Cultural Memory and Popular Dance: Dancing to Remember, Dancing to Forget (Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies) 3030710823, 9783030710828

Table of contents :
Acknowledgements
Contents
Notes on Contributors
List of Figures
Introduction: Dancing with Memory
Embodied Memory: Interdisciplinary Movements Between Memory and Popular Dance
Mapping the Terrain
References
Part I: Pedagogic Invocations of Afro-Diasporic Memory
Tap Dance and Cultural Memory: Shuffling with My Dancestors
Defining Dancestry as a Facet of Cultural Memory
Tap Dancestry: Respecting the Past, Revising in the Present
Classic Choreographies as Dancestral Inheritance
Maintaining Dancestral Inheritance: Embodying Named and Unnamed Dancestors
Bibliography
“Salsa con Afro”: Remembering and Reenacting Afro-Cuban Roots in the Global Cuban and Latin Dance Communities
“A Que Le Llaman ‘Salsa’ Si Esto Es Son?”1
“Une Vraie Sauce”
Rumba: “The Forbidden Black Dance”
Orishas: “And What Do You Want Them to Give You?”
“But Where Is the (Rueda de) Casino?”
“Ya Es Muy Rico”
“Una Onda Gozadera”
Bibliography
Between Creolisation and Kinaesthetic Transnationalism: Zumba Fitness as Mimetic Parody and Ritual Re-enactment
Introduction
Situating Zumba: Between Popular Dance and Cultural Memory
Mimesis and Alterity
Parody and the Carnivalesque
Incorporated Practices and Commemorative Ceremonies
Conclusion
Bibliography
Part II: Manipulated Memory and Reclamation
Parading the Past, Taming the New: From Ragtime to Rock and Roll
Cultural Memory and Remembering the Past
Irene and Vernon Castle
Arthur and Kathryn Murray
References
Queer Tango—Bent History? The Late-Modern Uses and Abuses of Historical Imagery Showing Men Dancing Tango with Each Other
Tango and ‘Men Dancing with Men’: A Contested History
Representations of Men Dancing Tango with Other Men
Queer Tango: Historical and Theoretical Contexts
Online Image Searching: Dodges and Dangers
Images in Contexts and the Generation of Meanings
Type 1. Mainstream Websites with Content About Tango or Queer Tango
Type 2. Mainstream, User-Generated Web Pages Such as Pinterest
Type 3. Mainstream Tango Websites
Type 4. Queer/LGBT Websites
Type 5. Queer Tango Online Presences
Concluding Remarks
References
Bomba Cimarrona: Hip Interactions in the Afro-Ecuadorian Bomba del Chota as a Decolonial Means to Remember
Afrodescendants in Ecuador
The Categories of the Bomba Event
Bomba Cimarrona and Collective Memories
Transmitting Collective Memories Through Bomba Cimarrona Dancers’ Hips
Collective Memories of Freedom in Bomba Cimarrona: Hip-Pushing While Dancing
References
Youthful Bodies as Mnemonic Artifacts: Traversing the Cultural Terrain from Traditional to Popular Dances in Post-independent Ghana
Background
Theoretical Underpinnings of Dancing Bodies as Cultural Memories
Popular Dance and Some Theoretical Frameworks
Bases of Some Mnemonic Artifacts in Postcolonial Ghanaian Popular Dance
Key Movements in Azonto and Their Mnemonic Elements
Toh nɔ or Ironing Movements
Aaka or Drying Movements
Conclusion
References
Part III: National Memories and Amnesias
Csángó Space and Time in the Hungarian Táncház Revival
Introduction
Ildikó’s Return
Unstable Transitions and Distant Pasts
The Search for a National Dance
Opening the Doors
Conclusion
References
National Identity in Philippine Folk Dance: Changing Focus from the Cariñosa to Tinikling
Nationalism and Folk Dance
Aquino and the Beginnings of Collection
The Maria Clara Suite
Visualised and Embodied Strategies of Representation
Gender Identity
The Rural Suite
Conclusions
References
Archive and Memory in Cuban Dances: The Performance of Memory and the Dancing Body as Archive in the Making
Popular Dances in Cuban Archives
Conjunto Folklórico Nacional: Intersecting Temporalities of Archive and Performance
Body, Memory and Transmission
Conclusion
References
Courting Disaster (“I Don’t Remember Anymore”): The Forgetful Dancer and the Body Politic in The Sound of Music (1965)
Dancing the Body Politic: A Choreonecrology of the Forgetful Dancer
Austria and the Pastoral Ländler
The Ländler, Memory, and World War Two
The Dis-Ease of Forgetting, the Disastrous Body
References
Part IV: Im/mediate Memories
Feeling with, Moving Toward: Empathetic Attunement as Dance Reconstruction Methodology
Introduction
New Materialism and Performance Studies
A New Materialist Approach to Dance Reconstruction
Empathetic Attunement
Conclusions
References
Mother Tongue: Dance and Memory, an Autobiographical Excavation
References
Filmed, Felt, and False Rhythms: Dance Videos and an Embodying “Home” in Post-migration
Dance/Music Lineages
New Proximities and Shifting Identifications
The Sensory Experience of Dance on Film
Conclusion: Holding Post-migrants Accountable
References
The Transmission of Nostalgia and (Be)Longing in Popular Screendance, or Recollecting Damien Chazelle’s La La Land
Prelude: Recalling La La Land
Remembering Nostalgia
(Re)Collecting Memory: La La Land’s Restorative Nostalgia
Postlude: La La Land’s Reflective Nostalgic Aftermath
References
Part V: Conclusions
Some Dance to Remember, Some Dance to Forget
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

PALGRAVE MACMILLAN MEMORY STUDIES

Cultural Memory and Popular Dance Dancing to Remember, Dancing to Forget Edited by Clare Parfitt

Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies Series Editors Andrew Hoskins University of Glasgow Glasgow, UK John Sutton Department of Cognitive Science Macquarie University Macquarie, Australia

The nascent field of Memory Studies emerges from contemporary trends that include a shift from concern with historical knowledge of events to that of memory, from ‘what we know’ to ‘how we remember it’; changes in generational memory; the rapid advance of technologies of memory; panics over declining powers of memory, which mirror our fascination with the possibilities of memory enhancement; and the development of trauma narratives in reshaping the past. These factors have contributed to an intensification of public discourses on our past over the last thirty years. Technological, political, interpersonal, social and cultural shifts affect what, how and why people and societies remember and forget. This groundbreaking series tackles questions such as: What is ‘memory’ under these conditions? What are its prospects, and also the prospects for its interdisciplinary and systematic study? What are the conceptual, theoretical and methodological tools for its investigation and illumination? More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14682

Clare Parfitt Editor

Cultural Memory and Popular Dance Dancing to Remember, Dancing to Forget

Editor Clare Parfitt University of Chichester Chichester, West Sussex, UK

ISSN 2634-6257     ISSN 2634-6265 (electronic) Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies ISBN 978-3-030-71082-8    ISBN 978-3-030-71083-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71083-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the ­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and ­institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Market traders in tango poses at Lorea Market on the occasion of its demolition, c1909 Cover credit: FLHC 20218 / Alamy Stock Images This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

This collection of essays was born from the AHRC Leadership Fellowship project, ‘Dancing with Memory’, throughout which I was blessed to collaborate with brilliant women scholars. The project was formed and funded with the inspiring support of Laura Wilson-Edwardes at the University of Chichester, who suggested that I work towards a publication in a memory studies series. I was lucky enough to have Prof. Jane Bacon as a mentor on the project, and she encouraged me to edit a collection of essays written by scholars working at the interface of popular dance and cultural memory, who I had met during the project or whose work I had read. I am grateful to the project’s steering group, composed of Prof. Anna Reading, Prof. Dee Reynolds, Prof. Theresa Buckland, Dr Danielle Robinson, and Dr Jane Pritchard, for their valuable advice about choosing a publisher and securing contributors. The symposia which brought together several of the scholars in this collection would not have happened without the organizational and moral support of Dr Celena Monteiro and the logistical support of the Centre for the Study of Cultural Memory, particularly Dr Katia Pizzi. My biggest source of inspiration during the editing of this collection has been its contributors. Thank you to every one of you for your exciting scholarship, your enthusiasm, and your dedication to the collection in the face of personal and collective challenges, especially COVID-19. Our editorial team at Palgrave, including Lucy Batrouney, Bryony Burns, Mala Sanghera-Warren, and Emily Wood, have been supportive throughout, and the level of care shown during the pandemic was deeply appreciated. I am also grateful to our series editors, John Sutton and Andrew Hoskins, v

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

for having faith in the project and for lending support and advice at key moments. I can never say thank enough to my Mum, Beth Parfitt, for inspiring and helping me to craft the opening paragraph not only of this book, but of my entire life in dance scholarship. I am also forever grateful to my Dad, Nigel Parfitt, whose love of books has been a lifelong inspiration and whose attention to detail has shaped me and the introduction and conclusion of this book. No thanks could ever fully acknowledge the way my partner, Simon Brown, has held a space for me to think and write amidst the onslaught of Life. And final thanks go to Jacob and Noah, for their ever-present reminder that there is more to life than books.

Contents

 Introduction: Dancing with Memory  1 Clare Parfitt Part I Pedagogic Invocations of Afro-Diasporic Memory  23  Tap Dance and Cultural Memory: Shuffling with My Dancestors 25 Janet Schroeder  “Salsa con Afro”: Remembering and Reenacting Afro-Cuban Roots in the Global Cuban and Latin Dance Communities 39 Elizabeth Anaya  Between Creolisation and Kinaesthetic Transnationalism: Zumba Fitness as Mimetic Parody and Ritual Re-enactment 61 Aoife Sadlier Part II Manipulated Memory and Reclamation  81  Parading the Past, Taming the New: From Ragtime to Rock and Roll 83 Julie Malnig vii

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Contents

 Queer Tango—Bent History? The Late-­Modern Uses and Abuses of Historical Imagery Showing Men Dancing Tango with Each Other101 Ray Batchelor and Jon Mulholland  Bomba Cimarrona: Hip Interactions in the Afro-Ecuadorian Bomba del Chota as a Decolonial Means to Remember121 María Gabriela López-Yánez  Youthful Bodies as Mnemonic Artifacts: Traversing the Cultural Terrain from Traditional to Popular Dances in Post-­independent Ghana137 Terry Bright Kweku Ofosu Part III National Memories and Amnesias 155  Csángó Space and Time in the Hungarian Táncház Revival157 Kirsty Kay  National Identity in Philippine Folk Dance: Changing Focus from the Cariñosa to Tinikling177 Declan Patrick  Archive and Memory in Cuban Dances: The Performance of Memory and the Dancing Body as Archive in the Making193 Elina Djebbari  Courting Disaster (“I Don’t Remember Anymore”): The Forgetful Dancer and the Body Politic in The Sound of Music (1965)211 Priya A. Thomas

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Part IV Im/mediate Memories 227  Feeling with, Moving Toward: Empathetic Attunement as Dance Reconstruction Methodology229 Danielle Robinson  Mother Tongue: Dance and Memory, an Autobiographical Excavation243 Leslie Satin  Filmed, Felt, and False Rhythms: Dance Videos and an Embodying “Home” in Post-migration259 Laura Steil  The Transmission of Nostalgia and (Be)Longing in Popular Screendance, or Recollecting Damien Chazelle’s La La Land275 Elena Benthaus Part V Conclusions 289  Some Dance to Remember, Some Dance to Forget291 Clare Parfitt Index297

Notes on Contributors

Elizabeth  Anaya  is an independent scholar born, raised, and living in Alaska. In 2017, she earned her master’s degree in Dance Knowledge, Practice, and Heritage through a consortium of European universities, having completed her fieldwork research on dance in Cuba. She now works as an educator and adjunct instructor in languages and humanities. She also teaches Cuban dance, organizes dance events, and arranges Cuba trips alongside her husband, who is a professional dancer from Santiago de Cuba. As a scholar, she is interested in intangible cultural heritage, cultural diffusion and tourism, and looking at music and dance as cultural texts. Ray Batchelor  is a queer tango dancer, teacher, activist, author, independent scholar, and historian. Part of Queer Tango London since 2011, he works with Birthe Havmøller and Mori Plaschinski on The Queer Tango Project, for whom he co-edits publications, curates the Queer Tango Image Archive, and contributes to and co-moderates The Queer Tango Conversation discussion forum on Facebook. During the COVID pandemic, the Project published his eBook, Queer Tango Histories: Making a Start (2020). He is co-editing an anthology of speculations about the post-COVID future of queer tango when dancing resumes: Queer Tango Futures (2021). Elena  Benthaus  is a sessional (adjunct) lecturer, living and working in Naarm (Melbourne) in so-called Australia. As a very very interdisciplinary dance studies scholar, her research on dance on the popular screen sits in between the disciplines and theoretical lineages of screendance xi

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studies, screen studies, cultural studies, popular culture and popular music studies, and fandom/spectatorship studies. Her scholarship can be found in The International Journal of Screendance and The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Competition. She is also serving as the chair of PoP Moves Australia/Australasia. Elina Djebbari  is an anthropologist, ethnomusicologist, and Lecturer in Dance anthropology at Paris Nanterre University. After her PhD dissertation that focused on the National Ballet of Mali, her current research deals with transatlantic circulations and local appropriation processes of Caribbean music and dance practices in postcolonial West Africa. She has previously worked as a postdoctoral research associate for the ANRFAPESP-funded project Transatlantic Cultures at Sorbonne NouvelleParis 3 University and for the ERC-funded project Modern Moves at King’s College London. Kirsty Kay  holds a PhD in Central and East European Studies from the University of Glasgow (2020). Her dissertation looked at nation-building processes within the Hungarian táncház revival. She is a research affiliate at the University of Glasgow looking at historical and contemporary uses of travel culture within national narratives and works as an academic editor in the humanities and social sciences. She is the English language editor of Stasis, a bilingual journal of social and political theory based at the European University at St Petersburg and is senior editor at the Editing Cooperative. María  Gabriela  López-Yánez is an Ecuadorian Performing Arts researcher and artist specialized in Afro-Ecuadorian dances. She holds a PhD in Theatre and Performing Arts from Goldsmiths, University of London (UK), and an MA in Performing Arts with specialization in Dance from the University of Malaya (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia). She is co-­ founder of the ‘Grupo Itinerante de Artes Guandul’, with whom she has led research and community-based projects since 2007. She has presented her work in Malaysia, the UK, Turkey, Uruguay, China, France, Ireland, Austria, Ecuador, Kazakhstan, and Portugal. She is a lecturer at the Carrera de Danza (Universidad Central del Ecuador). Julie Malnig  is a professor in the Gallatin School at New York University and a cultural historian of dance and theatre performance. She is the editor of Ballroom, Boogie, Shimmy Sham, Shake: A Social and Popular Dance Reader (2009) and author of Dancing Till Dawn: A Century of Exhibition

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Ballroom Dance (1995). She was formerly editor of Dance Research Journal (1999–2003) and editorial board chair of CORD (The Congress on Research in Dance) (2000–2003). She holds a PhD in Performance Studies from New  York University. In 2013, she received NYU’s Distinguished Teaching Award. Jon Mulholland  is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of the West of England, Bristol. Mulholland has written and researched in the fields of race, ethnicity, nationalism, and, more recently, the fields of popular culture and craft economies. Mulholland has recently published the co-edited volume: Mulholland, J., Montagna, N., and Sanders-­ McDonagh, E. (2018) Gendering Nationalism: Intersections of Nation, Gender and Sexuality, Basingstoke: Palgrave Press, having completed a project funded by the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust. Mulholland co-edited the forthcoming volume: Massi, M., Ricci, A., and Mulholland, J. (2021) The Artisan Brand: Entrepreneurship and Marketing in Contemporary Craft Economies. Terry  Bright  Kweku  Ofosu graduated with a Master of Fine Arts (Dance) at the University of Ghana in 2009 and has taught in the Department of Dance Studies, at the same university, since 2011. He has seven publications, and is awaiting his PhD result at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana. Ofosu has conducted traditional and popular dance workshops with several institutions, including New  York University in Ghana and Abu Dhabi, Universities of Maryland, Riverside, Irvine, and Stanford in the USA. He has also created choreographies for several beauty pageants and adjudicated in several dance contests in Ghana. Clare Parfitt  is an interdisciplinary dance scholar working between popular dance studies, memory studies and Atlantic studies. At the University of Chichester she has been a Reader in Popular Dance and is currently a PhD Supervisor. She is chair of PoP Moves, an international network for popular dance research, and co-chair of the Memory Studies Association’s Performance and Memory working group. From 2014 to 2016, she was Principal Investigator on an AHRC Leadership Fellowship project titled ‘Dancing with Memory’, which laid the groundwork for this edited collection and for her monograph in progress, titled Remembering the Cancan: Popular Dance and the Kinetics of Memory between France and the Atlantic World (OUP).

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Declan Patrick  is Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the University of Waikato in New Zealand. He is an academic and theatre practitioner working across performance, dance, and video, with particular interest in the performance of culture. His research takes the form of traditional academic publications and performance, and he is Artistic Director of Fighting Fit Productions. Danielle Robinson  is Associate Professor of Dance at York University in Toronto, Canada, where she is cross-appointed to Theatre and Performance Studies as well as Communication and Culture. She is the author of Modern Moves: Dancing Race During the Ragtime and Jazz Eras (2015). Her research has been supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada), the Leverhulme Trust (UK), the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK), and the Institute of Jazz Studies (USA). Aoife  Sadlier  is Lecturer in Global Sustainable Development at MLA College (BAU Global Network), and a licensed Zumba fitness instructor. Her research applies a cultural lens to the study of sport, education and sustainable development, and explores the potential dialogue between digital culture, corporeality and collective movement practices. Sadlier’s PhD (King’s College London) was the first cultural exploration of Zumba Fitness, in which she argued that collective movement challenges the patriarchal, capitalist and heteronormative foundations of society. Sadlier’s work has been published in a variety of international journals. She is also co-authoring a book on the role of youth, sport and the arts in small states, and writing a memoir. Leslie Satin  is a choreographer/dancer/performance scholar on the Arts Faculty at New York University’s Gallatin School. As faculty/guest artist, she has taught at Bard College, Ailey/Fordham University, State University of New  York, University of Chichester, Hamidrasha/Israel, Centro Coreográfico/Brazil. Satin co-edited the Performing Autobiography issue of Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory. She is developing a manuscript joining Georges Perec’s writing to dance. Her performance texts and writings about dance and Perec, space and site, visual art, scorederived composition, and autobiography appear in many journals and edited collections, including Literary Geographies; Choreographic Practices; Dance Research Journal; Performing Arts Journal; Georges Perec’s Geographies (eds. Forsdick, Leak, Phillips/UCL). Satin holds a PhD in Performance Studies from NYU.

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Janet  Schroeder  is a percussive dance artist, scholar, and teacher, with particular interests in tap dance, Appalachian clogging, and body percussion. Her research investigates the choreographic and representational strategies choreographers use to transfer the history and legacy of these dance forms to the stage, paying particular attention to representations of the complex ethnic and racial identities affiliated with each. Dance Chronicle published her article ‘Choreographing Appalachia as America: The Hazards of Nostalgia on the Concert Stage’ in 2020. Schroeder holds a PhD in Dance Studies from The Ohio State University and an MFA in Dance from SUNY Brockport. Laura  Steil  is an anthropologist interested in the cultural dynamics of European cities. She is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Contemporary and Digital History, at the University of Luxembourg. She previously taught at the Dance department of the University of Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis. Her research focuses on popular dance, cultural transmission, and spatial and social mobilities. As a public anthropologist, she works alongside artists in the non-profit sector on projects of oral history and cultural memory, experimenting with new methods of producing and disseminating knowledge. Her first book examines young AfroParisians’ use of dance to fashion cosmopolitan selves and navigate urban spaces. Priya  A.  Thomas is a dance historian with a multidisciplinary practice that straddles dance, music, performance, theatre, and digital media. Her scholarly research focuses on historical configurations of the nonhuman/ monster in transatlantic contexts of the long nineteenth century (1750–1913). She is the recipient of research awards from Dance Studies Association, Society of Dance History Scholars (SDHS), and Society for Canadian Dance Studies (SCDS). Thomas is an assistant professor at Texas Woman’s University in the Department of Dance, where she teaches in the BA, MA, MFA, and PhD dance programmes.

