dance artists in what can only be a partial exploration of how, as contemporary dance became established in the UK, its practices were caught up in the complexities of changing cultural values.
Contemporary dance – universal claims - colonialism
Academia Letters, 2021
Sondra Horton Fraleigh posits that "aesthetic value is basic to everything we call dance". , I discuss if one basis for all dancing really can be found? I want to challenge dance art's tendencies to argue about intrinsic values shared by all kinds of dance. I start this by recounting a recent personal experience with a one and a half your old boy, showing how dancing can be a vital framework for social interaction, and where the interaction is the core value of dance.
Brazilian Journal of Dance Studies, 2022
This article is an endeavor to diagnose different burdens associated with the dance historiographies produced from the global souths, based on my training and experience as a dance historian and as a dancer and researcher of peripheral dances. The purpose of the text is, firstly, to analyze how these different burdens operate and, secondly, to propose the hypothesis that: if coloniality bequeaths us burdens, de-coloniality does not necessarily operate differently. Therefore, the text resorts to central questions so as to elect critical thinking and show that the issue of marginalized subjects in dance mattering should not be a pretext that exempts us from dealing with historiographical methods and theories. The study employs historical sources and is guided by existing theories and debates in the field of dance studies, history, and cultural criticism.
Dancing from Past to Present. Nation, Culture, Identities
This groundbreaking collection combines ethnographic and historic strategies to reveal how dance plays crucial cultural roles in various regions of the world, including Tonga, Java, Bosnia-Herzegovina, New Mexico, India, Korea, Macedonia, and England. The essays find a balance between past and present and examine how dance and bodily practices are core identity and cultural creators. Reaching beyond the typically Eurocentric view of dance, Dancing from Past to Present opens a world of debate over the role dance plays in forming and expressing cultural identities around the world.
“Dance and Abstraction” Special Issue Introduction
Arts
In his 2013 book Hating Empire Properly, historian Sunil Agnani helpfully reminds his audience that an emphasis on cultural difference—a perspective that we tend to think of as the postmodern antidote to Enlightenment-era universalizing rhetoric—can in fact be traced back to early modern European thought [...]
Dance as an agency of change in an age of totalitarianism
Approaching , 2022
This article identifies two different paths where the amnesia described by Hannah- Arendt and the fragmentation identified by Willie James Jennings of our historical past has distorted how people today view dancing. I set out how the Christian entanglement with colonial powers has impacted on people’s abilities to relate to their bodies, lands and other creatures of the world. I describe how the colonial wound of Western society forms the basis of the loneliness and alienation that totalitarianism inculcates. After this, I examine how people who seek to find a solid tradition of dance within the Western traditions of Christianity often end up in a conundrum when they seek to legitimize the existence of the tradition in the wrong places. I show how seeking roots for Christian dance practices in Jewish customs is often entangled in supersessionist understandings. These arguments are constructed by means of both J. Kameron- Carter’s writings on race and theology and the black political theology outlined by Vincent W. Lloyd. The second-most-often chosen option for creating a dance tradition for Western forms of Christianity is to romanticize the non-Western ‘other’. Using Lindsey Drury’s work, I argue that dancers have perpetuated the interests that seek to possess the ‘other’ by bringing exotic dancers to the Western marketplace. Finally, I describe the third option – more commonly found amongst those critical of Christian tradition – to seek the roots of transformational dance practices in Hellenistic and more esoteric teachings flourishing in the early twentieth century. We run into the often forgotten or neglected stories of renowned dance teachers like Rudolf Laban and Isadora Duncan on this path. By combining esoteric bodily practices, Mother Earth ‘spirituality’ and superior views about race, they not only promoted but laid the foundation for how people were manipulated in the Third Reich. I end by sharing ethnographic stories of resistance towards how these past historical patterns have affected how dance is viewed today. Those exhibiting such resistance are not always consciously aware of the historical roots I have described. However, engagement in contemplative and healing dance practices seems to be forging new and better ways to create community and to live in a connected way with creation and our creatureliness (Hellsten 2021a). The central theme of these practices is to resist the illusion of perfection and control while helping people to listen to and discern the Holy Spirit leading them into a new way of living.
A Dialogics of Rhythm: Dance and the Performance of Cultural Conflict
Howard Journal of Communications, 1998
This article exam ines mid-twentieth century North American dance form s as communicative perform ances structured in the multiple and conflictua l intersections between African American and European American cultures. The analysis of these forms illustrates the value of historicized critical investigation in challenging the unity of any culture, the singularity of any practice, and the productivity of rigid dualisms in critical communication studies. Understand ing of cultural processes occurs through an investigat ion of the fracture s and dialogu es within a particul ar practice , not through the construction of an idealized "purity.