List of Figures

Queer Tango—Bent History? The Late-­Modern Uses and Abuses of Historical Imagery Showing Men Dancing Tango with Each Other Fig. 1 One of a set of five photographs in tango poses reproduced in 1903 in the Buenos Aires popular magazine Caras y Caretas (Faces and Masks). Source: Argentina, Archivo General de la Nación, Departamento Documentos Fotográficos o AR_AGN_ DDF/Consulta_INV: 295459_A 105 Fig. 2 Competing origin stories for this photograph, each citing the Archivo General de la Nación in Buenos Aires as their source, suggest it is either: men dancing (or posing as if dancing) tango in a river, 1904; or striking railway workers doing the same in 1912. Source: Argentina, Archivo General de la Nación, Departamento Documentos Fotográficos o AR_AGN_DDF/Consulta_INV: 22069_A106 Fig. 3 Sheet Music for L’avant dernier tango ou: le tango dinguo (The Penultimate Tango or: the Dingo Tango) Paris, 1913. Source: website Le temps d’un tango http://www.letempsduntango.be/ thematique/chroniques107 Fig. 4 Market traders in tango poses at Lorea Market on the occasion of its demolition, c1909. Source: Buenos Aires 1910: Memoria del Porvenir https://observatorylatinamerica.org/ pdf/1910CatalogoPDF/08.pdf108 Fig. 5 Men at night in a street in Buenos Aires in tango poses. Source: Wikimedia Commons https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ commons/9/99/Tango-­entre-­homme.jpg 108 xvii

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List of Figures

Fig. 6 The image shown in Fig. 5 used in an online article in the London entertainment guide, Time Out in 2011 about a visit to London by Argentinian queer tango teacher, Mariano Garcés. Source: http://now-­here-­this.timeout.com/2011/05/13/ queer-­tango-­arrives-­in-­london/ (now defunct 2020)

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Youthful Bodies as Mnemonic Artifacts: Traversing the Cultural Terrain from Traditional to Popular Dances in Post-­independent Ghana Fig. 1 Dancers performing the toh nɔ or ironing movement of azonto dance. (Photo by Solomon Dartey) 145 Fig. 2 Dancers performing aaka movements with hands lifted and the arms and wrists flexed on the first beat. (Picture by Benedictus Mattson)148

Introduction: Dancing with Memory Clare Parfitt

I begin with some reminiscences, you might say a genealogy. My mother took me to ballet classes in a nearby Surrey village when I was a child. She later told me that as a young girl of Portuguese descent born in Guyana (then British Guiana), her love of music and dance had been kindled by hearing the steel bands parading through the streets of Georgetown and waiting for the Masquerade dancers and musicians to knock on her door at Christmas time. While she enjoyed these West African rhythms, she also wanted to attend local ballet classes, but did not have the opportunity. She emigrated to the UK in her mid-twenties, married an Englishman, started a family, and when I was four and a half, she enrolled me in a local ballet school. After several years of Mrs Conrad’s strict instruction, my requests for different styles were satisfied with classes in tap, modern, disco, Latin American and ballroom dancing. I began learning salsa in 2002 when I moved to Clapham, south London, at the start of my PhD. My hips, which refused to stay in turn-out but happily

C. Parfitt (*) University of Chichester, Chichester, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Parfitt (ed.), Cultural Memory and Popular Dance, Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71083-5_1

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moved rhythmically in response to Latin music, seemed better suited to salsa than ballet. I enjoyed the sense of embodied connection salsa gave me to my mother’s Caribbean homeland, which was otherwise hard to grasp in my Anglicised upbringing. I also revelled in the rapid changes of partner that allowed me to embed myself in twenty-something South London social life. Salsa somehow connected my intangible ancestral past to a future I was working hard to create. On 21 March 2020, only days after the first COVID lockdown in the UK had halted all social dancing, a salsa friend from New Zealand who I had danced with for many years at The Bedford pub in Balham, tagged me in a Facebook link he had posted to the salsa track ‘Lady’ by Orquesta La Palabra. I replied, “This had me dancing around my room in nostalgic reverie! Oh, for the days of Balham salsa (or any kind of salsa, since corona shutdowns!). Thanks for helping me to relive a very social past in very anti-social times.” Months later, on the eve of the second UK COVID lockdown, and not having danced salsa for months, I asked Alexa to play salsa music in my kitchen. I shuffled in time with the clave rhythm towards my husband (who I had met through salsa friends in Balham) and we managed to dance a few bars before I felt an overwhelming sense of simultaneous loss and joy. Tears began streaming down my cheeks as we continued to dance. Reflecting on these recollections as I form them into language, I am struck by the complex ways that memory weaves and morphs across geographies, generations, modes of transmission, media and bodies moving to popular rhythms. A childhood memory migrates across the Atlantic and becomes diasporic memory, embedded in the body of the next generation through dance lessons. Caribbean desire for Britishness becomes British desire for Caribbeanness as memories pass from the migrant to the second generation. Popular dance translates diasporic memory into social identity in London. Social media converts affective memory into nostalgia. And the COVID pandemic, a global crisis of physical contact, bestows a palpable intensity on embodied memory. My popular dance memories reveal the shifting resonances of popular dance practices as they migrate between the colony and the metropole, the village and the city, the physical and the virtual, and the public and the domestic. These shifts highlight the difficulties of defining popular dance, given the malleable nature of dance and its meanings across temporal, spatial and social contexts. Responding to the question ‘What is Popular Dance?’, dance scholar Sherril Dodds (2011) considers multiple possible definitions, including “a form with a low level of cultural worth; a form

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with a high level of consumption; and a form that either maintains the dominant ideology or articulates expressions of resistance” (2011, p. 64). Her critique of each of these possibilities leads her to the conclusion that “an absolute definition of popular dance does not exist” (2011, p. 62). Instead, she outlines the historical, economic, geographical and sociopolitical conditions under which popular dance emerges. While initially focusing on “processes of industrialization and urbanization across Europe and America” (2011, p. 63), she later challenges the “assumption that ‘the popular’ is a Western phenomenon” and seeks a “more geographically inclusive understanding of popular dance” (2011, p. 64). To arrive at this more inclusive understanding, I would argue for the addition of colonisation to industrialisation and urbanisation as key conditions for the emergence of popular dance. Indeed, capitalism and colonialism have been inextricable in the making of the modern world, as Marxist scholars and scholars of Atlantic slavery have long argued (e.g., Williams 1994 [orig. 1944]). The collusion of capitalism and colonialism in eighteenth-century Atlantic modernity, for example, provoked revolutionary ideas of popular sovereignty, demanding new ways to embody the political will of the people that were materialised in popular performance (Dillon 2014, pp. 2–4). My personal popular dance genealogy, my research on popular dance in the Atlantic world (Parfitt forthcoming) and the chapters in this collection all bear out the centring of colonialism as a key context for the emergence, transmission and continual transformation of popular dance. Popular dance practices are intimately intertwined with both personal and collective dimensions of memory. As embodied forms, they can retain bodily knowledges over long periods of time through repeated movement sequences, rhythms, dynamics, spatial patterns and performer relationships. And yet, they often privilege improvisation, allowing skilled dancers and teachers to adapt the memories they perform to changing contexts. Frequently transmitted through social interaction, community classes or popular media (films, music videos, television, social media), popular dance practices allow memories to be shared and transformed across communities bound by social, cultural, diasporic, sexual, generational, religious and fan-based identities. As such, popular dance practices can become sites of contestation over genealogies, the use and meaning of the past and its implications for identities in the present. Their mnemonic charge can also make popular dance practices targets of cultural control and vehicles for shaping body politics around nationalistic, heteronormative, White, capitalistic values through moral panics, policing, censorship

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and appropriation—disciplinary techniques that attempt to regulate forgetting as well as remembering. Traces of dancers’ responses to contested memories and efforts to contain or co-opt their mobility are often embodied in the movement itself, so that popular dance practices become archives of their own conflicts over what can be remembered and forgotten.

Embodied Memory: Interdisciplinary Movements Between Memory and Popular Dance Bodies have long played a role in the development of ideas about cultural memory. The concept of embodied memory forms a thread through this interdisciplinary history, even as it gets pulled between and reshaped around notions of habit, ritual, resistance, performance, repertoire and archive. But understandings of embodied memory have developed only sporadically, often overshadowed by memory objects that ostensibly persist with greater stability over time, such as texts, monuments, films and photographs. Catalysts for shifting approaches to embodied memory have been the turn towards performances as key sites of memory transmission, and consideration of memory practices that emerged under the dehumanising conditions of colonisation, slavery and racial prejudice in the Atlantic world. This section traces ideas about embodied memory across philosophy, literature, history, anthropology, sociology, dance studies, performance studies and popular dance studies, offering one, inevitably selective, genealogy for the chapters in this book. Henri Bergson’s (2004) philosophical work Matter and Memory and Marcel Proust’s (1992) epic novel À la recherche du temps perdu, originally published in 1896 and 1913, respectively, both dwelt on the memory-­ making capacities of bodies, either to form habits or to trigger involuntary sensory recollections, and distinguished embodied memory from a more cognitive “image-memory” (Bergson 2004). French historian Pierre Nora later interpreted this distinction temporally, romanticising gestural and habitual memory as part of authentic milieux de mémoire (environments of memory) that characterised “primitive and archaic societies” (1996, p.  2), but were depleted in modern life. For Nora, modern memory is located not in the body, but in the images, recordings and documents of the archive, as a discrete, artificially constructed lieux de mémoire. Nora’s concept of places of memory has proved incredibly productive in memory

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studies, but his approach neglects the vibrant ways in which memory practices have remained embodied in modernity. Approaching the question of How Societies Remember as an anthropologist, Paul Connerton (1989, pp. 72–73) reframes Bergson’s habit-­memory and image-memory as different kinds of memory practices: incorporating practices and inscribing practices. Incorporating practices take place via live bodily activity, whereas inscribing practices use media, such as writing, photographs or computers, to store the memory beyond the temporal and spatial limits of corporeal presence. Importantly for dance and performance scholars, Connerton sees incorporating practices epitomised most formally in commemorative ceremonies of ritual re-enactment, such as coronations, religious rites and the Olympic Games, reflecting his belief in “the importance of performances, and in particular habitual performances, in conveying and sustaining memory” (1989, p. 104). It is for this reason that Connerton’s work has been so influential in later work on memory in dance and performance. Like Nora, Connerton perceives a shift in the roles of incorporating and inscribing practices in the course of human history and specifically in the “transition from an oral culture to a literate culture” (1989, p. 75). The rise of inscribing practices has, Connerton asserts, led people to “devalue” and “neglect[…]” (1989, p. 53, 101) rituals of re-enactment and incorporating practices more generally, particularly under the conditions of modernity, a contention that he pursues in his later book, How Modernity Forgets (2009). But unlike Nora, Connerton does not view the status of commemorative rituals of incorporation in modern life as characterised entirely by depletion and loss. Rather, in the face of modernity’s “logic of capital”, which “denies the idea of life as a structure of celebrated recurrence”, commemorative practices act as a “compensatory strategy”, reviving “the sense of life as ritual re-enactment in secular vocabulary” (1989, pp. 63–65). Connerton, thus, identifies a raison d’être for corporeal practices of memory in capitalist modernity. The value that Connerton attributes to the persistence of “bodily social memory” (1989, p. 71) in modernity is limited, however, by his commitment to ritual re-enactments as exemplary incorporating practices whose function is memory preservation. The value of these commemorative ceremonies, for Connerton, is their apparent resistance to the kinds of reflection, comparison and interrogation to which we submit inscriptions, such as texts. Existing only in the moment of performance, and not as persistent, tangible objects of contemplation, Connerton considers

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incorporating practices to be immune to “the process of cumulative questioning entailed in all discursive practices” (1989, p. 102). In this quality lies their mnemonic power, he continues, as they have the capacity to preserve social values beyond reproach. However, Connerton’s argument might be challenged here on several counts. Firstly, it is not self-evident that an immunity to critical questioning necessarily renders social values more memorable. Hannah Arendt writes that, on the contrary, events such as the American Revolution tend to be forgotten “unless they are talked about over and over again” (1990, p. 220). Secondly, it is questionable whether commemorative ceremonies are more impervious to challenge than tangible inscriptions, since the repetition and social context of rituals provides plenty of opportunity for critique. Connerton, in fact, provides an example of the critique of ritual in his description of the early days of the French Revolution, when the deputies of the Third Estate (representing the peasants and bourgeoisie) challenged the convention of requiring deputies to wear costumes representing their estate, leading to several waves of French fashion innovation during the 1790s (Connerton 1989, pp. 10–11). Finally, even if ritual re-enactments could be regarded as inherently conservative, they would not be representative of incorporating practices in this respect, which are often founts of improvisation and innovation. As Lyn Spillman and Brian Conway point out in their analysis of memories of Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland, even commemorative ceremonies “are never done exactly the same way twice” (Spillman and Conway 2007, p.  96). The power of performance to transmit memory resides not in its rigidity, but in its capacity to “convert the dead hands of the past into living presences that deviate from what went before” (Lhamon Jr. 1998, p. 71). The critical and creative capacities of embodied memory to refashion the past into a new future have emerged powerfully in writing that reflects on the ruptures and restitutions of embodied memory caused by colonisation, Atlantic slavery and race relations in the Atlantic world. Writer Wilson Harris gives poetic form to the idea that the traumatic memories of colonisation in the Caribbean and Guianas nevertheless contain seeds of cultural innovation and nourishment that he calls “an art of subsistence of memory” which “feed[s] imagination in the future” (1970, pp. 21, 22). He exemplifies such visionary capacities of memory in the figure of the limbo dancer, remembered from his childhood in British Guiana in the early 1930s. Forced to move under a gradually lowered bar on the slave ships of the middle passage, the limbo dancer embodied not only the

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painful threshold between the old world and the new, but “the renascence of a new corpus of sensibility that could translate and accommodate African and other legacies within a new architecture of cultures” (1970, p. 8). Sociologist Rafael F. Narváez has more recently developed the idea of embodied collective memory as a ground not just for “somatic compliance” but “somatic resistance” (2012, p. 7). Drawing on the history of race in the United States, as well as the work of Bourdieu and Freud, Narváez demonstrates how embodied collective memory does not condemn those who possess it to reproduce the existing social order, but also allows “social actors [to] collectively detach themselves from what that past prescribes for their bodies” (2012, p. 3). Under the pressure of forced migration, violence and persistent racism, embodied collective memory, Narváez argues, becomes a repository of “renewal, resistance, and creativity” (2012, p.  117), allowing Blackness to perform collective futures as well as collective pasts. Dance studies began to consider the importance of marginalised memories in the 1990s through African American studies scholar VèVè Clark’s (1994) work on the performance of memory in Afro-Caribbean dance. Pre-empting postcolonial critiques and correctives of Nora’s Les Lieux de mémoire project that continue to this day (for example, Achille et  al. 2020), Clark applies Nora’s rereading of the French Revolution and his notions of milieux and lieux de mémoire to the practices of African diasporic memory arising from the French Revolution’s often-forgotten twin, the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804). Clark traces the “memory of difference” (1994, p. 190) performed in choreographer Katherine Dunham’s work as a creative dialogue between the Caribbean milieux de mémoire where Dunham conducted research, including religious rituals and secular popular dance, and the lieux de mémoire of her performances. According to Clark, this “research-to-performance method” (1994, p. 189) allowed Dunham to develop cultural critique and sometimes political protest in her stage choreographies. The memory of difference was not lost in its transfer to the stage, but transformed and transmitted through the uneven and developing literacy of dancers, audiences and critics for Black dance. Sociologist and historian Cindy Patton (1993), writing in parallel and in dialogue with Clark’s developing work, considers what happens when the memory of difference is transferred not to the stage, but to the popular cultural site of music video. Focusing on Madonna’s evocation of the queer, Black performance culture of voguing in her 1990 music video Vogue, Patton asks what happens to the popular memory of homosexuality

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when it shifts from the underground to the mainstream popular culture of MTV. Following Clark’s recognition of the memory of difference even in the lieux de mémoire of stage performance, Patton identifies in mass media renderings of popular memory, such as Vogue, “the bricolagelike combination of kinetic moments of resistance, performances of difference, perspectival visions from the margin, and mute recognitions of power effected against the self” (1993, p.  91). In opposition to assumptions that mass mediation appropriates and “obstruct[s] the flow of this popular memory” (Foucault 1996, p. 123), Patton argues that the “[c]o-optation of locally meaningful forms, then, may highlight the memory of difference as much as it dilutes and commodifies the form and subversiveness of anti-­ establishment dance” (Patton 1993, p. 189). Just as Clark opens up the stage to memories of difference embodied in popular dance, Patton opens up mass media as a site of popular memory’s struggle and transmission. In the same year that Patton’s chapter on Vogue was published, Paul Gilroy’s seminal book The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (1993) mapped a new geopolitical frame for tracing memories of difference. The Black Atlantic expanded questions of remembering and forgetting Africa, slavery and migration to an oceanic scale. In the wake of Gilroy, performance studies scholars began to consider how popular performance practices transmit memory within the enlarged Atlantic and hemispheric fields that have framed histories of colonisation, transatlantic slavery and their aftermaths. Joseph Roach foregrounds the continual acts of “surrogation” (1996, p.  2) or substitution that allow both continuity and forgetting after death in the circum-Atlantic rim. Celeste Fraser Delgado and José Esteban Muñoz expand Clark’s and Patton’s grounding of lieux de mémoire in the diasporic dancing body to “Afro-­ Caribbean and Latin dancing as a whole”, arguing that “[d]ance vivifies the cultural memory of a common context of struggle” (1997, pp.  17, 16). And Diana Taylor’s distinction between the “archive” and the “repertoire” (echoing Connerton’s inscribing and incorporating practices) aims at “revalorizing expressive embodied culture” as “vital acts of transfer” in the Americas (2003, pp. 19, 20, 16, 2). Roach’s and Taylor’s work, in particular, has stimulated renewed interest in cultural memory in dance studies. Scholars of contemporary dance have considered the play of cultural memory on the stage in relation to diaspora (Mitra 2009), virtual community (Burt 2009), re-enactment (Lepecki 2010; De Laet 2013; Franko 2017) and historical trauma (Bernstein 2007; Fortuna 2019). The anthology Performance, Embodiment

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and Cultural Memory (Counsell and Mock 2009) brought together essays on cultural memory in a variety of performance contexts including contemporary dance and the Japanese tea ceremony. The sub-discipline of popular dance studies has also enthusiastically incorporated theories of cultural memory, perhaps due to popular dance’s difficult relationship to official histories. Until the rise of popular dance studies in the last twenty years, “the traditional periodization of dance studies [had] neglected [social, vernacular, and popular dance], favouring instead the study of concert dance and well-known dancers and choreographers” (Malnig 2009, p. 1). Julie Malnig attributes this exclusion of popular dance from the dance canon to dance studies’ attempts to establish and legitimise itself as a discipline in a wider academy that “viewed [dance] as unintellectual, intuitive, and uncritically expressive” (Goellner and Shea Murphy cited in Malnig 2009, p. 1). In the face of such Cartesian prejudices, dance studies constructed the history of dance through the lineages of ballet and modern dance, widely valued as high culture. The roots of many popular dance forms in rural, working-class and/or Afro-diasporic cultures also affected their exclusion from the dance canon. Not only did the young discipline of dance studies distance itself from lower-class and Black dance forms, but these forms had often developed their own oral and embodied archives, precisely because of their exclusion from, or rejection of, the elite investiture of power in the written word (Dillon 2014, pp. 18–19; Parfitt Forthcoming). Popular dance forms are often based on a corporeal vitality, improvisatory principle and body-to-­ body mode of transmission (even via the interface of a screen) that position them as “counter-memor[ies]” (Foucault 1977) to official histories. Theories of cultural memory alleviate some of these tensions between popular dance and historical method. The concept of cultural memory encompasses a wide variety of memory practices, including monuments and museums, written histories and memoirs, films and photographs, gossip and gestures. Therefore, although ‘archivable’ materials still form a large part of the evidence base, memory studies also offers ways to think about the past through memory practices beyond traditional definitions of the archive, such as family stories and dance. In his later work, Connerton (2011) highlights the broad spectrum of memory practices developed by victims of class, gender and race injustice as acts of mourning in the aftermath of historical trauma, using the genres of journalism, cinema, video, painting, photography, songs, plays and festivals. Exploration of these genres as memory practices provides a

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corrective to text-based historical research that often privileges the elites and the victors. English literature scholar, Marianne Hirsch, who traces traumatic memories across generations through stories, gestures and photographs, writes that she “turned to the study of memory out of the conviction that, like feminist art, writing, and scholarship, it offered a means to uncover and to restore experiences and life stories that might otherwise remain absent from the historical archive” (Hirsch 2012, p. 15). Similarly, the pasts transmitted in popular dance are often those of marginalised communities, of response to conflict and cultural trauma, of dispossession, appropriation and contestation, and simply of dance as everyday practice. Popular dance scholars have turned to memory studies to think about how these pasts can be excavated, valued and put into dialogue with other kinds of historical narratives. Theories of cultural memory have featured in popular dance research at least since popular dance studies began to coalesce as a field around the turn of the millennium.1 In 2001, dance historian and ethnographer Theresa Buckland argued that dance, and particularly “traditional forms of danced display” such as Morris dance, foregrounds and publicly enacts “cultural memory as embodied practice by virtue of its predominantly somatic modes of transmission” (Buckland 2001, p. 1). Buckland drew on Connerton’s distinction between incorporating and inscribing practices to think about how the Britannia Coconut Dancers of Bacup in Lancashire transmitted their repertoire (2001, p. 10). In the same year, dance scholar Lisa Doolittle investigated memories of mass social dancing in Alberta, Canada, in the 1930s and 1940s, citing Roach’s articulation of the incorporation/inscription binary. Noting that popular dancing was “largely absent from the existing historical records of this time and place”, Doolittle was faced with the question of “how to investigate such an ephemeral phenomenon?” (Doolittle 2001, p. 11). Her response was to use oral history interviews, “actual experiences of dancing with older people” (2001, p. 19) and contemporary choreography to triangulate “oral, embodied, and artistically transformed [memories] of the region’s social dance story” (Doolittle 2001, p. 14). As a young discipline, popular dance studies utilises and combines a range of existing methodologies. Dodds (2011, pp. 72–74) identifies the most common to be ethnography and historiography, with textual analysis used to study representations of popular dance. These methodologies have inspired popular dance scholars to develop distinctive approaches to cultural memory. Scholars researching popular dance from a

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historiographic perspective have utilised oral histories (Stearns and Stearns 1994), “embodied histories” (participants’ recollections of dance memories through dancing) (Doolittle 2001) and dance reconstruction (Robinson 2015) as strategies to make past popular dance practices present in their choreography and writing. Although ethnography often focuses on the synchronic dimension of life, Buckland points out that studies of dance in fields such as anthropology, ethnology and folklore studies have often combined ethnographic and historical perspectives, allowing consideration of cultural memory. Several examples of this approach to folk and popular dance were brought together alongside examples of non-Western classical dance in her edited collection Dancing from Past to Present: Nation, Culture, Identities (2006), which might usefully be considered in dialogue with Part III of this collection.2 Some of the more recent intersections between popular dance studies and memory studies have disrupted the binary opposition between the archive and the repertoire (Taylor 2003) by reconceiving the archive as a mediated collection of popular performances that are accessible to and curated by their communities of practice. For example, popular dance scholar Dara Milovanović (2020) uses the example of Bob Fosse to argue that popular screendance generates its own continually updated archive by quoting and referencing previous screen choreographies. A further example of recent work in this area is the AHRC/RCUK/Newton Fund/ Colciencias-funded research project ‘Embodied Performance Practices in Processes of Reconciliation, Construction of Memory and Peace in Chocó and El Medio Pacifico, Colombia’ led by dance scholar Melissa Blanco Borelli (2020). The project aims to co-create a digital archive of the embodied performance practices that have emerged in majority Afro-­ Colombian communities affected by the ongoing armed conflict (1964–), questioning how these practices affect discourses of post-conflict memory, trauma and reconciliation. Cultural Memory in Popular Dance emerged from an AHRC-funded research project called ‘Dancing with Memory’ that I led from 2014 to 2016. The project investigated how popular dance forms transmit cultural memory not only through embodied performance, but also through the written, artistic and cinematic forms that represent them.3 The research focused on the case study of the cancan, and particularly its participation in the Atlantic circulation of popular dance practices in the Age of Revolution (Parfitt Forthcoming). The project also engaged with other popular dance practices through two project symposia which attracted a

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wide range of international scholars.4 These gatherings were the seed for Cultural Memory in Popular Dance and four of the chapters were originally presented as papers at these symposia (Batchelor and Mulholland, López-Yánez, Robinson and Satin). The remainder of the contributors joined the collection in response to a call for contributions. A variety of disciplinary perspectives are represented in the chapters, including dance studies, sustainable development, sociology, theatre and performance studies, Central and Eastern European studies and ethnomusicology. The contributors are located across the globe, including Australia, Canada, Ecuador, France, Ghana, New Zealand, the UK and the US (from Texas to Alaska). They also encompass the full spectrum of career levels, from post-master’s to senior scholars. The authors have been in dialogue through the symposia and by peer-reviewing each other’s chapters. In this process, and in response to the cross-cutting histories of popular dance and cultural memory research outlined in this section, four clusters of research have emerged, which form the structure of this book.

Mapping the Terrain Part I brings together research into pedagogic invocations of Afro-­ diasporic memory. As the foregoing paragraphs have demonstrated, considerations of the transmission of memory in the Atlantic world, forged by colonisation and transatlantic slavery, have strongly shaped research at the interface of memory studies and dance studies. Building on foundational research into Afro-diasporic dance forms as embodied knowledge (Daniel 2005) that can be formulated into techniques and curricula (Welsh-Asante 1993, 2000), recent research has turned towards the politics and pedagogies that arise from transmitting Afro-diasporic memories through the formal setting of the dance class. For example, dancer-scholar Dasha Chapman (2016) considers Jean Appolon’s Afro-Haitian Dance Classes in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as a space of diasporic re-membering; Ananya Jahanara Kabir traces the circulation of Afro-Latin dances, rhythms and memories across variously commodified circum-Atlantic dance floors (e.g., Kabir 2019); and Lucía M. Suárez et al. (2019) have edited a collection of essays on Afro-Brazilian dance, education, memory and race. The three chapters presented in Part I of Cultural Memory in Popular Dance focus not on particular pedagogical settings, but on invocations of Afro-diasporic memory in the teaching methodologies adopted by selected popular dance forms: tap dance, Cuban salsa and Zumba Fitness. Janet

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Schroeder’s chapter develops the concept of “dancestry” to think about how embodied genealogies are acquired, performed and transmitted in tap dance lessons through a citational process that leaves a “corporeal residue”. Elizabeth Anaya considers the debate over whether teachers should incorporate sacred Afro-Cuban dances into Cuban salsa in global Latin dance communities, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Cuba. And Aoife Sadlier argues that Zumba classes produce ritual re-enactments of the uncreolised (i.e., uncoupled) African body that make manifest a collective ecstatic spirit in the space of the transnational gym. All three contributors discuss the temporal complexities of invoking Afro-diasporic memories in the dance class, and therefore bringing sacred memories into secular space. Such memory practices variously produce embodied cross-temporal connection (Schroeder), authenticity or alternatively disrespect (Anaya) or memories of collective joy (Sadlier). In all three chapters, then, popular dance classes provide spaces in which the politics, ethics and potentialities of invoking Afro-diasporic memories can be explored through the body. Part II considers how popular dance genealogies can be manipulated and, alternatively, reclaimed. The malleability of memory is a foundational tenet of memory studies. Philosopher Walter Benjamin famously acknowledged that memory is only ever a function of the power-laden present: To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it “the way it really was” (Ranke). It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger. […] The danger affects both the content of the tradition and its receivers. The same threat hangs over both: that of becoming a tool of the ruling classes. (Benjamin 2019, pp. 198–199)

For Benjamin, memory becomes a site of class struggle because whoever controls the past also controls the present. These questions, “Of what are there memories? Whose memory is it?” (Ricoeur 2006, p.  3), were taken up by philosopher Paul Ricoeur, who identified three levels of the abuse of memory: the pathologisation of memory as wounded by trauma, as in psychoanalysis; the manipulation of memory through the use of ideology; and the ethical-political obligation to remember (2006, p.  69). Julie Malnig’s chapter in this volume draws on Ricoeur’s work to consider how professional ballroom dance teams manipulated memory to legitimise the new popular dance styles in their repertoires: ragtime dance in the 1910s and rock and roll in the 1950s. These manipulations involved

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forgetting the African American origins of these new popular dances by rooting them in idealised, Whitened pasts. The remaining chapters in Part II address the question of how particular marginalised communities can reclaim and reconfigure manipulated memories. Ray Batchelor and Jon Mulholland use visual ethnography to trace the circulation of historical imagery of all-male tango couples on the internet. They propose that a queer tango historiography can challenge “nationalism’s heteronormative colonisation of the past” by revealing subjugated queer knowledges that are otherwise forgotten. Whereas Batchelor and Mulholland invoke queer theory, María Gabriela López-Yánez subjects the colonisation of memory to a decolonial critique in her chapter on Afro-Ecuadorian Bomba.5 López-Yánez distinguishes between Bomba as spectacle, developed during the period of Atlantic slavery in response to the demands of slaveholders and now performed for the tourist gaze, and Bomba cimarrona as decolonial performance. Finally in Part II, Terry Ofosu explores the distinct postcolonial politics at play in the popular dances created by youth sub-cultures in post-independent Ghana. Ofosu argues that the young practitioners of these dances respond to the global hegemony of Western popular culture and the Pan-African politics of the Ghanaian government by performing a “double articulation” (Clark et al. 1997, p. 101) of Western and indigenous Ghanaian movements. Ghanaian popular dances therefore become complex “mnemonic artefacts” for traditional Ghanaian dances. The chapters by Batchelor and Mulholland, López-Yánez and Ofosu demonstrate that embodied memory does not condemn its inheritors to repeat the past, but provides the ground on which new collective practices, indeed futures, can be built (Narváez 2012, p. 3). Part III exposes the political work of nation-building as memory work that acts, more or less successfully, through the folk dance practices of live and screened dancing bodies. For cultural studies scholar John Storey, the idea of folk culture was invented as an act of romantic fantasy, “intended to heal the wounds of the present and safeguard the future by promoting a memory of […] a lost world of the authentic” (2003, p. 13). This lost world was the culture of the rural peasantry, which intellectuals from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries feared was disappearing in the rush towards industrialisation and urbanisation. According to Storey, the rapid changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution and the rural exodus to the cities prompted intellectuals to divide popular culture into two geographical and moral categories: a rural, natural, “primitive”

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folk culture; and an urban, degraded, mass culture. This distinction became naturalised not only in scholarly categorisations but in popular cultural production, so that folk art, folk dance and folk music developed distinct aesthetics and forms of memory from their urban counterparts. The significance of the designation ‘folk’ to folklorists and practitioners of folk forms should not be underestimated or disregarded. The boundary between folk and urban cultures, however, has often been more fluid in practice than in the romantic theory of folk culture (see Parfitt forthcoming). In recognition of the complex historical relationships between dance practices labelled as ‘folk’ or ‘urban’, I have included both within the broader category of popular dance in this collection. Nationalism emerged hand-in-hand with modern ideas of popular performance. Storey goes so far as to say that, “intellectuals, working under the different banners of nationalism, Romanticism, folklore, and finally, folk song, ‘invented’ the first concept of popular culture” (Storey 2003, p.  1).6 Folk culture became the symbolic material that naturalised and legitimised emerging European nationalisms. But if the modern nation was imagined into being through romanticised memory, it was also a work of collective amnesia. French historian Ernest Renan asserted in his 1882 lecture ‘What is a nation?’, “[f]orgetting, I would even go so far as to say historical error, is a crucial factor in the creation of a nation, which is why progress in historical studies often constitutes a danger for [the principle of] nationality” (1990, p. 11). What are forgotten, according to Renan, are the “deeds of violence” and “brutality” (1990, p.  11) that brought about a national unity thereafter remembered as having existed since time immemorial. The chapters that comprise Part III explore the mnemonic and amnesiac processes of ‘salvaging’, documenting and commodifying folk and popular dances to produce national dance. Kirsty Kay traces the discovery and revival of the Moldavian Csángó folk dance by Hungarians seeking national origins in the minority communities of the former Austro-­ Hungarian Empire, now outside Hungary’s national borders. The subsequent two chapters in Part III reveal popular dance as a practice of memory in the postcolonial nation, following the previous work in this area by Sabine Sörgel (2007) and Susanne Franco (2015). Declan Patrick considers the types of colonial and postcolonial remembering performed by two folk dances claimed at different times to be the national dance of the Philippines: Cariñosa and Tinikling. Elina Djebbari draws on ethnographic fieldwork and archival research to compare three types of archives of

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popular Cuban dances: the “classical” archives produced under Fidel Castro’s government; the post-archival (Franco 2015, p. 18) recordings made by the Conjunto Folklórico Nacional; and the dancer’s body as an “archive in the making”. Finally, Priya Thomas examines the cinematic moment when Maria forgets the steps of the ländler in The Sound of Music (1965) as a scene that exposes the vulnerability of Austrian, German and American body politics to loss of control and political disorder. Thomas’ chapter reveals the stakes involved for the nation-state in the processes of identifying, reclaiming, codifying and archiving national dances, discussed by Kay, Patrick and Djebbari, and the anxiety provoked by the risk of nationalised bodies forgetting the choreographic script. Part IV considers how mediated dancing, in the form of archival objects, video recordings, films, photographs and music videos, can transmit memory as feelings or affects. Researchers working at the interface of media studies and memory studies have shown persistent interest in mediated, affective memory, perhaps as a counter to widespread narratives of media’s disembodiment.7 Notions of “haptic visuality” (Marks 2000), “prosthetic memory” (Landsberg 2004) and “postmemory” (Hirsch 2012) have provided frameworks for thinking about how media can carry affective memories within diasporic communities, to mass publics and across generations. The chapters in Part IV address all these dimensions of affective memory transmission, foregrounding the personal, embodied experience of each author as archival researcher, daughter, dancer and film spectator. Danielle Robinson reflects on her physical interactions with the archival remains of ragtime and early jazz social dancing, both in the archive and later in the dance studio. She draws on new materialist theories to propose a new approach to dance reconstruction called “empathetic attunement”, in which she engages imaginatively with the diverse people whose bodies, labours and lives are entangled in a specific archival object. Leslie Satin meditates on the fluid and continuous process of recomposing our own life stories which takes place as an iterative dance between memory and media. Like Robinson, Satin engages in imaginative acts of physical and writerly dance reconstruction, in which memory “channelling”, story-­ telling and dance-making converge. The shifting relations between memory and narrative emerge again in Laura Steil’s chapter. Steil draws on her experiences as a dancer and ethnographer in the Parisian “Afro scene” to explore how Afro-French young people rework affective memories of “home” through video, digital and social media technologies. For these post-migrants, mediated music and dance create complex, affective,

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paradoxically immediate relationships between Paris and a Congolese or Ivoirian “home”. Elena Benthaus takes the discussion of affective memory to the big screen, unpacking the nostalgic feelings she experienced when viewing the intertextual dance sequences in David Chazelle’s film musical La La Land (2016). Benthaus draws on Svetlana Boym’s (2008) work to distinguish between the restorative nostalgia for the Whitened, idealised dancing of Hollywood’s Golden Age performed in the film’s musical numbers, and the reflective nostalgia inscribed in the film’s critical reviews, which fragment and augment the polished “technonostalgia” of the film. The chapters in Part IV foreground the capacity of mediated dancing both to romanticise the past and to bring us into physical encounter with other memories, others’ memories, that pluralise the past and allow new narratives to emerge. The essays gathered in this collection forcefully refute Nora’s (1996) claim that embodied memory is depleted in modernity. Following Clark (1994) and Patton (1993), the contributors reveal how memories embodied in popular dance have continued to circulate and proliferate in and across dance classes, performances, social practices, archival objects, films, music videos and the internet. They are not confined to archival lieux de mémoire (Nora 1996, p. 1), but cross back and forth between archives and repertoires, in some cases constituting both at once. The popular dance practices discussed here do not preserve memory in a pre-discursive, uncritical bubble, as Connerton (1989) argued for commemorative ceremonies, but have the capacity to challenge hegemonic pasts and imagine new collective futures. Indeed, they are animated by an ongoing negotiation between multiple dominant and marginalised visions of the past, played out on the bodies of dancers, spectators, teachers, reviewers and more. In this negotiation, popular dancing bodies, often trivialised in public discourse, become vital to cultural processes of remembering and forgetting as pivots between alternative pasts, presents and futures.

Notes 1. In tracing scholarly interest in popular dance, Sherril Dodds records that “[a] burgeoning interest in popular dance came to fore in the 2001 winter edition of Dance Research Journal, which was devoted to ‘social and popular dance’” (Dodds 2011, p. 45).

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2. See Lynn D. Maners (2006) ‘Utopia, Eutopia, and E.U.-topia: Performance and Memory in Former Yugoslavia’ and Deidre Sklar (2006) ‘Qualities of Memory: Two Dances of the Tortugas Fiesta, New Mexico’. 3. Further information on the aims and design of the ‘Dancing with Memory’ project can be found in a chapter written by dance scholar Rachel Fensham on “funded dance research projects” that have “built credible, intensive and paradigm-shifting research programmes” (Fensham 2019, p. 45). 4. The two project symposia were: ‘Dancing (trans)national memories’, 20 June 2015, Senate House, University of London; and ‘Muse of Modernity? Remembering, Mediating and Modernising Popular Dance’, 16 April 2016, Senate House, University of London. 5. For further perspectives on decolonising memory in dance, see the special section on ‘Dance and decolonisation in Africa’ edited by Ananya Jahanara Kabir and Elina Djebbari in the Journal of African Cultural Studies (2019) and Tina K.  Ramnarine’s edited collection Dance, Music and Cultures of Decolonisation in the Indian Diaspora (2020). 6. In my forthcoming book, Remembering the Cancan: Popular dance and the kinetics of memory between France and the Atlantic World, I challenge the idea that rural and working-class people had no conception of popular culture before it was ‘invented’ by middle-class intellectuals. Rather, I root popular notions of a common culture of the underclasses in circulations of knowledge and memory around the transcolonial Atlantic world during the Age of Revolution. This emergent popular culture was a source of both fascination and threat to middle-class and elite observers, who quickly redefined and appropriated it in a way that mollified its danger. 7. On the importance of gender, sexuality and embodiment in digitally mediated environments, see Neils van Doorn (2011).

References Achille, Etienne, Charles Forsdick, and Lydie Moudileno. 2020. Postcolonial Realms of Memory: Sites and Symbols in Modern France. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Arendt, Hannah. 1990. On Revolution. London: Penguin. Benjamin, Walter. 2019. Theses on the Philosophy of History. In Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, ed. Hannah Arendt, 196–209. Boston and New York: Mariner Books and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Bergson, Henri. 2004. Matter and Memory. Mineola and New  York: Dover Publications. Bernstein, Carol L. 2007. Beyond the Archive: Cultural Memory in Dance and Theater. Journal of Research Practice 3 (2): 1–14.

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Blanco Borelli, Melissa. 2020. Embodied Performance Practices in Processes of Reconciliation, Construction of Memory and Peace in Choco and Medio Pacifico, Colombia. Accessed November 24, 2020. https://gtr.ukri.org/ projects?ref=AH%2FR013748%2F1#/tabOverview. Boym, Svetlana. 2008. The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic books. Buckland, Theresa Jill. 2001. Dance, Authenticity and Cultural Memory: The Politics of Embodiment. Yearbook for Traditional Music 33: 1–16. ———. 2006. Dancing from Past to Present: Nation, Culture, Identities. Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. Burt, Ramsay. 2009. History, Memory, and the Virtual in Current European Dance Practice. Dance Chronicle 32 (3): 442–467. Chapman, Dasha. 2016. The Diasporic Re-membering Space of Jean Appolon’s Afro-Haitian Dance Classes. The Black Scholar 46 (1): 54–65. Chazelle, Damien, director. 2016. La La Land. Summit Entertainment. 2 hr., 8 min. Clark, VéVé. 1994. Performing the Memory of Difference in Afro-Caribbean Dance: Katherine Dunham’s Choreography, 1938–1987. In History and Memory in African-American Culture, ed. Geneviève E.  Fabre and Robert G. O’Meally, 188–204. New York: Oxford University Press. Clark, John, Stuart Hall, Tony Jefferson, and Brian Roberts. 1997. Subcultures, Cultures and Class (1975). In The Subcultures Reader, ed. Ken Gelder and Sarah Thornton, 100–111. London and New York: Routledge. Connerton, Paul. 1989. How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2009. How Modernity Forgets. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2011. The Spirit of Mourning: History, Memory and the Body. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Counsell, Colin, and Roberta Mock. 2009. Performance, Embodiment and Cultural Memory. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Daniel, Yvonne. 2005. Dancing Wisdom: Embodied Knowledge in Haitian vodou, Cuban yoruba, and Bahian candomblé. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. De Laet, Timmy. 2013. Bodies With(out) Memories: Strategies of Re-enactment in Contemporary Dance. In Performing Memory in Art and Popular Culture, ed. Liedeke Plate and Anneke Smelik, 147–164. New  York and London: Routledge. Delgado, Celeste Fraser, and José Esteban Muñoz. 1997. Rebellions of Everynight Life. In Everynight Life: Culture and Dance in Latin/o America, ed. Celeste Fraser Delgado and José Esteban Muñoz, 9–32. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press. Dillon, Elizabeth Maddock. 2014. New World Drama: The Performative Commons in the Atlantic World, 1649–1849. Durham: Duke University Press.

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Dodds, Sherril. 2011. Dancing on the Canon: Embodiments of Value in Popular Dance. Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Doolittle, Lisa. 2001. The Trianon and On: Reading Mass Social Dancing in the 1930s and 1940s in Alberta, Canada. Dance Research Journal 33 (2): 11–28. van Doorn, Niels. 2011. Digital Spaces, Material Traces: How Matter Comes to Matter in Online Performances of Gender, Sexuality and Embodiment. Media, Culture & Society 33 (4): 531–547. Fensham, Rachel. 2019. Research Methods and Problems. In The Bloomsbury Companion to Dance Studies, ed. Sherril Dodds, 35–78. London and Oxford: Bloomsbury. Fortuna, Victoria. 2019. Moving Otherwise: Dance, Violence, and Memory in Buenos Aires. New York: Oxford University Press. Foucault, Michel. 1977. Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews. Trans. Donald F. Bouchard, and Sherry Simon. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. ———. 1996. Film and Popular Memory. In Sylvère Lotringer, ed. Foucault Live, 122–132. New York: Semiotext(e). Franco, Susanne. 2015. Reenacting Heritage at Bomas of Kenya: Dancing the Postcolony. Dance Research Journal 47 (2): 3–22. Franko, Mark. 2017. The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Reenactment. New York: Oxford University Press. Gilroy, Paul. 1993. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Harris, Wilson. 1970. History, Fable and Myth in the Caribbean and Guianas. Caribbean Quarterly 16 (2): 1–32. Hirsch, Marianne. 2012. The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust. New  York and Chichester: Columbia University Press. Kabir, Ananya Jahanara. 2019. Decolonizing Time Through Dance with Kwenda Lima: Cabo Verde, Creolization, and Affiliative Afromodernity. Journal of African Cultural Studies 31 (3): 318–333. Kabir, Ananya Jahanara, and Elina Djebbari. 2019. Dance and Decolonisation in Africa. Journal of African Cultural Studies 31 (3): 314–401. Landsberg, Alison. 2004. Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. Columbia University Press. Lepecki, André. 2010. The Body as Archive: Will to Re-enact and the Afterlives of Dances. Dance Research Journal 42 (2): 28–48. Lhamon, W.T., Jr. 1998. Raising Cain: Blackface Performance from Jim Crow to Hip Hop. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press. Malnig, Julie. 2009. Ballroom, Boogie, Shimmy Sham, Shake: A Social and Popular Dance Reader. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

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Maners, Lynn D. 2006. Utopia, Eutopia, and E.U.-topia: Performance and Memory in Former Yugoslavia. In Dancing from Past to Present: Nation, Culture, Identities, ed. Theresa Jill Buckland, 75–96. Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. Marks, Laura U. 2000. The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment and the Senses. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press. Milovanović, Dara. 2020. Popular Dance as Archive: Re-imagining Keeps the Fosse Aesthetic Preserved. Dance Research 38 (2): 255–270. Mitra, Royona. 2009. Embodiment of Memory and the Diasporic Agent in Akram Khan Company’s Bahok’. In Performance, Embodiment and Cultural Memory, ed. Colin Counsell and Roberta Mock, 41–58. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Narváez, Rafael F. 2012. Embodied Collective Memory: The Making and Unmaking of Human Nature. Lanham and Plymouth: University Press of America. Nora, Pierre. 1996. Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, Volume I: Conflict and Divisions. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. New  York: Columbia University Press. Parfitt, Clare. Forthcoming. Remembering the Cancan: Popular Dance and the Kinetics of Memory between France and the Atlantic World. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Patton, Cindy. 1993. Embodying Subaltern Memory: Kinesthesia and the Problematics of Gender and Race. In The Madonna Connection: Representational Politics, Subcultural Identities, and Cultural Theory, ed. Cathy Schwichtenberg. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Proust, Marcel. 1992. In Search of Lost Time, vol. 1: Swann’s Way. Translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff, Terence Kilmartin, and D.J. Enright. London: Chatto and Windus. Ramnarine, Tina K. 2020. Dance, Music and Cultures of Decolonisation in the Indian Diaspora. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Renan, Ernest. 1990. What Is a Nation? In Nation and Narration, ed. Homi K. Bhabha, 8–22. London and New York: Routledge. Ricoeur, Paul. 2006. Memory, History, Forgetting. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Roach, Joseph R. 1996. Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance. New York and Chichester: Columbia University Press. Robinson, Danielle. 2015. Modern Moves: Dancing Race during the Ragtime and Jazz Eras. New York: Oxford University Press. Sklar, Deidre. 2006. Qualities of Memory: Two Dances of the Tortugas Fiesta, New Mexico. In Dancing from Past to Present: Nation, Culture, Identities, ed. Theresa Jill Buckland, 97–122. Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. Sörgel, Sabine. 2007. Dancing Postcolonialism: The National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag.

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Spillman, Lyn, and Brian Conway. 2007. Texts, Bodies, and the Memory of Bloody Sunday. Symbolic Interaction 30 (1): 79–103. Stearns, Marshall, and Jean Stearns. 1994. Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance. New York: Da Capo. Storey, John. 2003. Inventing Popular Culture: From Folklore to Globalization. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Suárez, Lucía M., Amélia Conrado, and Yvonne Daniel. 2019. Dancing Bahia: Essays on Afro-Brazilian Dance, Education, Memory, and Race. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect. Taylor, Diana. 2003. The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Welsh-Asante, Kariamu. 1993. African-American Dance in Curricula: Modes of Inclusion. Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance 64 (2): 48–51. ———. 2000. Umfundalai: An African Dance Technique. Trenton: Africa World Press. Williams, Eric. 1994. Capitalism and Slavery. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press. Wise, Robert, director. 1965. The Sound of Music. Twentieth Century Fox. 2 hr., 52 min.

PART I

Pedagogic Invocations of Afro-Diasporic Memory

Tap Dance and Cultural Memory: Shuffling with My Dancestors Janet Schroeder

Whenever I teach the classic tap dance the Shim Sham to a new group of dancers, I begin by introducing its contested history.1 I also share my own history of learning this choreography in 1998 as an undergraduate student at Ohio Northern University, during a residency with the LA-based Jazz Tap Ensemble. Though I cannot recall exactly who taught me, I mention a few people it might have been, including Lynn Dally, Sam Weber, or Carol Christianson. In the only dance studio in the university’s performing arts centre, we faced the mirror as we often did to learn choreography. Following the leader, we engaged in call and response: Stamp spank-step, stamp spank-step, stamp spank-step step stamp spank-step. Reverse and repeat. Break: step toe step hop step hop step out in. With its simple structure of four choruses and plenty of repetition within them, the Shim Sham is fairly easy to learn and hard to forget. At this point, I have been dancing the Shim Sham for more than 20 years, performing with many different groups. Over time, I have made subtle changes to the dance as I initially

J. Schroeder (*) Columbus, OH, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Parfitt (ed.), Cultural Memory and Popular Dance, Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71083-5_2

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learned it, such as the extra ball change I added in the third chorus and the way I vary the break with each repetition. As I talk with students, I emphasise that the dance I teach today is not necessarily the ultimate Shim Sham, but rather, it is my Shim Sham right now. Classes are especially exciting when some students have previous experience with the dance because in the process of learning, differences in rhythm, weight placement, and bodily shapes reveal themselves between what I teach and what other students know. In those moments, students see very clearly the lively nature of this dance, and I emphasise that these differences are a part of the tradition of tap dance—in such corp-oral histories, transmission is imperfect. Moments of contrasts in the dance also underscore the importance of recognising that our individual Shim Shams are part of the larger legacy of the dance and of tap dance history broadly. The legacy of tap dance is both singular and multiple—singular in that each of us has our own individual practice and multiple in that each individual’s practice fits within the broader legacy of tap dance. In this chapter, I offer the concept of dancestry, which is similarly individual and plural. Engaging concepts from Joseph Roach (1996), Diana Taylor (2003), and Paul Connerton (1989), I suggest dancestry provides a way of understanding the collective and embodied nature of cultural memory, particularly as conveyed through popular dance forms. Sherril Dodds describes popular dance as being “open to a constant process of recycling and reinvention” ( 2011, p. 3), and in this chapter, I explicate dancestry in relation to rhythm tap dance. As in other forms of popular dance, each tap dancer has their own influences that shape their tap dance style, vocabulary, and experience of the form, which impacts the gestural, rhythmic, and choreographic inheritance they embody and disseminate through dancing. At the same time, we are connected to tap dancers across generations through historic dances like the Shim Sham, performing the cultural values, history, and memories of tap dance alongside its practice. In this way, though dancestry is enacted by individuals, it exceeds our individual paths as it acknowledges that we are all part of a much larger whole. In what follows, I define dancestry as a facet of cultural memory and describe tap dancestry as a generational legacy built upon a simultaneous commitment to innovation in the present and respect for the past. Using the classic choreography of the simple group tap dance Coles Stroll as an example, I show how dancestry is maintained and transmitted. I suggest such choreographies create physical connections between dancers past and present, which leave traces of dancestral corporeal residue. Finally, I

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contend that the stories and legends conveyed by tap dance legend Dianne Walker enable emotional or affective attachments to dancers of the past. As I address these specific elements of tap dance history, I also consider my own genealogy as a tap dancer, which offers another way of understanding dancestry as a collective process.2 Overall, I aim to characterise dancestry as a particularisation of theories of cultural and embodied memory—a lens for conveying the specific dimensions of tap dance’s value of respect for the past, even as the past comes to be revised over time.

Defining Dancestry as a Facet of Cultural Memory Dancestry addresses the training of social, material bodies, and it also encompasses the memory, legacy, and values that dancing bodies carry and transmit. Like genealogies of performance as formulated by Joseph Roach, dancestry “document[s]—and suspect[s]—the historical transmission and dissemination of cultural practices through collective representations” (1996, p. 25). Similarly, like the repertoire Diana Taylor offers, dancestry acknowledges that “embodied acts…[transmit] communal memories, histories, and values from one group/generation to the next” (2003, p. 21). As a facet of cultural memory, dancestry connects bodily legacies of dance forms across generations, makes sense of contemporary steps and aesthetics alongside performances from the past, and processes and performs social, cultural, and historical memory through bodies. Firmly grounded in the body, dancestry also embodies ethnic, racial, and class-based cultural knowledge. Like cultural memory, dancestry embodies a collective history. I understand cultural memory in similar terms to those Paul Connerton describes in How Societies Remember (1989). Connerton argues that cultural, communal memory is habituated through bodily practices, and he suggests societies remember through such social-habit memory. Dancestry is similar to the commemorative ceremonies Connerton writes about in that each is sustained and passed on through performances that are based upon images and collective knowledge of the past. However, the commemorative ceremonies Connerton examines are primarily interested in maintaining the status quo through a continuation of social order, whereas dancestry values revision as a means to keeping legacy alive. While dancestry is collective, individuals are vital to the revision process, which further differentiates dancestry from the formulations offered by Roach and Taylor. Because of the simultaneous values of individuality, innovation, and respect for the past, tap dancestry proposes a different modality of

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cultural memory that these other theories do not necessarily account for. As an embodied genealogy, dancestry acknowledges the interrelation between an individual dancer and their dancing community—the collective, syncretised, bricolage of memory that builds up in the body and manifests through aesthetics and steps and the ways individual dancers embody such histories. Because of the centrality of the body in cultural memory and the relationship between individuals and the collective in dancestry, I suggest there is something diasporic about each, particularly in the importance of the body in the maintenance and dissemination of danced legacies in the context of the United States. In their introduction to the anthology Black Performance Theory, editors Thomas DeFrantz and Anita Gonzalez describe diaspora as “continual” and “communal,” and they state that diaspora “serves as a process of unification [that] brings together collective experiences around particular issues, forces, or social movements” (2014, p. 11). Diaspora is a kind of embodied belonging enacted through practice. The concept of diaspora also highlights the value of embodied knowledge, as dance scholar Yvonne Daniel demonstrates when she states, “[enslaved] Africans and African Americans danced, sang, and drummed ancient knowledge to the present” (2005, p.  56). Similarly, Nadine George-Graves addresses the ways African diasporic practices generate collective memory, stating, “African American slaves…recorded their traditions with their voices and bodies and played them back in their songs and dances. Thus, Africanisms were remembered in a collective ancestral memory transmitted through generations” (2000, pp. 29–30). As Daniel and George-Graves suggest, not only do physical practices draw history from the past and across geography, but they also situate the participants in their localised time and place. Neither scholar makes a claim for a singular truth of the memories contained in song and dance, but they do address the role of the body in the continuation of cultural memory over time. Throughout this chapter, I further characterise dancestry through the lenses of Africanist and diasporic aesthetics.

Tap Dancestry: Respecting the Past, Revising in the Present Like most cultural practices, the history and development of tap dance in the United States is collective and generational, and it shifts according to its context. Tap dance scholar Constance Valis Hill describes tap dance as

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an Afro-Irish fusion that developed out of “a complex intercultural exchange” between people of African and Irish descent in the Americas (2010, p. 4). Beginning in the 1600s as enslaved Africans and indentured servants from Ireland worked side by side in the Caribbean, tap dance further developed in the south-eastern United States in the 1700s, and finally migrated to the Five Points district in Manhattan in the 1800s. In various capacities, African-American and Irish-American peoples shared steps and rhythms, and tap dance shifted from flat-footed shuffling to flashier buck-and-wing steps to grounded, syncopated rhythm tap dance. Hill states, “Afro-Irish fusions…shaped and ‘rhythmetized’ American tap dance” (2010, p. 2). Now a global form, people tap dance on stages and street corners, in studios and on screens. As a mandate in rhythm tap dance, innovation establishes an individual’s place within the legacy of the form even as dancers have an unending respect for the past. DeFrantz states, “the revelation of individual innovation…is acknowledged by all as the fullest capacity of dance to demonstrate subjectivity. […] Black aesthetics prize working as an individual within a group dynamic” (2014, p. 236). In black performance practices such as rhythm tap dance, subjectivity and identity formation are generated through an individual’s practice in relation to their community. The individual-collective relationship is also a vital element of how dancestry functions. Through dancestry, individuals trace their particular role and place in the lineage as one might trace bloodlines through familial ancestry. Further, when a dancer names their teachers, performs a classic tap routine, or in any other way marks their dancestry, they also stake a claim to a particular lineage of tap dance, which might situate them as coming out of a Broadway tradition, the competition and convention circuit, or other tap dance legacies. So while a claim to a particular lineage unites a dancer with those of similar such history, it also marks her as distinct from others. Individuals relating to the dynamics of their communities means tap dance shifts generationally. For example, individual innovations by dancer John Sublett “Bubbles” generated what we now know as rhythm tap dance. Bubbles initiated aesthetic shifts to tap dance in the 1920s by moving away from the up-on-the-toes style of buck-and-wing tap dancing exemplified by Bill “Bojangles” Robinson. Instead Bubbles dropped his heels, extended the musical phrase, and added swinging and syncopated rhythms. According to Hill, his contribution to tap dance history “had a profound influence on jazz tap dancers throughout the twentieth

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century” (2010, p. 88), and his influence continues today. While we may not all offer genre-changing innovations, as did Bubbles, tap dancers broadly follow “the African American imperative to innovate” that DeFrantz identifies in his discussion of hip-hop dance (original italics, 2014, p. 234). DeFrantz further highlights the generational and body-to-body nature of tap dance training by describing it as a “sustained apprenticeship” (2002, p. 6). The apprenticeship model creates an ethos of deep respect for teachers, whom tap dancers honour through naming and by corporeally citing their steps and aesthetics. Offering a more contemporary example, dance scholar Brenda Dixon Gottschild argues, “[Savion] Glover pays glowing tribute to his mentors, acknowledging that he is building on their superb lead” (2003, p.  121). At a very young age, Glover performed alongside tap dance luminaries including Honi Coles, Jimmy Slyde, Lon Chaney, and Gregory Hines in musicals like Black and Blue and movies such as Tap!. Glover reflects on his experiences stating, “Black and Blue was when I realized I could create my own kind of dance” (Hill 2010, p. 285). His mentors’ influence motivated Glover to create tap dance relevant to his particular generation and time period. As tap dancers like Baby Laurence and Jimmy Slyde modified their tap dance aesthetics with the musical shift from swing to bebop in the 1940s,3 and as Hines tap danced to the rock music of his generation, Glover integrated the hip-hop music of his (Hill 2010, pp.  173–174; Gottschild 2003, p. 122). Through musical and aesthetic shifts, Glover’s influence on young tap dancers in the 1990s was profound, specifically through his Broadway show Bring in da Noise, Bring in da Funk. Following Glover’s hip-hop aesthetic, young dancers hit the floor hard with towels draped around their necks and their pants worn low. Their individual tap dancestry focused on Glover’s particular aesthetic in the late 1990s. The difference between these young dancers and Glover is that, while dancers like Glover and his mentors continually responded to tap dance’s past in its present to keep it fresh and relevant within its time, many tap dancers who entered the tap dance scene in the era of Glover’s 1995 Broadway hit missed all that had come before.4 Hitting the floor hard was all they knew. Responding to such lapses in memory, current dancers like Dormeshia5 work vigilantly to remind tap dancers of the foundations of the form and simultaneously to emphasise that tap dancestry exceeds our individual paths. In a public discussion entitled “Tap Today” at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in 2017, Dormeshia stressed that no matter what the current

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trends of tap dance are now, tap dancers must always revisit, be aware of, and maintain responsibility for tap dance’s foundation in swing and jazz.6 To remind tap dancers of this legacy, in 2016, Dormeshia, along with her peers Derick K.  Grant and Jason Samuels Smith, created And Still You Must Swing, an evening-length tap dance concert with live music. An epigraph in the programme highlights the importance of (d)ancestral legacy to tap dance: “Swing / swiNG/ v: 2. move by grasping a support from below and leaping. ‘We grasp for our ancestors in order to rise…’” In the concert, not only do the steps and rhythms swing, but so do the dancers’ metaphoric relationship with their ancestors.7 While each tap dancer has their own historical trajectory, rhythm tap dancers share some agreed-upon elements of tap dance aesthetics including grounded footwork, musicality of steps and phrasing, and an emphasis on individual style. Many of these elements combine in a repertoire of classic choreographies established long ago by rhythm tap dance pioneers and passed on by dancers today. Classic choreographies such as the Shim Sham and Coles Stroll offer dancers opportunities for learning about and embodying the legacy of swing embedded in tap dance history.

Classic Choreographies as Dancestral Inheritance If dancestry is an inheritance, then classic choreographies like the Shim Sham are the heirlooms that get passed down to us. But unlike family heirlooms like the quilt given to me by my grandma, these classic choreographies are not things we can hold in our hands, though we do carry them in our bodies, thus situating us within the diaspora of rhythm tap dance.8 By continually passing these dances on in workshops, at festivals, among friends in local studios, and online, tap dancers assert the historical importance of these choreographies, and simultaneously transmit values and aesthetics, many of which derive from tap dance’s Africanist heritage. In addition to those already mentioned, a number of choreographies fall under the category of classic tap dances, including Bill “Bojangles” Robinson’s Doin’ the New Low Down, Buster Brown’s Laura, and Leon Collins’ Routine #53, among many others. In this section, I focus on Coles Stroll, which was choreographed by tap dancer Charles “Honi” Coles.9 Drawing on a legacy of Africanist circle dances such as the plantation ring shout of the southern United States and the cakewalk of minstrelsy and vaudeville, as well as his personal experiences as a performer in vaudeville, Coles choreographed Coles Stroll.10 Initially, Coles set down a

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choreographed sequence of steps for a walk around that a group of beginner tap dancers could perform, demonstrating his point that “if you can walk you can dance” (quoted in Bufalino 2004, p. 220).11 More subtle than the showmanship and competitive nature of the cakewalk, Coles Stroll begins with simple steps like those of the ring shout.12 As it progresses, it builds by adding a new sound and syncopation every eight measures. The steps never reach a level of high-kicking, but rather, each is slightly more complicated than the last, and at their height, they might best be described as lilting, bouncing steps. Coles’ protégé, Brenda Bufalino characterises Coles Stroll as “a dance of introduction. […] It is a dance that comments on itself, that instructs the viewer on how tap dancers use their feet, from the simplest to the most complicated manipulations” (2004, p. 216). Coles Stroll embodies what African and African-American art scholar Robert Farris Thompson would describe as an Africanist spirit of contradiction and balance through its attention to both historical precedent and Coles’ personal interpretation (1966/1999). This notion of balance is also present in the execution of the dance. Coles Stroll is itself quite simple, but the importance of perfectly synchronised footwork means that dancers have to maintain close musical relationships to other dancers in their steps and individuality in the rest of their performance. Even as the energy picks up over the course of the dance, the attention towards maintaining a cool, easy attitude persists. According to Gottschild, such an aesthetic of the cool embodied in Coles Stroll “results from the juxtaposition of detachment with intensity” (1996, p. 13). Tap dance epitomises this energetic conflict in that dancers, no matter how complex or how fast their rhythmic footwork, often appear unfazed and even pleasant as they move. For example, describing a performance of Coles Stroll in 1976 by the Copesetics, a benevolent club formed in 1949 and dedicated to the memory of Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, writer and tap dancer Jane Goldberg states, “there was a swagger to each of their walks full of personality [and] individuality” (2008, p.  34). My experience of performing Coles Stroll matches such descriptions of it. Its simplicity of steps and moderate tempo mean dancers can “take it easy” and “keep it cool” as they travel around the circle, two expressions I attribute to the Africanist aesthetic of the cool (Gottschild 1996, pp. 16–19). Through the concept of dancestry, I suggest that as tap dancers try on the aesthetic or stylistic markers of our mentors or legendary dancestors, we acquire corporeal residues that stick with us over time.13 As we compile more and more of these influences, we develop our own particular style in

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the process. So while a citation of the Copesetics performing Coles Stroll enlivens the repertoire of tap dance through what Taylor might call a “(quasi-magical) invocational practice” (2003, p. 143), it simultaneously leaves behind subtle, sensorial traces within the present dancer’s own body. Such corporeal residue also connects us back to the Africanist aesthetic, as dance scholar Kariamu Welsh Asante suggests that within this aesthetic, “imitation is based on sensation, not materialism” (2001, p.  148). While we might begin our attempts to channel the Copesetics with an outward shape in mind, it is actually through the physical sensation of the movement that we come into an embodied connection with their legacy. When we re-perform or re-enact historic dances, we engage with cross-­ temporality, which creates a “knotty and porous relationship to time” (Schneider 2011, p.  10). Such a “temporal tangle” (Schneider 2011, p. 10) enables tap dancers to dance alongside their dancestors in the works they created and performed, and that they themselves celebrated or were celebrated for. At the same time, without continual acknowledgement of the legacy as it is passed down, we risk losing sight of those who originated the steps and aesthetics we share. When historical connections and traces of the lineage get too far displaced, there is a danger of shifting from invocation of dancestors to appropriation of their labour, which makes the citational practices mentioned in this chapter so crucial. This is of particular importance to the legacy of tap dance, as so many of the innovators of the form were black men, who in some instances were not even given credit in their time.14 In order to maintain the legacy of rhythm tap dance, it is vital that dancers understand the history of the form and continually name those from whom they learn. In order to cite one’s dancestry, one must know it.15

Maintaining Dancestral Inheritance: Embodying Named and Unnamed Dancestors Hill states, “Tap dancers take deepest into their hearts the revering of old souls, perhaps because, as a cultural form more than a dance practice, tap eternally binds dancers into a family that always looks back as it moves ahead.” She goes on to say, “The elders are revered and respected” (2010, p. 360). One living legend that tap dancers frequently refer to as the griot of rhythm tap dance is Dianne Walker, also known as Auntie Dianne and Lady Di.16 In West African traditions, griots carry and transmit the oral

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history of their communities, and I suggest dancestry is transmitted through stories told to us by such contemporary griots. In contrast to the embodiment of dancestry in classic choreographies, the stories Walker transmits offer dancers today affective connections with the personalities and values of dancers from the past. Through Walker, we gain historical insight and long-lasting steps, rhythms, and choreographies, and we also come to understand the importance of relationships among dancers in the past as well as in the present. There is a spiritual dimension to dancestry, particularly as it enables dancers today to make connections to earlier dancers. Describing spirituality as a component of epic memory, Asante states that “it is not religious by definition, but…it is the conscious and subconscious calling upon ancestors…to permit the flow of energy so that the artist can create” (2001, p.  149). Asante further emphasises the importance of “memory sense,” which conjures (meta)physical connections across bodies and through time. Walker draws out connections between tap dancers past and present through her stories, and Coles drew upon such “memory sense” to invoke the ancestors when he initially choreographed Coles Stroll, some of whom we could name and many we could not. In a review of an unprecedented tap dance concert in October 2017 at the Kennedy Center that reunited six tap dancers who first worked together as a group in Bring in da Noise, Bring in da Funk in the 1990s, dance writer Lisa Traiger described the concert as a “tribute to the multitude of unnamed, and perhaps nameless, ancestors whose lives and struggles made this moment of celebration and homage possible.” The ancestors Traiger refers to include enslaved Africans who danced on ships and plantations as well as teachers and performers from the vaudeville era who may have been known in their time, but who have faded from explicit memory because of racism, economics, and the passage of time. Even still, these are our dancestors, and as Hill states, “their ghosts are ever present, implicit in every step” (2010, p. 360). When tap dancers name their teachers and other people who have significantly impacted their work, they simultaneously honour the unnamed many who have contributed to the development of the form. As a facet of cultural memory, dancestry connects bodies and histories, and the concept of dancestry acknowledges that even those we cannot name live within our steps and aesthetics. To me, the beauty of dancestry as inheritance is that, as one shares it—when Walker tells a story or teaches a step, for example— she does not give it away for good. Whereas my grandma only made one

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bright yellow quilt with the pinwheel pattern that I now possess, when Walker shares a story or a step from her dancestors, she continues to carry these things with her, and we also get to embody the legacy of tap dance that she shares with us.

Notes 1. On the origins of the Shim Sham, Constance Valis Hill states, “While Leonard Reed claims to have created this routine combination with his partner Willie Bryant, it is more likely that it evolved in collaboration with the female chorus of the Whitman Sisters troupe” (2010, p. 80). 2. Many tap dancers have written autobiographical accounts of their experiences. For example, see Brenda Bufalino, Tapping the Source: Tap Dance Stories, Theory, Practice (New Paltz, NY: Codhill Press, 2004); Anita Feldman, Inside Tap: Technique and Improvisation for Today’s Tap Dancer (Pennington, NJ: Princeton Book Co., 1996); and Jane Goldberg, Shoot Me While I’m Happy: Memories from the Tap Goddess of the Lower East Side (New York, NY: Woodshed Productions, 2008). 3. Constance Valis Hill describes Baby Laurence “the first” bebop tap dancer and “the king” (2010, p. 174). 4. This sort of breakdown in dancestral education is not uncommon as many dancers are never taught the history of the form. 5. Formerly known as Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards, this iconic tap dancer now goes by Dormeshia. 6. PillowTalk: Tap Today (2017, pp. 33:30). 7. For more on dancestry in And Still You Must Swing, see Janet Schroeder, Ethnic and Racial Formation on the Concert Stage: A Comparative Analysis of Tap Dance and Appalachian Step Dance, unpublished dissertation (Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University, 2018), chapter 4. 8. I liken the inheritance we gain through classic choreographies to the lessons I learned in the kitchen with my grandma while making her signature “parker house rolls.” This inheritance includes the handwritten recipe and the practical experiences of preparing the dough. Like a recipe that gets rewritten with each baker, classic choreographies pass from dancer to dancer, perhaps reshaped stylistically, sometimes rhythmically, but the core of the dance remains. 9. For more details on Coles’ life and career see Stearns and Stearns (1968/1994) and Hill (2010). 10. The ring shout, walk around, and cakewalk share features such as travelling in a circle in a counter-clockwise direction and improvisation by dancers. The ring shout, a spiritual practice engaged by enslaved Africans on southern plantations, featured shuffling steps that looked more like flat-­footed

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walking than dancing, which was purposeful as dancing was not permitted on plantations (Toll 1974, p.  44; Thompson 2014, p.  176; Stearns and Stearns 1968/1994, p. 31; Hill 2010, p. 34; Abrahams 1993, p. 96). In contrast, the cakewalk was characterised as much more ostentatious, as noted in this description of the finale of Darktown Follies in 1914: “the entire cast paraded before the audience—bowing, prancing, strutting, and high-kicking with arched backs and pointed toes, in a grand cakewalk” (Hill 2010, p. 45). Katrina Dyonne Thompson additionally includes the buzzard loop, a circular plantation dance, in the genealogy of African and African American dance practices related to the walk around (2014, p. 177). 11. It was not until much later when the Copesetics had been performing it regularly that Coles named the dance Coles Stroll, thus staking a claim in this particular sequence of steps and rhythms. In contrast to the walk around of minstrelsy and vaudeville, which closed the show, for the Copesetics and for duet shows between Bufalino and Coles, Coles Stroll served as a concert opener. See Bufalino (2004). 12. Gottschild describes “the shuffling syncopation of the Ring Shout…[as] Africanist ancestors in the evolution and development of tap dance” (my emphasis, 2003, p. 114). 13. For analysis of the corporeal residue of the vaudeville class act on current rhythm tap dance performance, see Janet Schroeder, Ethnic and Racial Formation on the Concert Stage: A Comparative Analysis of Tap Dance and Appalachian Step Dance, unpublished dissertation, (Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University, 2018). 14. One such example comes from Honi Coles and his dancing partner Cholly Atkins. In 1949, the tap duo was hired to appear in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes on Broadway. They worked up a routine with musical arrangement by Benny Payne, but none of the men were given credit for their creative work. Instead, Agnes de Mille was listed as choreographer. See Marshall and Jean Stearns, Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance (1968, Reprint, New York, NY: Da Capo Press, Inc., 1994), 309. 15. For an analysis addressing appropriation and tap dance, see Clover, C. J. (1995). Dancin’ in the Rain. Critical inquiry, 21(4), 722–747. 16. For more details on Walker’s life and career, see Hill (2010).

Bibliography Abrahams, Roger. 1993. Singing the Master: The Emergence of African American Culture in the Plantation South. New York, NY: Penguin Books. And Still You Must Swing. 2016. Concert program. Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival: Becket, MA. July 6–10.

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Bufalino, Brenda. 2004. Tapping the Source: Tap Dance Stories, Theory, Practice. New Paltz, NY: Codhill Press. Connerton, Paul. 1989. How Societies Remember. New  York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Daniel, Yvonne. 2005. Dancing Wisdom: Embodied Knowledge in Haitian Vodou, Cuban Yoruba, and Bahian Candomblé. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. DeFrantz, Thomas. 2002. “Being Savion Glover:” Black Masculinity, Translocation, and Tap Dance. Discourses in Dance 1 (1, Fall): 17–28. DeFrantz, Thomas, and Anita Gonzalez, eds. 2014. Black Performance Theory. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Dodds, Sherril. 2011. Dancing on the Canon: Embodiments of Value in Popular Dance. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. George-Graves, Nadine. 2000. The Royalty of Negro Vaudeville: The Whitman Sisters and the Negotiation of Race, Gender and Class in African American Theater, 1900–1940. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. Goldberg, Jane. 2008. Shoot Me While I’m Happy: Memories from the Tap Goddess of the Lower East Side. New York, NY: Woodshed Production. Gottschild, Brenda Dixon. 1996. Digging the Africanist Presence: Dance and Other Contexts. Westport, CT: Greenwood. ———. 2003. Black Dancing Body: A Geography from Coon to Cool. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Hill, Constance Valis. 2010. Tap Dancing America: A Cultural History. New York: Oxford University Press. “PillowTalk: Tap Today”. 2017. Presented by Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. June 30. ID 5916, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival Archives. DVD. Roach, Joseph. 1996. Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Schneider, Rebecca. 2011. Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment. New York, NY: Routledge. Stearns, Marshall, and Jean Stearns. 1968/1994. Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance. Reprint, New York, NY: Da Capo Press, Inc. Taylor, Diana. 2003. The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Thompson, Robert Farris. 1966/1999. “An Aesthetic of the Cool: West African Dance,” 1966. Reprinted in Signifyin(g), Sanctifyin’, and Slam Dunking: A Reader in African American Expressive Culture, edited by Gena Dagel Caponi. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press. Thompson, Katrina Dyonne. 2014. Ring Shout, Wheel About: The Racial Politics of Music and Dance in North American Slavery. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Toll, Robert. 1974. Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

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Traiger, Lisa. 2017. Review: ‘Lotus’ at The Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater. DC Metro Theater Arts, October 10. Accessed January 20, 2018. https:// dcmetrotheaterarts.com/2017/10/10/review-­l otus-­k ennedy-­c enters-­ terrace-­theater/. Welsh Asante, Kariamu. 2001. Commonalities in African Dance: An Aesthetic Foundation. In Moving History / Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader, ed. Ann Dils and Ann Cooper Albright, 144–151. Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press.

“Salsa con Afro”: Remembering and Reenacting Afro-Cuban Roots in the Global Cuban and Latin Dance Communities Elizabeth Anaya

During the summer of 2016, I set out to begin my independent fieldwork in Cuba as a graduate student of dance anthropology. I wanted to look at casino, a popular dance that is both a predecessor and a part of what is often referred to globally as “Cuban salsa”. Casino developed as a social dance from a mix of Cuban popular dances during the late 1950s. At this time, it was especially popular at the Casino Deportivo concert venue and recreation centre in Havana, hence the name. During my fieldwork, I interviewed founders of the dance in the Miramar neighbourhood of Havana but spent most of my time working with and observing young professional dancers in their 20s and 30s in and around Santiago de Cuba, on the eastern side of the island. As salsa and casino (including the latter’s

E. Anaya (*) Anchorage, AK, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Parfitt (ed.), Cultural Memory and Popular Dance, Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71083-5_3

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dynamic group formation, rueda de casino) enjoy great popularity today abroad, I also partook in the European salsa and Cuban dance circuit before and during my study, even participating as a judge in a rueda de casino competition. When first conceptualising my fieldwork, I was intrigued by the dance elements I observed taught by the Cuban instructors I met in Europe. I am a white, non-Hispanic American, and I had learned some casino in the United States, along with the linear style of salsa popular there. I first learned from a Cuban instructor when I moved to France to study in 2015. She introduced me to other Cuban dances, first as borrowed movements incorporated within casino or salsa. Later, within her specialty workshops, I learned these dances within their original contexts. When incorporated into salsa, dancers momentarily switch from the basic casino or salsa steps to perform movements from another Cuban dance, sometimes lasting several musical phrases, before switching back. These “new moves”, in the eyes of eager students, are exciting and challenging. While some Cuban popular dances, such as mambo, chachachá, and son, are direct antecedents to casino and salsa and share aesthetic similarities with what I had previously learned, the Afro-Cuban dances required me to move in ways I had not before. Unfortunately, this topic was not the original focus of my research, although it became a salient theme during the process. As I continued to learn about these other Cuban dances, I became aware of just how common their incorporation is within casino and salsa today. I began to recognise their movements in the social dances and choreographies of numerous established salsa artists on the US and European scenes, and this new way of dancing contrasted with the way some of these same artists were dancing in the late 1990s and earlier 2000s. Today, countless salsa stars are using Afro-Cuban dance in their practice, but I noticed that these movements are often referred to broadly simply as “body movement” or “fusion”, decontextualising and obscuring the source material. Yet I found that while the increasing trend of employing Afro-Cuban dance in salsa contexts resulted in some complex discord for some, it also re-anchored the salsa genre within its Cuban origins and was otherwise satisfying for others, depending on the cause and the context.

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“A Que Le Llaman ‘Salsa’ Si Esto Es Son?”1 For centuries, Cuba has widely been regarded as a prolific creator of musical genres and dances born of both European and African roots, many of which have become internationally popular and highly influential. After gaining independence from Spain and abolishing slavery, American military rule, and dictatorship, the new socialist government put in place following the Cuban Revolution (1953–1959) recognised the need for a unified people with a strong sense of Cuban identity. The subsequent efforts to enhance Cuban culture through government initiatives affected dance in various ways. Cuba’s national arts universities were founded, which house professional music and dance programmes. The Conjunto Folklórico Nacional de Cuba (Cuba’s national folkloric dance troupe) was also founded directly following the revolution, with a focus on Afro-­ Cuban music and dances. In addition, concert and dance venues were nationalised and supported through government funding and programming. In this environment, casino developed as a popular and social dance, with clear roots in Cuban son dancing. While not tied to any specific Cuban dance music, it was often danced with son-based music. In the decades before and after the revolution, Cuban dance music was brought to the United States and ally countries along with expatriated Cuban musicians, where it found itself with a receptive audience, but within a political climate that officially rejected all things Cuban. Mambo, chachachá, and primarily son formed the basis for what we know today as “salsa” music and dance, a term popularised by the US-based label Fania Records in the 1970s to give the music a simplified and more commercially viable name (Manuel 1985, p. 13). “Salsa” was also more inclusive and politically neutral than “Cuban dance music”, and the term now refers to a pan-Latino cultural phenomenon centred around music and dance. Since the early days of salsa, musicians playing Cuban originals and creating new compositions based primarily on son music, in the United States and in other countries, who made and continue to make their own unique contributions to the style, were primarily non-Cuban Latinos. Similarly, the way in which people danced and continue to dance to this music has developed several distinct regional styles. This has resulted in an indigenisation of the genre in many places, particularly in Puerto Rico and among Puerto Ricans in New York,2 who have popularised salsa internationally. While many musicians and dancers are very cognisant and reverent of salsa’s clear Cuban origins, for others this history is distant and irrelevant compared to what took place outside of Cuba. For this reason,

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the term “salsa” has resulted in some issues of ownership and identity. Some Cubans and casino dancers view “salsa” as an obscuring and generalising term which has erased its Cuban roots from the cultural memory of Latinos in the United States and abroad. Others have embraced it, often using the term “salsa” or “Cuban salsa” to describe these Cuban expressions as well, especially in etic contexts and as a marketing tool. In this chapter, “salsa” encompasses both Cuban and non-Cuban expressions. ​On the island, Cubans continued to make new music after the revolution, and dance bands began to further mix Afro-Cuban and other elements with the existing dance music. This was called “songo” by Los Van Van, and other groups had their own inventions. During the 1990s, the collapse of the Soviet Union, upon which Cuba was heavily dependent, caused an economic crisis known as the Special Period in Time of Peace, and a new wave of Cubans left the island. During this time, timba music evolved, developing upon the son and “songo” format by further mixing Afro-Cuban and other genres with it, including outside influences such as funk, jazz, rock, and reguetón. Yet again, in etic contexts, timba is often referred to as “Cuban salsa”. As a response to the crushed economy, Cuban tourist markets opened up. Dance tourism has been particularly lucrative from this time through today, which led to an increase in jobs for dancers to teach tourists or perform in dance companies showcasing Cuban dances. Increased contact between dancers and foreigners also led to an increase in professionally trained dancers moving abroad, particularly to Europe, often opening dance businesses and becoming the local experts and ambassadors of Cuban culture and dance as well as the top trend-setters in the salsa world. As a result, by the late 1990s, Europe was experiencing a veritable “boom” of salsa and casino dancing. This continues today and stimulates ongoing dance tourism in Cuba, with many foreign dance artists seeking out professional-­ level training there, particularly in Afro-Cuban dance. In Cuba, the economy remains stagnant at best, yet a dance professional may earn twice that of a doctor or schoolteacher (or more) by instructing and performing for tourists, all while still struggling to survive. Dance tourism also affords these young Cubans access to many dance clubs and concert venues which would be difficult to attend otherwise due to relatively high entry fees compared to Cuban wages, even when accounting for the double currency system.

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“Une Vraie Sauce” On the global Cuban dance scene, the ensemble of rumba and orisha dances, along with a few others, are sometimes referred to collectively as “afro”. For example, a workshop incorporating any Afro-Cuban dance into casino or salsa might be called “salsa con afro” (“salsa with afro”), although at other times the term “afro” is used only to refer to dances from Afro-Cuban religious and folkloric traditions, such as orisha dances. Sometimes the term “timba”, like the music, is used to describe a mix of rumba and Afro-Cuban dances with salsa or casino. Here, I will use the term “afro” in the sense of “rumba and orishas”, the two categories of Afro-Cuban dance on which I will focus in this writing, although other Afro-Cuban dances are also frequently borrowed. As Jonar González, a Cuban dancer living in France, explained to me during his trip to Santiago de Cuba with his French dance students: “We [Cubans] want to make salsa into a true sauce (‘une vraie sauce’), mixing lots of different ingredients together so that it’s good”.3 Cubans on the island might learn and experience these dances in educational programmes, at public gatherings, through taking part in cultural or spiritual life, or by working for a dance company. Outside of Cuba, dance students often first encounter these dances through the world of salsa. For experienced dancers, these moves are viewed as something fresh, expanding one’s movement vocabulary and providing tools for responding to some of the Afro-Cuban elements of timba music (as well as foreign-­ made salsa music). While casino arose popularly, founders of the dance who I interviewed in Havana, such as Graciela Chao Carbonero and Alan and Alicia Sardiñas, confirmed that this distinct and deliberate manner of incorporating other movements into casino, such as those of the Afro-­ Cuban dances, was not the tendency during the initial formation of this dance genre and its subsequent decades of popularity. Indeed, this trend seems to have begun not long after timba music, the Special Period, and the European salsa “boom”. Daybert Linares Díaz, a Cuban social dancer and occasional instructor (not a dance artist) who has long been living in the United States, has written posts on this topic in his popular blog dedicated to son and casino.4 In it, he explains that “Cuban instructors trained in the Afro-Cuban dances at the National School of Arts (ENA) would leave the island and, when attempting to teach outside of Cuba, they would find that the only viable way to really teach Afro-Cuban dance would be through what people already danced, with music they were

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already comfortable dancing to” (Linares Díaz 2016). In my discussion with Jorge Luna Roque,5 director of the Cuban dance company All Stars, he evoked the same idea, reminding me that just as not every Cuban can dance the orishas, not every university dance graduate can dance casino, as it is generally considered a street dance and is not the focus of these programmes. “What is their strong suit?” he asked me, before himself responding: “Afro. You can study afro”. Jonar offered a similar but more positively framed explanation, suggesting that casino and salsa’s new “breath of life” in Europe is partly due to the many Cuban folkloric dancers who converted to teaching salsa. “In this way, they have succeeded in transmitting the dances in which they were trained”, he told me. Casino and salsa have not only changed outside of Cuba, but also on the island. Yordanis Ortiz Labrada,6 a Cuban dancer who works in Santiago de Cuba, had this to say: It’s changed for sales purposes, to sell tourism, and it’s being mixed. Before, casino was casino, not casino with afro and orishas and other dances. I like all that is traditional, but this is just to sell the dance, for the choreographies, in order to bring new things to it. Well, they’re old things, too. For example, the mix of rumba and casino, nobody danced this before….but now it is even more beautiful. I prefer the mix. And when tourists come, they always have something to learn…you can’t just keep doing the basics and the classics. Everything has to change, because tourists and Cubans, they don’t always want to see the same thing. It’s just like with music. You can’t play the same thing for years.

In other words, Cuban dancers have recognised both a new market and a new creative avenue for Afro-Cuban dance. This brings me to the first dance I would like to discuss, rumba.

Rumba: “The Forbidden Black Dance” Rumba was developed by enslaved peoples and working-class Afro-Cubans who casually gathered on free days to express themselves, with roots in both African and Spanish music and dance. It is danced to sung chants and percussion, which has made it accessible to economically disadvantaged Cubans, who may use spoons, bottles, and other household items as accompaniments. The Cuban rumba is not a ballroom dance and is not danced with partners in a closed embrace, but as dance scholar Juliet McMains (2010) explains, in the early twentieth century, American and

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European dancing masters invented new dance styles which they also called “rumba” or “rhumba”, and which they based on the partnered social dances of Cuba, in particular son. Because it was known that rumba was banned in Cuba during the early twentieth century, this new ballroom dance with the same name was associated with scandal, and so it was considered very exotic and exciting by westerners. In France in the 1920s and in the United States in the 1930s, the ballroom rumba was known as the “forbidden black dance” (McMains 2010, p. 47). As such, the use of the word “rumba” to refer to the ballroom invention, much like “salsa”, began as a marketing tool. Meanwhile in Cuba, after the revolution, the new government “took advantage of rumba’s connection to African roots and used rumba as a political vehicle for promoting Cuba’s ‘new’ identity as an Afro-Latin nation”, as dance scholar Yvonne Daniel writes (2002, p. 50). She goes on to explain that “the embarrassment over African cultures that existed in Cuba for centuries and the shame over African customs, including dances in lowered back positions with hips in motion to complicated drumming, were minimised as outmoded perspectives…” (2002, p. 50). Rumba is still practised in Cuba today, as a popular expression, in performance, and as a subject of study and exhibition through Cuba’s state-run educational and cultural programmes. In 2016, rumba was inscribed in the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO. In Cuba, rumba has three main variants: guaguancó, yambu, and columbia. For the purpose of this writing, I will only discuss guaguancó, which is derived from yambu, although movements from columbia are also frequently employed in salsa dancing. Guaguancó is danced by partners of opposite genders, which has roots in the Congo-Angolan form yuka, a dance of couples at play (Daniel 2002, p. 35 and p. 49). The dance represents a game between sexes in which the male dancer will try to make a vacunao (“vaccination”) gesture towards the female dancer, usually by making a tossing or kicking motion in the direction of her pelvis. The female dancer must then “protect” herself, bringing one hand, often with a scarf or material from her skirt or dress, to cover the pelvis and “block” the vacunao, otherwise she may “become pregnant”. When incorporating guaguancó into salsa in partners, dancers usually first separate. In contrast to the more upright position of the embrace, dancers must also drop their weight, bend the knees slightly, and often tip the torso forward to perform the rumba steps. Sometimes a vacunao

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gesture may occur within partnerwork when the follower, generally the female dancer, has a free hand available to block it. While many foreign dancers have achieved excellence in Cuban dance practices, not all who learn movements from Cuban dances like rumba also learn how to use them in culturally acceptable ways. In particular, dancers who only know rumba through incorporating it into casino or salsa may not have learned when the music might provoke rumba steps, or the “rules” for using them, as they would by learning this dance in its original cultural context as a Cuban popular dance. As an example, Esteban Isnardi, a teacher of Cuban dances on the European circuit who is originally from Uruguay, shared his observations watching social dancing in Montenegro and Macedonia. “When the girls are dancing casino, even during the introduction of the song, and one hand is free, they always have it here”, he said, pointing towards the pelvis, “because the men were using the vacunao all the time”.7 Esteban describes this tendency to overuse the vacunao within salsa or casino as an “imitation” of Cuban dance, and in my research I found that the misuse of rumba within salsa or casino was viewed as foolish by Cubans and dancers with knowledge of these dances, but not offensive. This brings me now to the dances of the orishas.

Orishas: “And What Do You Want Them to Give You?” Like rumba, religious and folkloric dances, such as but not limited to those of the orishas, are also borrowed from and inserted into casino and salsa. The orishas are deities of the Yoruba religious tradition, brought to Cuba with the first enslaved peoples coming from West Africa. Outside of Cuba, the religious way of life that developed from Yoruba traditions is known as Santería. It went through a process of syncretism after Catholicism was imposed on the enslaved peoples by the Spanish, which allowed followers to outwardly maintain some aspects of their African traditions, which spread throughout Cuba. However, other aspects, such as the dances, were practised only in private ceremonies, to the sacred music of batá drums. These dances are pantomimic, with gestures specific to each orisha. It should be noted that the term “folklore” in Cuba has traditionally referred mainly to both the religious and secular performance of the

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traditions of Cuba’s black population, as discussed by dance scholar Katherine J. Hagedorn in her work “Divine utterances” (2001), based on her research in the 1990s, although today I have observed that the tendency is towards the latter definition. According to Hagedorn, “Cuban folklore” has been “simultaneously radicalized and disempowered—radicalized because it has come to refer almost excessively to the religious performance traditions of Cubans of African heritage, and disempowered because those traditions were categorized by non practitioners not as divinely potent modes of communication between deities and mortals, but rather as ‘folk traditions’, objectified and reconstructed without consideration for their contemporary religious context” (2001, p. 4). When a practising person dances an orisha in a ceremony, he or she is embodying the spirit of that orisha. In professional dance training and in folkloric performance in Cuba, it is understood that the dancer is not having a spiritual experience. Prior to the 1940s, Yoruba religious practices were outlawed in Cuba, and prior to the 1990s, these practices were marginalised within Cuban society outside of their folkloric element, such as dance performances, as the new government following the revolution sought to restrict religious expressions. However, with the rise of timba music, Yoruba spirituality entered the mainstream, and the turning point came in 1991 with the hit song by Adalberto Álvarez y su Son, “¿Y qué tu quieres que te den?” (“And what do you want them to give you?”), which names the orishas individually and includes their sacred language chants while maintaining the timba musical format. This is around the same time that dance courses for tourists were becoming popular in Havana, often taught by graduates of Cuba’s national arts schools, as Cuban dance scholar Barbara Balbuena8 estimated when I spoke with her on this topic. Within the economic crisis of the Special Period, Cuba’s cultural richness, and in particular its spiritual capital, became a valuable commodity for its growing tourist industry catering to providing an “authentic” experience. This included not only its music and dances, but also its rituals, a phenomenon nicknamed “Santurismo”.9 When incorporated into salsa, the dances of the orishas are inserted the same way as with rumba. If dancing in couples, the partners usually first separate and then one or both will begin to dance an orisha step or even an entire sequence. As with the insertion of rumba, a shift or adaptation of both timing and aesthetic is required. As Daniel writes, “Yoruba

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movements are lyrical and often make the dance seem to undulate vertically from the pelvic area up through the chest, shoulders, neck and head” (Daniel 2002, p.  38). She also describes Yoruba dances as, similar to rumba, accentuating a low-level and forward-leaning position, pointing to the “get down position” that is characteristic of black dance in general. While son, casino, and salsa require an upright, but horizontally divided torso which moves as the dancer shifts weight from one leg to another, the “get down” position allows for the upper and lower torso to “divide fully and move fluidly or percussively” (Daniel 2002, p. 41). As within a folkloric context, it is understood that people dancing salsa or casino who choose to perform these steps are not having a religious experience in which the spirits “descend” or “ride” upon them. Nonetheless, the same Cubans (and sometimes non-Cubans) dancing orishas within casino or salsa may be practitioners of the religion in private life. When the orishas are danced within salsa or casino, the context is neither religious nor folkloric. Instead, it is popular. For some salsa and casino dancers on the global Latin dance scene, this practice is viewed as adding a more authentic flavour to one’s dance, yet I observed some contention around this topic during my study. To dig deeper, I spoke with a former director of the dance programme at Havana’s Instituto Superior de Arte, the highly respected Graciela Chao Carbonero.10 During the 1950s and 1960s, she was a founder of both casino as a popular dance and Cuba’s national folkloric dance troupe, noted at that point in history for being a white Afro-Cuban dancer. On this topic, she explained: This is religion, do you understand? So for me, it’s disrespectful to begin to put the dances of the orishas in casino, in casino time. And it’s not necessary because casino is already very rich. Rumba, okay, mambo as well. The steps of popular dances should be used.

However, in practice, it seems that not all Cubans share this perspective. Cuban artists who have made a career out of teaching salsa commonly give workshops on orisha dances in salsa contexts, and sometimes specifically on how to incorporate them into casino or salsa. Steps from these dances, as well as those from rumba, also frequently appear in Cuban dancers’ salsa choreographies with positive reception from many Cubans and non-Cubans alike. Cubans may also incorporate orisha movements into manifestations of rumba, a popular dance. When it comes to salsa and casino, many Cuban dancers I spoke to, notably casino legend Yanek Revilla,11 have stated that there should be

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something (lyrics, chants, toques or drums) to evoke the orishas in the music if one or more are danced. Graciela also made this allowance: “If the music is talking about the orishas,” she says, “well, then the music is asking you for it, we can say”. Yet in my own experience observing dance in Cuba, I remember seeing orisha steps and gestures employed both with and without explicit musical evocation.12 When questioned about why orisha movements were used without a clear musical reason, the response was usually that it simply “felt good” with the music. As one dancer put it, “this is art”. While in salsa music, clear Yoruba (and rumba) elements are not new, if one wanted to incorporate the orishas in every dance, there would be “very few songs to dance to if you waited for musical or lyrical cues”, as Esteban told me. Yet at the same time, Jonar explained that more and more timba songs are indeed evoking the orishas in their works, as like dancers, musicians recognise a market and framework for afro. In return, Jonar says, more and more dancers “want access to this musical world”. This said, it is worth noting that some Cubans and many non-Cubans employing or observing these steps are not always linguistically, culturally, or musically equipped to identify when these musical moments occur. In contrast, Jorge, director of the All Stars, decidedly does not include orisha movements in his popular dance choreographies. With respect to dancers employing these movements out of context, he told me: “They don’t even know what they’re doing. But I keep quiet. I don’t want to judge them”. Graciela takes a more critical view, saying, “I’m sorry, but the Cuban who does this in the first place isn’t religious,13 and if he is, then he doesn’t respect his religion”. Daybert’s personal opinion is also critical, writing in his blog that this phenomenon is “some sort of exotic fantasy of Cuban dance” (Linares Díaz 2016). Graciela points to the commercial aspect of this trend as the culprit: “It’s an invention, not something created by common people. It’s from choreographers and dance teachers in order to make money”. While Graciela claims that Cubans “should know that religious dances should not be mixed with popular dances”, my experience in Cuba and with Cubans abroad was different. I did observe Cubans, some of whom are religious, not only teaching tourists to dance the orishas, sometimes in casino or salsa contexts, but also doing it themselves in both performance and social dance, and not always for tourists. One can conclude that it is also because they find some value in it outside of marketing their dancing as more “exotic”.

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While foreign dancers often perceive the inclusion of orisha steps in casino or salsa as adding authenticity to one’s dancing, Barbara Balbuena, like Jorge, warned not to presume that the whole Cuban population that dances casino also knows these dances. “These are complex dances that not everybody can dance”, she explained. Ronald Fisher,14 a young dancer in Santiago de Cuba, also pointed out, “lots of people on the street don’t know how to dance Elegguá”, which is one of the most important deities of the orisha pantheon. He then told me that he did not know how to dance any orisha steps before he began training with a professional company, Yanek Revilla’s “Sabor de Calle” (“Street Style”),15 which teaches and performs Cuban popular dances in salsa contexts for both Cubans and foreigners, including tours abroad. I observed this group throughout my research and noted that Yanek’s salsa choreographies sometimes do include some orisha movements (as well as rumba and other Cuban and Afro-­ Cuban dances). Although it is through this employment that Ronald first learned the steps of the orishas, he is proud of his newfound knowledge. “These are the things of black roots”, he said while pointing at the dark skin of his outstretched arm. A few years after my research, Ronald joined a folkloric dance company specialising in Afro-Cuban dances. As such, salsa, casino, and dance tourism are not only an economic opportunity for young Cubans, but a means of entry deeper into their own culture. In my own observation working with young dancers in Santiago de Cuba, dance also acts as a spiritual gateway, as some of the young dancers I met who first connected with the religion through dance would later go on to adopt and practise it. For some Cubans, the inclusion of orisha and Afro-Cuban steps within casino or salsa is a celebration of heritage reclaimed, and a homage to Cuban dance culture, to be employed thoughtfully. But for others, the performance of these steps may be territorialised, to be employed with reservation, if at all. Issues around the bounds of sacred dances in Cuba are not new, as thoroughly discussed by Hagedorn (2001). What is new is that these bounds are now extending beyond Cuban “folklore” and further into the popular dance realm. As a researcher looking at dance through the lens of anthropology, I do not seek to prescribe what is good or bad dancing or what should and should not be done, as some have misinterpreted my role, but rather to understand what is done and to what effect. In the two fieldwork encounters I discuss next, in competitive dance settings, I was presented with two different experiences which

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revealed how representations of Cuban dance are negotiated and valued in different contexts.

“But Where Is the (Rueda de) Casino?” In early August 2016, I travelled from Santiago de Cuba to Bayamo to observe a regional competition of Cuban popular dances held during celebrations of Fidel Castro’s 90th birthday—this one especially for children and youth. The event took place outdoors in a public square and the large audience consisted of mainly locals and a few curious tourists passing by. The competition was organised in two parts. First, there was a couple’s competition, including numerous Cuban popular dances as well as casino. Different musical genres were played, and the young competitors first had to recognise the genre and then perform the corresponding dance. In this way, the competition was not only about technique and performance, but also musical and cultural knowledge, as all the genres played were born long before the children dancing. The second half of the competition was dedicated to rueda de casino, with about a dozen groups participating. What stood out to me during this competition was that there were only a few instances of other Cuban dances used within casino, and there were no orisha movements in the competition that I or the Cuban dancer accompanying me observed. The winning group was the youngest group, and at two points the crowd burst into gratified cheers during their rueda de casino performance: as they performed the rueda de casino move ni pa’ ti, ni pa’ mi, which Graciela suggests may come from rumba (Chao Carbonero, 2010, p. 65) and as they performed steps from pilón,16 bending their knees low and joyfully moving their hips and torsos in each instance. Only a few short weeks later, I found myself at another competition— this one held in Trondheim, Norway. It was at the 16th annual “Rueda Congress”, a three-day rueda de casino festival attracting mainly European casino aficionados and featuring many important Cuban dance instructors based in Europe. On the merit of my thesis project, I was asked to sit on a panel of judges for the “Rueda de Casino World Championship” held at this congress. Five dance groups participated from Norway, Sweden, Barcelona (Spain), and the Canary Islands (Spain). The competition included two components: an improvised rueda de casino and a rueda de casino choreography.

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One of the most visually compelling performances during the choreographic component was from the Swedish group, led by a Peruvian living in Sweden. The eight dancers performed barefoot to the timba song “Oní Oní” by Alexander Abreu and Havana D’ Primera (2009), which refers in its lyrics to the union of the orishas Yemayá and Changó. What stood out most about this choreography, compared to the others, were the numerous orisha steps. In fact, the first third of it consisted of these types of movements, which were well-executed. During this time, Reynaldo Salazar, a fellow judge and dance professional originally from Santiago de Cuba, leaned over to me and whispered, unimpressed: “But where is the rueda de casino?”17 Indeed, this was a rueda de casino competition. To the surprise of some audience members, first and second place went to the two Spanish groups, whose performances were of a similar calibre, yet focused primarily on casino steps and combinations. I later learned that the director of the winning Spanish group, who is from Chile, is also a skilled dancer and teacher of rumba, yet only a few rumba movements were included in his choreography. After the competition, Esteban Isnardi, who was also a judge on the panel, shared the following thoughts with me with respect to the Swedish group: Maybe in the technique, and surely in the afro technique, they were first. As a show it was really good, but the caricature of Cuban dance as I saw it was to put a lot of…it was justified, because it’s talking about Changó and Yemayá. I don’t know why they put Obatalá or Babalú Ayé, but that’s another story. And just because the song makes a reference to an orisha doesn’t mean you have to do it.

When I asked Esteban about the winning group, his response was simple: “They respected the evolution of dance, and they did it on purpose”. I would later understand that this conscientious intentionality would be a key element in understanding this theme.

“Ya Es Muy Rico” Western imaginings about Cuban dances have certainly influenced their development as they have diffused, which parallels the trajectory of other Afro-Latin dances. Summarising Curt Sachs (an early twentieth-century ethnomusicologist) and Leonardo Acosta (a later Cuban ethnomusicologist) while commenting on the history of tango, Marta Savigliano writes:

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The European appetite for exoticism is based on the need for renovation, for spicy flavoring, for true unregenerate emotions: that is, for passion. The decadence, the exhaustion of the European ‘culture’ is taken as a given…Europeans have lost touch with their ‘natural’ human souls through the hardships of capitalist life. The return to ‘primitive’ emotions through the emotions of the ‘primitives’ was always a solution. (1995, p. 89)

In other words, through the consumption of exoticised cultures, in this case through dance, westerners seek a primally satisfying experience. Today, the reincorporation of Afro-Cuban dance is seen by some salsa and casino dance enthusiasts as adding greater authenticity to a dance which, by implication, is or has become inauthentic. According to social anthropologist Paul Connerton, modernity and capitalism both require and facilitate “a deliberate forgetting” where “the celebration of recurrence can never be anything more than a compensatory strategy” (1989, p. 64). I will argue later that the value that Afro-Cuban dance brings to the salsa world is not simply a reparation to account for a perceived lack of authenticity, but something more. As Jorge insisted, “el casino ya es muy rico” (“casino is already very rich”), an assertion also made by Graciela. As such, casino already has this figurative “flavoring” without the explicit reincorporation of Afro-Cuban movement. In her aptly named article, “The Africanness of Dance in Cuba”, Graciela Chao Carbonero also asserts that casino (and by my own extension, salsa), already exhibits elements of “Africanness”: Casino also bears traces of African roots integrated into many steps, like the half turns women make under the instructions of the leader or caller, which, though characteristic of many turns or figures, are in a way similar to the half turns typical of dances for the orisha Ochun to the batá drums of the Yakotá toque. (2010, p. 65)

In addition, both rumba and son’s rhythmic patterns, clave, come directly from Africa. While danced in a closed embrace with connected turning figures reflecting its clear European heritage, the dance of son, casino and salsa’s direct antecedent, also traces African roots. As an example, Daniel points to son’s “heavy accent on the moving hips and an isolation of complementary rhythms in various body parts” (2002, p. 43). The divided torso used in son, casino, and salsa is what allows for the swinging hip movement known as “Cuban motion” or “Latin motion” that is an

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essential characteristic of Latin dances, including their ballroom versions. Scholar Melissa Blanco Borelli theorises this as “hip(g)nosis” in her recent writing, in which she associates this hip movement with the orisha Ochun, and describes it as a “choreography of identity” among mulata18 women (2016, p. 20). It is clear that salsa’s “Africanness” is an undeniable and fundamental part of its development, but both its cultural history and its aesthetic are permeated with complexity and dichotomy. Embodied memory within casino and salsa simultaneously includes both secular(ised) memory, as in the case of popular dances like mambo, son, chachachá, rumba, and the movements of Yoruba and other religious dances performed without spiritual possession, and a more deeply embedded religious memory, as in the case of the aesthetic elements which the same religious dances contributed to popular dances. Yet the memory embodied in the reincorporation of Afro-Cuban elements in salsa dancing differs from that already perceivable within the genre in that it may be a consciously and purposefully performed recall that, while at times contentious, can also be deeply satisfying to the dancer. Furthermore, just as much as Cuban (and Latin dances in general) are conceived of, especially by westerners, as “hot” and “spicy”, I argue that casino and salsa dancing is also about coolness and control. Dance scholar Brenda Dixon Gottschild defines this sense of “cool” in Africanist aesthetics as “the culminating step in an attitude that combines vitality with composure” (2002, p.  7). In my understanding, this attitude is also at the heart of the sandunga Cubana, a way of describing the savoir-faire of Cubans dancing. It requires both plasticity and control, a key to many movements in the Afro-Cuban dances that I have referenced. Yet it also requires the ability to recognise when one is stepping into the “uncool”, as Dixon Gottschild alludes to as well (2002, p.10). As Esteban explains: In rumba, you have a lot of resources you don’t need. You can put a little step, just a little bit, but the problem is when they put a lot …because afro and rumba is spectacular, and the dancers want this, but it’s too much, and casino doesn’t need this.

Knowing when one is pushing these bounds requires a clear concept of the movements being performed and a clear understanding of the dance culture in its original context. In my research, I found that for some Cubans, the reincorporation of Afro-Cuban dances within salsa may be a

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permissible expression, while there are also concerns over its trivialisation within capitalist modes of transmission. For many non-Cubans, this reincorporation may serve as a reverent nod towards salsa’s Cuban and African roots. Yet when done without concept, such as in excess or in an illogical way according to the norms of the dance culture, it may be considered by those more knowledgeable as an act of imitation, or worse, an act of cultural appropriation (with the negative charge ascribed to this term in contemporary public discourse). As I found in my research, this use of the profane afro expressions in salsa, such as in the case of popular dances like rumba, and the use of the sacred ones, such as the movements of religious dances, is not viewed in the same way in each instance, or by all Cubans.

“Una Onda Gozadera” As I write in 2018, Cuban and non-Cuban artists continue to incorporate Afro-Cuban movements into their dancing, a trend which seems to be accelerating both within and outside of the island, despite concerns. For those engaging in this trend, what is the effect and what is its value? I suggest that the reasons are twofold, at the very least. First, for Cubans who incorporate Afro-Cuban dance into their salsa repertoire in foreign contexts, aside from the benefits of teaching “new” material, capitalising on existing musical and dance trends, and teaching from within one’s realm of expertise and culture, I will argue that for some, “salsa con afro” also represents a continuing resistance both to the appropriation of Cuban music and dance as “salsa” and the forgetting of salsa as a Cuban creation. Reinserting these Afro-Cuban dance roots into salsa and casino forces the visibility of these dances and serves as an embodied reminder to the consumer of the ingredients that this “sauce” is made of, re-anchoring salsa within Cuban culture. When done explicitly, it reclaims agency for Cubans within a music and dance style that has been successfully indigenised, reinterpreted, and repackaged around the world, particularly for black Cubans whose traditions have been historically dismissed by the Cuban hegemony yet who contributed so strongly to what is arguably Cuba’s most successful export. Secondly, this continual self-referencing and recurrence is quintessentially Cuban and Caribbean, as Cuban novelist and essayist Antonio Benítez Rojo writes: Within the sociocultural fluidity that the Caribbean archipelago presents, within its historiographic turbulence and its ethnological and linguistic

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clamor, within its generalized instability of vertigo and hurricane, one can sense the features of an island that “repeats” itself, unfolding and bifurcating until it reaches all the seas and lands of the earth, while at the same time it inspires multidisciplinary maps of unexpected designs. (1992, p. 3)

Some dancers, teachers, and performers in the global Cuban and Latin dance communities feel that salsa and casino have become too saturated with this repetition, especially when it comes to dances such as rumba and those of the orishas, which merits careful contemplation. Many feel that Afro-Cuban dance has fallen victim to a capitalist international salsa market, with too many dancers exploiting these dances in non-contextual excess and further obscuring their meaningful steps and gestures with more marketable terminology. Certainly, salsa is already rich with possibilities for expression that are already rooted in Afro-Cuban culture, and so there is no real need for further fusions. But even though it is not necessary, Cubans continue to bend the rules of dance while endlessly in search of something more, ever expanding the vocabulary upon which dancers improvise and create, often with Afro-Cuban influences. In my interview with Ronald, when asked to define casino, he explained it in this way: It’s una onda gozadera (“an enjoyable vibration”). It’s to enjoy yourself, ¡ya! (“That’s all!”) That’s casino. It’s from the street, a mix of everything: rumba, reguetón, afro…this is casino.

For Cuban dancers like Ronald, the mix of varied elements tied to Cuban culture within their dancing is an expression of joy and of an everyday Cuban identity. In this way, it is not a movement itself that must have meaning to be authentic, but the meaningful pleasure derived by the dancer from its embodiment. In his work on cultural memory, Connerton claims that modernity denies both the individual and community the possibility of deriving value “from the acts of consciously performed recall” (1989, p. 64), and while the trend of “salsa con afro” may be criticised for its potential decontextualisation and exploitation of Afro-Cuban dance, I argue that it may also symbolise a resistance to the historic repression, marginalisation, obscuring, patronising tolerance, and finally commodification of black Cuban expressions. Connerton also states that the “temporality of the market…generates an experience of time as quantitative and as flowing in a single direction” (64), but this conflicts with the assertions of many young

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Cubans dancing, for whom these reincorporations of African roots are not simply compensatory recurrences or commercial trends developing in linear time, but bifurcations of cultural memory occurring in an ever-­present time and unfolding not forwards, but outwards from a one’s centre. While the island and its traditions are popularly said to be frozen in time, young Cuban dancers today are forging their own creative identities through popular dance—immersed in cultural memory, yet unrestrained by it. Finally, the elephant in the room throughout this chapter has been “authenticity”. One can “say that something is ‘authentic’ or ‘true’ and a multitude of anthropologists (in immediate, almost Pavlovian response) will set out to explain to you how you failed to recognize the constructedness of this ‘authentic something’ of yours”, as anthropologist Mattijs van de Port writes (2004, p. 7). Indeed, unpacking authenticity is beyond the scope of this chapter, but using van de Port’s own definition of authenticity as a “felt authentic grounding”, this constructedness becomes irrelevant. In other words, “authenticity is not something that necessarily gives access to a ‘truth’”, as dance anthropologist Andrée Grau has stated (1992, p. 22). Ultimately, I have learned that it is not important to establish if salsa is enhanced or corrupted by the trend of the reinsertion of Afro-Cuban elements. What is felt to be authentic by those dancing, particularly by Cubans who are fully conscious of what they are doing and feel good doing it, is more important than debates around truth, or what is inauthentic, incorrect, or irreverent. True to the Caribbean, this living heritage continues to unfold, repeat, and self-reference in the bodies of dancers in motion, like the ripples of a vibration—“una onda gozadera”. International interest in Afro-Cuban dance, through salsa, may put Cuban dancers in a position of control as influencers who may educate the masses as to how, why, if, and when to include these dances in one’s salsa repertoire, although it would be problematic to suggest that Cuban dancers living abroad or working with tourists must necessarily assume the role of cultural brokers as a matter of obligation in order to merit the right to their own artistic and cultural expression. But rather than resulting in a territorialisation of dance, it is my hope that this trend will spark deeper interest, discourse, and education, inspiring all salsa dancers and particularly non-Cubans to think critically, considerately, and contextually about the incorporation of these movements into their practice, naming and explaining them when appropriate, as well as to recognise the innate richness, cultural value, strong African roots, and tremendous influence of salsa and other Cuban music and dance expressions. I also hope that the

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growing awareness of issues around this trend will inspire dancers to learn, distinguish, and appreciate rumba, Yoruba dances, and other Cuban and Afro-Cuban dances as unique genres within their original contexts. That is to say that dancers will not only view these dances as embodied memories of salsa’s roots, but also as vibrant and venerable representations of its innately multidisciplinary design—past, present, and future.

Notes 1. “What do they call ‘salsa’ if this is son?”, lyric from “Dale lo que lleva”, the  2014 hit from  Maykel Blanco y su Salsa Mayor featuring the  vocals of international Cuban dance instructor Maykel Fonts. 2. For more, see: Manuel, P. (1994). “Puerto Rican Music and Cultural Identity: Creative Appropriation of Cuban Sources from Danza to Salsa”. Ethnomusicology, Vol. 38, No. 2, Music and Politics (Spring–Summer, 1994), pp. 249–280. 3. All citations from author’s interview with Jonar González in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, on August 18, 2016. 4. It should be noted that although Daybert has many posts in Spanish, internet access remains limited for Cubans on the island, and in general they do not frequently comment on blogs or online discussions aimed at etic audiences. 5. All citations from author’s interview with Jorge Luna Roque on August 10, 2016, in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba. 6. All citations from author’s interview with Yordanis Ortiz Labrada in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, on August 15, 2016. 7. All citations from author’s interview with Esteban Isnardi in Trondheim, Norway, on September 2, 2016. 8. All information and citations from author’s interview with Barbara Balbuena on August 24, 2016, in Havana, Cuba. 9. For more, see: Rausenberger, J. (2018) “Santurismo: The Commodification of Santería and the Touristic Value of Afro-Cuban Derived Religions in Cuba”, Almatourism—Journal of Tourism, Culture and Territorial Development, 9(8), pp.  150–171. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2036­5195/7775. 10. All citations from author’s interview with Graciela Chao Carbonero on August 23, 2016, in Havana, Cuba. 11. Information from author’s field notes taken in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, in July and August 2016.

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12. Due to my positionality in the field, and that of my informants as working dancers, my observations were usually somehow related to dance ­tourism, and I was dependent upon my informants to help confirm my observations. 13. I did notice some contradictions around Graciela’s assertion when asking the dancers that I worked with about their faith, although I chose not to reveal the religious practices of informants in this work. 14. All citations from author’s interview with Ronald Fisher on August 10, 2016, in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba. 15. Also written as “Sabor DKY”. 16. A popular dance whose characteristic gesture resembles that of grinding coffee beans with a pestle and mortar. 17. This citation from Reynaldo Salazar is from field notes taken on September 2, 2016, in Trondheim, Norway. 18. Mixed-race.

Bibliography Abreu, Alexander, and Havana D’ Primera. 2009. Oní Oní. CD. Haciendo Historia. Egrem. Benítez Rojo, A. 1992. The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective. 1st ed. Durham: Duke University Press. Blanco Borelli, M. 2016. She Is Cuba: A Genealogy of the Mulata Body. 1st ed. New York: Oxford University Press. Chao Carbonero, G. 2010. The Africanness of Dance in Cuba. In Making Caribbean Dance: Continuity and Creativity in Island Cultures, ed. S. Sloat, 62–66. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Connerton, P. 1989. How Societies Remember. In Cambridge. New  York: Cambridge University Press. Daniel, Y. 2002. Cuban Dance: An Orchard of Creativity. In Caribbean Dance from Abakuá to Zouk: How Movement Shapes Identity, ed. S.  Sloat, 23–55. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Dixon Gottschild, B. 2002. Crossroads, Continuities, and Contradictions: The Afro-Euro-Caribbean Triangle. In Caribbean Dance From Abakuá to Zouk: How Movement Shapes Identity, ed. S. Sloat, 3–10. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Grau, A. 1992. Intercultural Research in the Performing Arts. Dance Research: The Journal of the Society for Dance Research 10 (2, Oct.): 3–29. Hagedorn, K.J. 2001. Divine Utterances: The Performance of Afro-Cuban Santeria. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press. Linares Díaz, D. (2016). Why I don’t Incorporate the Orishas into my Casino. Son y Casino. Accessed December 4, 2016. https://sonycasino.com/2016/ 01/31/why-­i-­dont-­incorporate-­the-­orishas-­into-­my-­casino-­dancing/.

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Manuel, P. 1985. Ideology and Popular Music in Socialist Cuba. Pacific Review of Ethnomusicology 2: 1–27. McMains, J. 2010. Rumba Encounters: Transculturation of Cuban Rumba in American and European Ballrooms. In: Making Caribbean Dance: Continuity and Creativity in Island Cultures, ed. S. Sloat, 37–48. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Savigliano, M. 1995. Tango and the Political Economy of Passion. 1st ed. Boulder: Westview Press. Van De Port, M. 2004. Registers of Incontestability: The Quest for Authenticity in Academia and Beyond. Etnofoor 17 (1/2): 7–22.

Between Creolisation and Kinaesthetic Transnationalism: Zumba Fitness as Mimetic Parody and Ritual Re-enactment Aoife Sadlier

Introduction Zumba Fitness is a global Latin dance fitness phenomenon and multinational company, with its headquarters in Hallandale Beach, Florida (Rusli 2012). It incorporates aerobic fitness movements, the steps of various Latin social dances, and an array of international musical styles (Sadlier  2020b). Zumba has its genesis in the 1990s, when its creator Alberto ‘Beto’ Pérez, a Colombian choreographer and group fitness instructor, forgot his regular music CD for a class. Instead, he chose to improvise, and taught using the Latin music he normally only listened to for his own enjoyment, which turned out to be a huge success.1 Zumba was subsequently marketed in the US, in conjunction with two other entrepreneurs, Alberto Perlman and Alberto Aghion, in the early 2000s

A. Sadlier (*) MLA College (BAU Global Network), Plymouth, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Parfitt (ed.), Cultural Memory and Popular Dance, Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71083-5_4

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(Rusli 2012). In 2006, Zumba became an official trademark, with the establishment of the Zumba Instructor Network (ZIN) (Sadlier 2020b). In 2012, Zumba was worth $500 million and was voted American Company of the Year (Rusli 2012). The Zumba website (Zumba 2021) states that 15 million people attend Zumba classes at 200,000 locations worldwide, in 180 different countries. While previous research has emphasised the health benefits of Zumba (see Luettgen et al. 2012), virtually no research has examined Zumba ‘as a social and cultural phenomenon’ (Kabir 2015, p. 1). This is surprising, for from its inception, Zumba has been marketed as not only a product but also a lifestyle choice. My recent research (Sadlier 2017, 2020b) highlighted how Zumba taps into what Ehrenreich (2007, p. 9) refers to as ‘collective ecstasy’ or ‘self-loss in the rhythms and emotions of the group.’ Although Ehrenreich’s text has been critiqued by dance scholars on the basis that it lacks methodological rigour (see Van Oort 2008), it is useful for reflecting on Zumba’s salient features: shared rhythms and emotions. These mechanisms have also been explored in a range of sociological and dance scholarship, for instance, Durkheim’s (1915 [1912]) idea of ‘collective effervescence,’ Grau’s (2016) work on dance and sociality, and Rova’s (2017) interdisciplinary research on kinaesthetic empathy. These theoretical insights have also been probed in scientific studies, notably Reddish et al.’s (2013) study on shared intentionality in dance, and Tarr et al.’s (2015) work on dance and social bonding. However, Ehrenreich’s (2007) text will be drawn upon in this chapter, as its strength lies in its challenging of the ‘grand narrative’ of dance history, by ‘presenting dance not as the artistic endeavor of the few but as the ecstatic endeavor of the many’ (Van Oort 2008, p. 126). Indeed, this feature is also central to Zumba. Through my interconnected roles as an academic with an interest in (a) sexual empowerment and a licensed Zumba Fitness instructor, I have coined the concept of Zorbitality to capture how collective ecstasy acts as a connective tissue between people, beyond differences in gender, sexuality, race, class, or culture, and can enable marginalised groups such as women and LGBTQIA+ communities to gain empowerment (see Sadlier 2017, 2020a, 2020b). Zorbitality is a non-sexualised form of collective energy that builds on a genealogical connection with Afro-diasporic rhythms to articulate collective enjoyment as an ethical opening to otherness. It takes us beyond capitalist models of identity and relationality, which privilege the individual and the primarily heterosexual dyad. Each of its component words—Zumba, Orb, Digital, and Vitality—suggests

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movement and knowledge transfer, processes that are constantly evolving, rather than static. I argue that Zumba, as a central example of Zorbitality, reaches its strongest manifestation in the internalisation of a collective ecstatic spirit, which sustains humans in times of vulnerability, whilst fostering networks of resistance. Although Zumba has many positive aspects, my previous and forthcoming work (Sadlier 2020b, Forthcoming; Kabir and Sadlier Forthcoming) also offers (auto)ethnographic explorations of the limitations of the Zumba enterprise, highlighting the cultish features of its mass gatherings (notably the cult following surrounding its creator, its colourful staging and branded clothing, and use of tear-jerking narratives to keep instructors humble), and its astute marketing and profit-making tools (its focus on turning instructors into entrepreneurs, continually marketing training add-ons, incorporating carefully choreographed presentations on Zumba’s success into its events, and ensuring that instructors pay the same amount for their licence fee, regardless of their country’s development context).2 Other scholars have extended this work by empirically examining the practices and well-being levels of Zumba instructors and class participants. Nieri and Hughes (2021) explored Zumba instructors’ strategies, highlighting that although Zumba promotes the idea of exercise being fun for women, it does not necessarily challenge gendered stereotypes surrounding the body ideal. Indeed, in some cases, women participants do not find the Zumba experience pleasurable. Furthermore, Domene et al.’s (2016) comparative empirical study of community-based salsa and Zumba classes for physically inactive women highlighted that both interventions improve levels of subjective well-being, thus indicating that it is perhaps their communal nature and the characteristics of Latin music, rather than the Zumba format itself, that enable positive outcomes. Yet, neither of these studies has sufficiently engaged with the relationship between Zumba and capitalism, as a system that privileges economic gain, or with the cultural history of the dances Zumba employs in a deconstructed form. In this chapter, I extend these theorisations by exploring how Zumba navigates the tension between collective ecstasy and capitalism. I achieve this by examining Zumba’s entanglement with popular dance and cultural memory in an increasingly globalised world, and evaluating its deconstruction of creolised dance forms, which emerged from European colonisation of the ‘New’ World in the late fifteenth century. More specifically, I highlight how Zumba enables its sense of ethical Othering, by jointly harnessing creolisation, as the symbolic value of interpenetrating cultural

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elements (Glissant 1997), and kinaesthetic transnationalism, as a set of shared rhythms across the boundaries of nation and culture (Kabir 2014). In essence, Zumba connects people through their common human traits, whilst holding difference. By re-staging Latin social dance, normally danced in couple formation, through the specific configuration of solo within a collective, I argue that Zumba engages in a ritual re-enactment of the uncreolised African body: ‘a body free of classification, with no specific origins’ (Sadlier 2020a, p.  593). I highlight three mechanisms through which Zumba achieves this: mimesis and alterity (Taussig 1993), parody and the carnivalesque (Ehrenreich 2007), and incorporated practices and commemorative ceremonies (Connerton 1989).3 Whilst research has since extended the scope of these texts,4 I engage in a detailed exploration of their original concepts in tandem, as they offer a valuable theoretical toolkit. The theoretical elaborations of the sections titled “Situating Zumba: Between Popular Dance and Cultural Memory,” “Mimesis and Alterity,” and “Parody and the Carnivalesque” will be contextualised through an (auto)ethnographic account of my practices as a Zumba instructor, both in the capitalist epicentre of London, UK, and in the creolised context of Tarrafal, Cape Verde, in “Incorporated Practices and Commemorative Ceremonies.” First, however, I will offer a more detailed account of Zumba’s relationship with popular dance and cultural memory.

Situating Zumba: Between Popular Dance and Cultural Memory Zumba draws our attention to two key study areas: popular dance (see Dodds 2011), which explores dance styles enjoyed by the general population in various social contexts, and cultural memory, which challenges an individualised view of memory and focuses on the value of cultural manifestations (Connerton 1989). I endorse Parfitt-Brown’s (2011, p.  19) assertion that ‘“the people” who define the popular today are defined less by class and nation than by international imagined communities of practice.’ This is particularly relevant to the Zumba Fitness enterprise, which has developed embodied and virtual Zumba networks, within the space of the transnational gym, and via online forums.5 These act as productive sites that are simultaneously public and clandestine, sustained through the mantra that fitness should be fun. Zumba allows the field of popular dance to probe its relationship with fitness, and with the sedimentation of

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informal embodied knowledge, via a blending of genres, dance styles and choreographies in the transnational gym studio.6 It is worth noting that while other pleasure-inducing leisure activities such as Clubbercise or BodyCombat take place in this space, Zumba is a unique example. It offers a total lifestyle brand that integrates shared movements and affective mechanisms, all packaged via a community ethos and associated paraphernalia. At this juncture, a deeper understanding of its relationship with popular dance and cultural memory is therefore required. As regards cultural memory, I challenge the individualised notion of memory advocated by Freud (1962 [1896]) and rather view it as collectively and culturally embodied (Connerton 1989). Whilst acknowledging the place of traumatic memory since the 1980s, with the emergent narratives of Holocaust survivors in the Western context (see Nora 1989 [1984]), I wish to highlight how memory is increasingly being mediated by digital culture and globalisation.7 In particular, I reference Rothberg’s (2009, p.  3) conception of multidirectional memory, as a ‘productive, intercultural dynamic’ (Rothberg 2009, p. 3), which rejects the assumption that ‘a straight line runs from memory to identity and that the only kinds of memories and identities that are therefore possible are ones that exclude elements of alterity and forms of commonality with others’ (Rothberg 2009, pp. 4–5).8 This conception is relevant to Zumba, where both shared movement configurations and idiosyncratic movement styles are prized. Furthermore, as I will explore further in  a later section  (“Incorporated Practices and Commemorative Ceremonies”), it speaks to my conception of the ‘uncreolised’ African body (Sadlier 2020a, p. 593), as referenced in Zumba’s deconstruction and re-staging of creolised dance styles. Zumba connects popular dance and cultural memory within the domain of the market. As Connerton (1989, p.  64) highlights, the market prescribes a linear trajectory, organised in a succession of old and new: ‘The temporality of the market thus denies the possibility that there might co-­ exist qualitatively distinguishable times, a profane time and a sacred time, neither of which is reducible to the other.’ Slavery occurs when ‘memories are taken away’ (Connerton 1989, p. 14) through the domination of certain knowledge systems, and the commodification of human relationships. This occurred during the colonial encounter in the ‘New’ World during the late fifteenth century, where European and African rhythms merged, yet where the couple formation gradually took hold under the European influence (Kabir 2014).9 Significantly, couple dance did not feature in the

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African tradition, where collective circle dance to the beat of the drum was central (Kabir 2014). Whilst Chasteen (2004, p.  13) asserts that ‘Something new and powerful happened when couple dancing met the liberation of the lower body to create the dance-of-two,’ this process also devalued collective ecstasy as a valuable form of expression, and served to naturalise the dyad (Ehrenreich 2007). Yet, in Zumba, these movements are deconstructed, thus emphasising a return to the collective. By tapping into the memory of collective joy, deeply embodied via Afro-diasporic rhythmic cultures, Zumba enables us to challenge the ‘forced forgetting’ (Connerton 1989, p. 12) that Western modernity endorses. By looking to the possibilities of ‘ritual re-enactment’ (Connerton 1989, p.  61), via shared movements and aesthetics, Zumba practitioners can challenge the constant search for origins and foster new methods of human connection. Undoubtedly, Zumba fails to fully articulate the history of the dances it employs in this colonial encounter, or the capitalist principles that underpinned the emergence of ‘Latin America’ as an idea (Mignolo 2005), thus tying into the themes of remembering and forgetting that this volume seeks to untangle. However, by highlighting Latin America as a collectively embodied global site of postcolonial trauma, Zumba highlights the tension between collective ecstasy and the market, and opens up the possibility of fostering new allegiances, which celebrate both our commonalities and our differences. Having explored Zumba’s relationship with popular dance and cultural memory, I will now turn to the first of my three areas of exploration: mimesis and alterity (Taussig 1993).

Mimesis and Alterity Embodiment is certainly not absent from anthropological explorations of other cultures. Indeed, over the last number of decades, a range of studies have highlighted the importance of embodiment, as a ‘paradigm’ that views the body not as ‘an object to be studied in relation to culture’ but rather as ‘the subject of culture…’ (Csordas 1990, p. 5). More recent contributions have engaged with the ‘embodied turn’ in the social sciences (Thanem and Knights 2019), and the role of embodied performance in dance practice (Allegranti 2011). The latter work has highlighted the body as a site of knowledge and ethics, as well as autobiographical and relational engagement. Yet, as Taussig (1993) has highlighted, the act of disembodiment is a colonial endeavour premised on mind/body dualism,

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and the devaluation or prohibition of the bodily practices and lived experiences of others, which needs to be further unpacked. One way of achieving this is by engaging with Taussig’s ideas of mimesis and alterity. Taussig (1993, p. xiii) describes mimesis as ‘the nature that culture uses to create second nature, the faculty to copy, imitate, make models, explore difference, yield into and become Other.’ Taussig further describes mimeticity as ‘thought that moves and moves us’ (Taussig 1993, p. 2), via a combination of a shared history and our mimetic faculties. As Taussig argues, disembodiment is a colonial practice, as it erases a narrative from history, and thus privileges a certain mode of knowledge production (Taussig 1993, p. 18). This erasure was set up during the age of European conquest from the fifteenth century, which led to the sensuous Othering and exploitation of other cultures. It continued into the eighteenth-­ century Enlightenment in its quest to consciously control nature through rationality, thus seeking to divide human beings into discrete categories.10 Although Zumba is a capitalist enterprise that can be accused of cultural appropriation, it taps into the possibilities of mimesis, via kinaesthetic transnationalism: the celebration of shared steps and rhythms across the barriers of culture and language (Kabir 2014). Beto, Zumba’s creator, encourages us to enjoy the rhythms of Latin America, via their shared history in Europe and Africa. Furthermore, he enables us to transcend this, by embracing multiple international styles such as Indian bhangra and belly dance, in a transnational space, which emphasises collective joy, and by marketing the brand so as to be as inclusive for as many body types and identities as possible. In contrast to mimesis, alterity is more physical and performative. In Zumba, the colonial roots of the dances it endorses are both concealed and revealed in its ecstatic deconstruction of the couple formation, a European colonial residue. By tapping into the specific configuration of solo within a collective, which is central to many African dances, whilst appealing to each participant’s distinctive movement style, Zumba, perhaps unwittingly, encourages an act of ethical Othering. The shared deconstructed rhythms of merengue,11 salsa,12 cumbia,13 reggaeton14 (Zumba’s core rhythms) and other international styles serve as connective fibres, to which each Zumba instructor can bring his/her own style. Undoubtedly, Zumba could be accused of being a cultural mime, where the Other is essentialised. This is evidenced in Beto’s comment that: ‘I want to be like them [Africans/Afro-Latinos/Afro-Colombians]—they have the flavour in their bodies’ (Kabir 2015, p. 6). Yet, there is no such

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thing as a univocal African body, since the Black Atlantic exists ‘in a webbed network, between the local and global’ (Gilroy 1995, p.  29), internally divided by other factors such as sexuality, age, economics, and ethnicity. In this way, it is important to highlight our shared history as human beings, whilst acknowledging the deep trauma of colonisation. I will do so later by invoking the uncreolised African body as a key aspect of Zumba’s trajectory and engaging with the performative possibilities of the tension between collective ecstasy and capitalism. I will now argue, in line with Taussig (1993), that Zumba’s mimicry opens up possibilities for parodic repetition, through its relationship with the carnivalesque.

Parody and the Carnivalesque In Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy (2007), Ehrenreich succinctly argues that a missing element of twenty-first century life is the sense of collective ecstasy found in danced rituals of centuries past. As Ehrenreich highlights, it was perhaps the ancient Greeks who valued collective ecstasy the most, as exemplified in the danced rituals of the cult of Dionysus, approximately 2500 years ago. Over the centuries, the cult of Dionysus got lost in translation. The expulsion of dancing from the Church in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries led to people taking their ecstatic rituals to the streets. This paved the way for the emergence of ‘Carnival’—a celebration linked to the Christian calendar—as a public festivity from the thirteenth century. Carnival embodies the merging of different bodies, providing ‘a time and place where complete freedom is possible’ (Parker 2009, p. 157). Yet, in reality, Carnival may reinforce a social order at the same time as it inverts it (Bakhtin 1941). Ehrenreich (2007, p. 93) argues that with the emergence of Carnival, something had been lost: ‘a certain “secularization” of communal pleasure’ had been enacted.15 In a recent article (Sadlier 2020b), I highlighted a genealogical connection between the roots of Carnival and Zumba. I argued that Zumba is a contemporary Dionysian rite, mediated by Neoliberalism16 and capitalism. In essence, it taps into the possibilities of parody, which can be described as ‘any cultural practice which provides a relatively polemical allusive imitation of another cultural production or practice’ (Denith 2000, p. 9). It does so through its slogan, ‘Join the Party,’ articulated in the space of the transnational gym, which can otherwise be seen as a site of neoliberal surveillance (Sadlier 2020b). Zumba playfully exposes the origins of the

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devaluation of collective ecstasy, highlighting how liminality is produced through the ‘carnivalesque loss of identity’ (Shields 1991, p. 97). Zumba has become a global Carnival, which can be celebrated at any time, in any place. In essence, it removes the temporal limitations of Carnival, which encourages liminality once a year in a given locale, before normal life is restored. Zumba encourages interconnected networks, committed to collective ecstasy, which organise both through embodied practices (Zumba classes/events) and virtual practices (online networks). Pérez and Perlman (2016) describe how Zumba achieves its joyous effect, via the concept of Free Electrifying Joy (FEJ). According to Perlman, this occurs 20 minutes into the Zumba experience, where ‘the person suddenly feels very liberated… everything that’s in their life disappears and it’s just them and the music’ (Pérez and Perlman 2016, n.p.).17 Yet, interestingly, it does so through the modulating processes of the market, which doubly parodies the static rhythms of late capitalism. While it could be stated that the sexualised movements Zumba sometimes employs (e.g., pelvic thrusts and shimmies) play into a neoliberal bodily economy and cultural appropriation, I argue that they are a source of parody. As Katherine Dunham, the African American anthropologist and choreographer who did fieldwork in the Francophone Caribbean island of Haiti and was initiated into the vaudún danced religion astutely observed: ‘African movement is pelvic movement, natural and unself-­ conscious. It becomes erotic on the stages of civilization’ (Dunham, in Lloyd 1949, p. 245). As Dunham’s words highlight, the gestures depicted would not be seen as ‘sexual’ in African society, since pelvic thrusts are common in West African dance. In this way, Zumba’s ‘parodic repetition’ (Butler 1990, p. 192) exposes ‘the phantasmatic effect of abiding identity as a politically tenuous construction.’ By dancing these movements in a collective, the focus is taken away from capitalism’s glorification of the heterosexual couple and devaluation of the collective (see Hennessy 2000). In the process, a space is created where we can all poke fun at the sexualised motifs of capitalist society, and create an inclusive space for sexual minorities, as well as other marginalised groups. Taussig (1993, p. 69) highlights the productive possibilities of parody, asserting that it enables us to seek ‘a novel anthropology, not of the Third and Other worlds, but of the West itself as mirrored in the eyes and handiwork of its Others’ (Taussig 1993, p. 236). Through embracing various cultural elements, Zumba exposes the West as an unstable term and taps into the possibilities of ‘mimetic excess’ (Taussig 1993, p. 254). As Taussig

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(1993, p. 255) asserts: ‘Mimetic excess as a form of human capacity potentiated by post-coloniality provides a welcome opportunity to live subjunctively as neither subject nor object of history but as both, at one and the same time.’ Zumba deconstructs the subject itself, and further the African subject. It does so by re-performing a tragic history and simultaneously parodying a system that constrains all human beings—capitalism—creating what this system does not otherwise allow: collective joy that connects people across cultural and linguistic divides. More specifically, this is embodied through shared movements, and the celebration of individual movement styles. As argued in the introduction, it must also be noted that Zumba is a capitalist corporation, whose ultimate role is to make profits, through its marketing efforts. However, as various studies have highlighted (Sadlier 2017, 2020b; Nieri and Hughes 2021), overall Zumba does allow participants to find a sense of belonging. I will now further explore how Zumba enables this through the specific configuration of solo within a collective, drawing on (auto)ethnographic insights. In doing so, I will highlight how Zumba taps into the possibilities of the uncreolised African body, through its incorporated practices and commemorative ceremonies.

Incorporated Practices and Commemorative Ceremonies As Taylor (2003) highlights, the whole project of Western modernity is based on viewing certain modes of knowledge transmission as superior to others. During the colonial encounter in the ‘New’ World in the late fifteenth century, indigenous cultures, which did not rely on writing as a mode of knowledge transmission, were viewed as uncivilised. Furthermore, Columbus’s writings on the conquest basked in the ‘marvel of undiscovered Otherness’ (Taylor 2003, p.  54). As Taylor (2003, p.  18) asserts: ‘While the conquerors elaborated, rather than transformed, an elite practice and gender-power arrangement, the importance granted writing came at the expense of embodied practices as a way of knowing and making claims.’ More specifically, this can be related to the split ‘between the archive of supposedly enduring materials (i.e., texts, documents, buildings, bones) and the so-called ephemeral repertoire of embodied practice/ knowledge (i.e., spoken language, dance, sports, ritual)’ (Taylor 2003, p. 19). I argue that this split specifically devalued collective movement as

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an important element of human expression, which Zumba taps into through its deconstruction of Afro-diasporic social dances. Connerton’s (1989) work on incorporated practices and commemorative ceremonies is valuable for exploring how Zumba transcends the limitations of the archive, through its celebration of the collective roots of Latin American culture. Zumba foregrounds Connerton’s (1989, p.  1) central question—‘how is the memory of groups conveyed and sustained?’ Connerton probes this by developing a performative conception of memory: ‘bodily social memory’ (Connerton 1989, p.  72). By incorporated practices, Connerton refers to images and recollected knowledge of the past, sustained through ritual performances. Such performances challenge the ‘inertia in social structures’ (Connerton 1989, p. 5), by creating a new order. Meanwhile, Connerton’s (1989, p. 52) conception of commemorative ceremonies highlights the importance of collective acts of performed recall. As Connerton (1989, pp.  65–71) suggests, ritual re-enactments have three key elements: calendrical, verbal and gestural. While the verbal is largely elided in Zumba, I focus here on Zumba’s calendrical and gestural elements, which mark it as a distinctive contemporary rite of collective ecstasy. I use the word ‘rite’ to emphasise the sense of ecstasy built into both Zumba’s marketing practices and affective mechanisms. It could be asked whether other group dance classes are ‘rites.’ Whilst this is open to interpretation, the answer should reflect the extent to which the class in question draws on a set of calendrical, verbal, and gestural rituals, in both formal and spontaneous contexts. Zumba creates a time and place to experience ritualised collective ecstasy. By harnessing capitalism at the same time as it challenges its devaluation of collective life, Zumba creates a realistic intervention. Ideally, we could topple capitalism as a system that commodifies human desires. However, as Connerton (1989, p. 9) attests: ‘A rite revoking an institution only makes sense by invertedly recalling the other rites that hitherto confirmed that institution.’ Zumba’s rituals parody the market’s search for temporal order, by focusing both on continuity and specificity. Such rituals include not only Zumba classes, which regularly punctuate attendees’ lives, but also mass Zumba events such as local community Zumbathons (Zumba for charity), the Zumba Academy (held annually for Zumba instructors in London  and other European cities) and the Zumba Convention (ZinCon—held annually for the global Zumba instructor community in Orlando, Florida), which create intensified manifestations of collective joy. Yet, these events also draw attention to Zumba’s capitalist

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roots, as demonstrated by the multiple Zumba merchandise stalls. In this way, collective ecstasy is simultaneously commodified and celebrated. Speaking to Connerton’s (1989) theorisations, Zumba’s commemorative ceremonies are formalised as well as expressive acts, which ‘are subject to spontaneous variation’ (Connerton 1989, p. 44). I encountered this, for instance, when I led an improvised ‘Zumba in the park’ session in Russell Square Gardens, London, during the course of my PhD, with the ominous Senate House Library and university buildings standing in the background, in stark contrast to our brightly patterned neon Zumba outfits. Our choice to unite was driven by a desire not only to disrupt the engineered stasis of our surroundings through an improvised gesture, but also by a desire to publicly perform our formalised shared movements and to encourage others to join in, thus extending an invitation to develop further Zumba networks. In relation to gestural elements, Zumba, as a collective rite, taps into what Connerton (1989, p. 35) refers to as ‘social habit-memory,’ whereby meaningful actions and rules of conduct are laid out for a community, in appropriate social spaces. By deconstructing dance forms that are performed on dance floors around the globe, ordinarily in couple formation, Zumba creates unique movement manifestations that offer an alternative iteration of social habit-memory. By removing the couple hold and rather emphasising the collective body, expressive possibilities are opened up for arm movements (Kabir 2015). These possibilities manifest themselves, for instance, in ‘the Beto shuffle’ (where arms interlock in a ‘single, single, double, double’ formation) and ‘the Beto swing’ (where hands circle in loops during merengue songs). Furthermore, many Zumba movements are choreographed in a half-circle, which can be seen as a way of transcending the linearity of capitalism (Sadlier  2020a). On a deeper level, Zumba enables both instructors and participants to develop their own style, which simultaneously enables personal expression and a collective movement aesthetic. When my class and I did Zumba in the park, we danced using our Zumba style, where flexing limbs resemble the movements of a chicken.18 I argue that Zumba taps into and parodically replays the rift between the archive and the repertoire, by re-staging a colonial encounter in the space of the transnational gym. Zumba highlights Latin America as a collectively embodied global site of postcolonial trauma by celebrating difference, at the same time as it encourages its breakdown. By endorsing the

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specific dance configuration of solo within a collective, Zumba allows us to go beyond ‘the imprisoning model of a history that is already shaped’ (Mbembe 2002, p. 258). In essence, it enables us to transcend the ‘colonial wound’ (Mignolo 2005, p.  8) of the ‘New World’ encounter, by deconstructing creolised dance forms, and removing the categorisations that ordinarily divide people, such as gender, sexuality, race, and class. My awareness of this process led me during recent postdoctoral research to confidently lead Zumba sessions with young women who had escaped abuse in Nepal, and with women’s and LGBTQIA+ communities in Timor-Leste. Yet, my approach was more tentative in Cape Verde, an archipelago of islands off the coast of West Africa. In Cape Verde, I viscerally experienced what I refer to as the process of ‘uncreolisation:’ a sense of shared humanity achieved through the deconstruction of creolised dance forms (Sadlier  2020a, p.  606). I had been reluctant to lead Zumba sessions at our partner NGO for two key reasons: firstly, since Cape Verde has a complex relationship with the history of the Atlantic slave trade, having been uninhabited prior to the Portuguese explorers’ occupation; and secondly, since the NGO utilises batuku, a native dance style that celebrates women’s empowerment (see Stranovsky 2011). Significantly, Cape Verde is a strongly creolised nation. Although Portuguese is the dominant language, Cape Verdean Creole—which also has  differences in  dialect between the north  (barlavento)  and south (sotavento) and further variations across each of its ten islands—is the everyday spoken language, and a key aspect of its cultural heritage (Carter and Aulette 2009). If I taught Zumba, a transnational movement form that arguably commodifies African dance forms, I thought I would reproduce a neocolonial narrative. In essence, I neither wanted to ‘teach’ the children something that they already knew in a deeply embodied sense, nor wanted to coach the women, who had found their own movement configuration that viscerally connected them to their cultural heritage and challenged patriarchal constraints. Yet, when I decided to lead a session, the joy was more abundant than I had expected, as the participants recognised something in the movements, and in the collective formation. Indeed, it felt like a form of mimetic parody and a ritual re-enactment of the origins of the ‘New’ World. This process highlighted how creolisation and kinaesthetic transnationalism can coalesce in a commemorative ceremony that connects Zumba practitioners and participants around the globe. Furthermore, the sense of collective joy that Zumba generates can

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be ethically employed with the communities whose narratives are at the heart of the dances it deconstructs. Indeed, collective movement itself can be used as a way of connecting and commemorating this history. In this way, uncreolisation serves as a way of collectively acknowledging the creative potentialities of creolisation and re-staging a traumatic history, by tapping into vital life.

Conclusion This chapter has focused on Zumba Fitness as a transnational movement form that highlights the tension between capitalism and collective joy. As I have argued, Zumba offers insights for both popular dance and cultural memory studies, as it taps into what can be referred to as collective ecstasy, whereby collective movement connects people beyond differences in sexuality, gender, race, and class (Ehrenreich 2007). While Zumba draws on capitalist processes, it also challenges capitalism’s commodification of human desires, whereby empowerment is seemingly achieved by reaching a partnered sexual goal. It does so by highlighting the relationship between creolisation, as the symbolic value of interpenetrating cultural elements (Glissant 1997), and kinaesthetic transnationalism, as the celebration of shared steps across the boundaries of nation and culture (Kabir 2014). Thus, it offers an inclusive space for sexual minorities, and indeed other marginalised groups within society. This chapter examined three key mechanisms through which Zumba creates global collective ecstasy: mimesis and alterity (Taussig 1993), parody and the carnivalesque (Ehrenreich 2007), and incorporated practices and commemorative ceremonies (Connerton 1989). While Zumba can be accused of cultural appropriation, in particular of the black African body, I sought to highlight how it engages in an act of ethical Othering, through its focus on the configuration of solo within a collective. Ultimately, the chapter has highlighted that Zumba, through its deconstruction of creolised dance forms, invokes the memory of an uncreolised African body: a collective body propelled through movement that re-performs colonial history, whilst creating a connective fibre between all humans. In this way, Zumba challenges static identity classifications, by appealing to both our idiosyncrasies and our commonalities.

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Notes 1. It is worth noting that Latin music was commonly used in aerobics classes in Latin America throughout the 1980s and 1990s, as I discovered in conversations with various Colombian friends. Indeed, as Latin social dance is such a dominant part of their culture, it was not seen as innovative to integrate it into a group fitness setting. Therefore, it can be said that Zumba was not really ‘new,’ but rather was marketed well. 2. I learned of this latter point in conversation with a Zumba instructor in Nepal, who told me that her cousin in America paid her monthly licence fee—exactly equal to what I was paying—in spite of the difference in overall income levels between the UK and Nepal. 3. While mimesis and parody are sometimes used interchangeably, I separate them to first highlight how mimesis encourages a celebration of difference within sameness, before unpacking this in relation to the parodic repetition of Carnival. 4. See, for instance, Cole’s (2009) account of the ‘first’ Aboriginal debutante ball in 1968, and O’Neill et al.’s (2002) arts-based exploration of ethno-­ mimesis as performative praxis, drawing on Taussig (1993); Tarr et  al.’s (2015) work on dance and social bonding, drawing on Ehrenreich (2007); and Buckland’s (2001) piece on dance, authenticity and cultural memory, drawing on Connerton (1989). 5. During the COVID-19 pandemic, all events, including the Zumba Instructor Network Convention went online (see Sadlier Forthcoming). 6. For a detailed exploration of the role of informal learning and embodied knowledge, see Soler Caicedo’s (2020) doctoral thesis on embodied capital in Colombian salsa dancing. 7. As the trauma theorist, Bessel van der Kolk (2015, pp. 171–183) notes, remembering and forgetting are also central aspects of traumatic memories, which ‘are organized not as coherent logical narratives but in fragmented sensory and emotional traces: images, sounds and physical sensations’ (2015, p. 176). 8. Rothberg shows how seemingly separate histories are intertwined, by examining the links between Holocaust and postcolonial studies. Notably, he shows how decolonisation and demands for civil rights in the Caribbean had an impact on memory of the Holocaust as a Western site of trauma. 9. The colonisers brought Church and popular music, as well as courtly couple dances, such as the minuet and the quadrille, which proliferated from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. These were not explicitly couple dances, but rather set dances. Couples danced in lines and moved to different partners. The watershed moment occurred with the emergence of the waltz in nineteenth-century Europe, which was the first strictly defined

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couple dance (see Scott 2008). Significantly, it emerged at the very same moment as bourgeois capitalism. This marked a democratisation of the dance floor, which had the dyad at its core. 10. See my discussion of Taylor’s (2003) work on the archive and repertoire in  the section  titled “Incorporated Practices and Commemorative Ceremonies.” 11. Merengue is a march that originates from the Dominican Republic. Its shuffling feet movements supposedly mimic slaves with their feet in chains (see Austerlitz 1997). 12. Salsa is a transnational dance form, marketed by Fania Records in the US in the 1970s, incorporating the rhythmic cultures of Cuba and Puerto Rico (see Calvo Ospina 1995). 13. Cumbia originated as a courtship dance among African slaves on the Caribbean coast of Colombia and Panama. Important movements include the ‘machete,’ which mimics African slaves cutting sugar cane (see Vila and Fernández L’Hoeste 2013). 14. Reggaeton originated in the underground scene of Puerto Rico in the 1990s. It incorporates rap, hip-hop and reggae, and is often associated with drugs and violence (see Rivera et al. 2009). 15. Carnival has a complex history. The Carnival of Venice, first documented in 1162, was one of the first mass Carnival celebrations to take place in Europe, with masking playing a major role in its characterisation. The Carnival tradition would then spread to Spain, Portugal and France, and from there to Latin America, the Caribbean and French America via the history of Western colonisation. Carnival would become infused with local traditions and mythologies across these sites. A notable example in Latin America is the La Diablada Carnival tradition in Oruro, Bolivia, which replays colonial history by featuring participants dressed up as conquistadores, Incas, demons and other characters. Carnival celebrations also take place on the continents of Africa and Asia through the processes of creolisation. Notable examples include the Mindelo Carnival on the island of São Vicente in Cape Verde, which demonstrates influences from Brazil and local cultural inflections, and the Intruz (swindler) Carnival tradition in Goa, India, which combines Portuguese colonial and Hindu elements. For a history of global Carnival culture, see Crichlow (2012). 16. Neoliberalism is a political and economic system that emerged in Europe and the US from the 1970s, which ‘places an emphasis on the potential expansion of the viewpoint of commercial exchanges to nearly every other sphere of society from motherhood and reproduction to international relations’ (Guardiola-Rivera 2010, p. 6).

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17. This conceptualisation resonates with Csikszentmihalyi’s (1992, p. 4) theory of flow, as a ‘state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter.’ 18. I affectionately conceptualise my theorisations around the chicken move as ‘avian ontological theory.’

Bibliography Allegranti, Beatrice. 2011. Embodied Performances: Sexuality, Gender, Bodies. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Austerlitz, Paul. 1997. Merengue: Dominican Music and Dominican Identity. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1941. Rabelais and His World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Buckland, Theresa Jill. 2001. Dance, Authenticity and Cultural Memory: The Politics of Embodiment. Yearbook for Traditional Music 33: 1–16. Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York and Abingdon: Routledge. Calvo Ospina, Hernando. 1995. Salsa!: Havana Beat, Bronx Beat. Trans. N. Caistor. London and New York: Latin American Bureau. Carter, Katherine, and Judy Aulette. 2009. Creole in Cape Verde: Language, Identity, and Power. Ethnography 10 (2): 213–236. Chasteen, John Charles. 2004. National Rhythms, African Roots: The Deep History of Latin American Popular Dance. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Cole, Anna. 2009. Dancing with Myth, Memory and Mimesis. Coolabah 3: 252–258. Connerton, Paul. 1989. How Societies Remember. Cambridge and New  York: Cambridge University Press. Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. 1992. Flow: The Psychology of Happiness. London: Rider. Csordas, Thomas J. 1990. Embodiment as a Paradigm for Anthropology. Ethos 18 (1): 5–47. Crichlow, Michaeline A. (Ed.). 2012. Carnival Art, Culture and Politics: Performing Life. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Denith, Simon. 2000. Parody (The New Critical Idiom). Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Dodds, Sherril. 2011. Dancing on the Canon: Embodiments of Value in Popular Dance. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Domene, Pablo A., Hannah J. Moir, Elizabeth Pummell, and Chris Easton. 2016. Salsa Dance and Zumba Fitness: Acute Responses during Community-Based Classes. Journal of Sport and Health Science 5 (2): 190–196.

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Durkheim, Émile. 1912. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. Trans. J.W. Swain, 1915. London: George Allen & Unwin. Ehrenreich, Barbara. 2007. Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy. London: Granta Books. Freud, Sigmund. 1896. The Aetiology of Hysteria. In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud: Early Psycho-Analytic Publications, Ed. and trans. J.  Strachey [1962], Vol. 3, 187–221. London: Hogarth Press. Gilroy, Paul. 1995. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Glissant, Édouard. 1997. Poetics of Relation. Trans. B.  Wang. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Grau, Andrée. 2016. Why People Dance—Evolution, Sociality and Dance. Dance Movement & Spiritualities 2 (3): 233–254. Guardiola-Rivera, Oscar. 2010. What If Latin America Ruled the World?: How the South will take the North Through the 21st Century. New York: Bloomsbury. Hennessy, Rosemary. 2000. Profit and Pleasure: Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism. New York: Routledge. Kabir, Ananya Jahanara. 2014. Oceans, Cities, Islands: Sites and Routes of Afro-­ Diasporic Rhythm Cultures. Atlantic Studies: Global Currents 11 (1): 106–124. ———. 2015. Zumba as a global phenomenon. Unpublished manuscript. Kabir, Ananya Jahanara, and Aoife Sadlier. Forthcoming. Selling Free Joy: Zumba Fitness and the Commodification of Latin American Dance. Unpublished manuscript. Lloyd, Margaret. 1949. The Borzoi Book of Modern Dance. New  York: Dance Horizons. Luettgen, Mary, Carl Foster, Scott Doberstein, Rick Mikat, and John Porcari. 2012. Zumba: Is the “Fitness-Party” a Good Workout? Journal of Sports Science and Medicine 11 (2): 357–358. Mbembe, Achille. 2002. African Modes of Self-Writing. Trans. S. Rendall. Public Culture 14 (1): 239–273. Mignolo, Walter D. 2005. The Idea of Latin America. Boston, MA and Oxford: Blackwell. Nieri, Tanya, and Elizabeth Hughes. 2021. Zumba Instructor Strategies: Constraining or Liberating for Women Participants? Leisure Sciences. https:// doi.org/10.1080/01490400.2021.1881669. Nora, Pierre. 1984. Entre mémoire et histoire. In Les lieux de mémoire, ed. Pierre Nora, 23–43. Paris: Gallimard. Trans. as ‘Between Memory and History.’ 1989. Representations 26 (2): 7–24. O’Neill, Maggie, Sara Giddens, Patricia Breatnach, Carl Bagley, Darren Bourne, and Tony Judge. 2002. Renewed Methodologies for Social Research: Ethno-­ Mimesis as Performative Praxis. The Sociological Review 50 (1): 69–88.

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Parfitt-Brown, Clare. 2011. Popular Past, Popular Present, Post-Popular? In Conversations Across the Field of Dance Studies, Special Issue on Dancing the Popular, Guest-ed., Danielle Robinson, Vol. XXXI: 18–20. Parker, Richard G. 2009. Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions: Sexual Culture in Contemporary Brazil. 2nd ed. Nashville, Tennessee: Vanderbilt University Press. Pérez, B., and Perlman, A. 2016. Beto and Alberto chugeder [video online]. Accessed October 1, 2016. https://www.facebook.com/zumbabeto/ videos/10154366144680822/. Reddish, Paul, Ronald Fischer, and Joseph Bulbulia. 2013. Let’s Dance Together: Synchrony, Shared Intentionality and Cooperation. Plos One 8 (8): e71182 (1–13). Rivera, Raquel Z., Wayne Marshall, and Deborah Pacini Hernandez, eds. 2009. Reggaeton. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Rothberg, Michael. 2009. Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Rova, Marina. 2017. Embodying Kinaesthetic Empathy Through Interdisciplinary Practice-Based Research. The Arts in Psychotherapy 55: 164–173. Rusli Evelyn M. 2012. Investors Put Some Muscle Behind Popular Fitness Trend. The New York Times, March 9. Accessed July 12, 2016. http://query.nytimes. com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A03E3DF1038F93AA35750C0A9649D8B63. Sadlier, Aoife. 2017. Women Dancing on the Edge of Time: Reframing Female (a) sexualities through Zorbitality [PhD thesis]. Accessed September 23, 2018. https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/files/73257895/2017_Sadlier_Aoife_ Claire_1334718_ethesis.pdf. ———. 2020a. Dancing to a Resistant Imaginary: Reconfiguring Female (a)sexualities through Zorbitality. Qualitative Research in Psychology 17 (4): 587-616. https://doi.org/10.1080/14780887.2018.1456588. ———. 2020b. Dionysus Meets Neoliberalism: Zumba® Fitness and the Call to Zorbitality. Sexualities 23 (5–6): 810–833. https://doi. org/10.1177/1363460719861805. ———. Forthcoming. Can a Pandemic Kill Collective Joy and Social Connection? Zumba Fitness and Affective Capitalism during COVID-19. Unpublished manuscript. Scott, Derek B. 2008. Sounds of the Metropolis: The 19th-Century Popular Music Revolution in London, New  York, Paris and Vienna. Oxford and New  York: Oxford University Press. Shields, Rob. 1991. Ritual Pleasures of a Seaside Resort: Liminality, Carnivalesque, and Dirty Weekends. In Places on the Margin: Alternative Geographies of Modernity, ed. Rob Shields, 73–116. London: Routledge. Soler Caicedo, Camilo. 2020. Exporting the Embodied Capital of Colombian Salsa. PhD thesis. Accessed May 3, 2021. https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/camilo-­s oler-­c aicedo(99b872bc-­f 8c6-­4 17a-­9 48a-­9 087e0920d5c)/ theses.html.

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Stranovsky, Sara. 2011. Dancing at the Crossroads: Batuko, Community, And Female Empowerment in Cape Verde West Africa. Los Angeles: UCLA, California Digital Library. Accessed December 11, 2017. https://escholarship. org/uc/item/49j0958t. Tarr, Bronwyn, Jacques Launay, Emma Cohen, and Robin Dunbar. 2015. Synchrony and Exertion during Dance Independently Raise Pain Threshold and Encourage Social Bonding. Biology Letters 11: 20150767. Taussig, Michael. 1993. Mimesis and Alterity. London: Routledge. Taylor, Diana. 2003. The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press. Thanem, Torkild, and David Knights. 2019. Introduction: The Embodied Turn in Social Science Research. In Embodied Research Methods, eds. Torkild Thanem and David Knights, 1–9. London and Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Van der Kolk, Bessel. 2015. The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma. London: Penguin. Van Oort, Jessica. 2008. Review: A Tale of Festive Dance. Dance Chronicle 31 (1): 124–128. Vila, Pablo, and Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste. 2013. Cumbia!: Scenes of a Migrant Latin American Music Genre. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Zumba Fitness. 2021. Accessed May 3, 2021. https://www.zumba.com/ en-­US/about.

PART II

Manipulated Memory and Reclamation

Parading the Past, Taming the New: From Ragtime to Rock and Roll Julie Malnig

Worlds of social dance often find their genesis among artists, rebels, non-­ conformists, and others who are deliberately or accidentally marginal to mainstream culture. From the bordellos of Buenos Aires, where tango was born, to the honky-tonks of Nashville, the jazz clubs of New Orleans and New York, and contemporary raves, social dance is rooted in transgressive behavior. What happens, though, once social and popular dances enter and become enmeshed in commercial mass culture? Why are social dancers who flout social convention or perceived notions of decency subject to shame, ridicule, or castigation? How are norms of appropriateness determined? In this chapter, I explore ways that proponents and practitioners of popular dance draw on memories and styles of the “past” to create consensus regarding a dance’s acceptability for a broad, commercial audience. In particular, I look at two case studies and two dance teams decades apart: exhibition ballroom dancers Irene and Vernon Castle, from the mid-1910s, and Arthur and Kathryn Murray, from the 1950s. Although

J. Malnig (*) New York University Gallatin School of Individualized Study, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Parfitt (ed.), Cultural Memory and Popular Dance, Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71083-5_5

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the Murrays began their school in the late 1920s and developed it into an empire throughout the 1930s and 1940s, their work in the 1950s, near the end of their careers, most interests me. Significantly, the two historical periods I address were times of racial upheaval in the U.S.: the 1910s, when waves of African Americans headed north during the Great Migration, and the cities began adjusting to a mixed racial population; and the 1950s, a critical time of racial segregation and the beginning of the Civil Rights movement. There were other commonalities, too. Both periods—the ragtime and rock and roll eras—elicited what can be called moral and sexual “panics” in response to new styles of African American-influenced music and dance. Although by the mid-­ 1910s, the ideology of the sexuality-liberated New Woman took hold, there was a countervailing backlash against female sexuality and its perceived excesses. According to historian Christina Simmons, “For women to abandon their modesty and follow men’s lascivious behavior was to threaten the very basis of civilization” (Simmons 1989, p. 171). The gender fears were entwined with race: the idea that women, now participating in nightlife culture, might engage in dances of African American origins, let alone consort with African American men.1 Since the Renaissance court of Elizabeth I, social ballroom dance (those dances performed by the public in social as opposed to theatrical settings) has long been associated with the inculcation, maintenance, and remembrance of social values, but the 1910s and 1950s saw challenges to these values as a result of incursions of new dances born of ragtime and rock and roll. In both eras, class, too, was important: the Castles and the Murrays attracted their following through appeals to white, upper-class gentility. They memorialized within the dances not only older dance styles but more traditional social values associated with a citizenry for whom dance was a measure of social grace, breeding, and economic status. The Castles reverted to a distant past associated with the ancient Greeks; the Murrays returned to dances from yesteryear—the heyday of exhibition ballroom dance synonymous with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, of the 1930s and 1940s, when style, personality, and heterosexual romance became intertwined. Arthur Murray actually shunned the word “etiquette” (presumably because readers would find it too “old-fashioned”), but he invoked it nonetheless, and updated it, in the 1954 edition of his dance manual How to Become a Good Dancer, advocating “the practical application of good common sense and attractive manners” (Murray 1954, p.  242). Both teams used the past as a tool to appeal to a contemporary cohort of social

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ballroom dancers and maintain the currency of their dance-instruction businesses. The teams deployed the “past” and mediated past and present through the popular media of their day—in one instance, mass-marketed magazines and newspapers; the other, television. As a result of these new channels of communication, their appeals were inscribed in language and images giving them the patina of authenticity and “truth.”

Cultural Memory and Remembering the Past My thinking about the uses of the past and cultural memory is informed by social anthropologist Paul Connerton’s How Societies Remember, in which he draws on the ideas of Maurice Halbwachs, the French philosopher and sociologist known for his pioneering work On Collective Memory (1941). Accordingly Connerton writes, It is through their membership of a social group—particularly kinship, religions and class affiliations—that individuals are able to acquire, to localise and to recall their memories. (Connerton 1989, p. 36)

He continues: For what binds together recent memories is not the fact that they are contiguous in time but rather the fact that they form part of a whole ensemble of thoughts common to a group, to the groups with which we are in a relationship at present or have been in some connection in the recent past. (p. 36)

I contend that the ballroom dance floor, dance studio, and televised dance “class” seen by national viewers, were ritual spaces and performative practices like those Connerton addresses. These social activities brought together groups and classes of people engaged in a unified social project in which “memory” of their own dancing past, or newly created past designed for them, served to join the dancers in a shared activity. It was through these activities that memories were transmitted. The memories that these groups drew on were not always or necessarily accurate; that is, they may have been embellished or altered to suit current circumstances and fulfill present social needs. As sociologist Lewis Coser writes in his Introduction to On Collective Memory, “A society’s current perceived needs may impel it to refashion the past, but successive epochs are being kept alive through

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a common code and common symbolic canon even amidst contemporary revisions” (Halbwachs 1992, pp. 26–27). Connerton uses the term “proprieties of the body” (p. 83) to refer to those behaviors that are more than mere habits but are culturally learned and instilled according to the structures of one’s own culture.2 Using the history of table manners—a bodily activity in its own right—as an example, Connerton cites Erasmus’s 1530 treatise De civilitate morum puerilium (On Civility in Children) to explain how ideas about civility (“civilite”) are often connected with attitudes concerning manners and decorum. One’s manner of eating, for instance, betrays a lack of, or adherence to, a culture’s governing conventions. As Connerton notes, “By the end of the eighteenth century the French leisured upper class had fully elaborated the standard of table manners that came gradually to be seen as self-evident in Western civilized society” (p. 83). What is important and relevant to contemplating ballroom dance, is that these bodily traits and behaviors are learned, culturally specific, and central to the notion of what constitutes a “civilized” being. For Connerton, these proprieties of the body “are technical skills imbued with moral values. They are ‘forgotten’ as maxims only when they have been well remembered as habits” (p. 83). These “mere” habits are, in fact, a learned set of dispositions: what Connerton calls “a set of rules for defining ‘proper’ behavior” (p. 83). It was professional ballroom dance teams who became arbiters of social dance behaviors and essentially instructed a public in these conventions by recollecting the past.

Irene and Vernon Castle One of the most highly publicized and emulated early-twentieth-century exhibition ballroom teams was Irene and Vernon Castle. By the mid-­1910s, the Castles had published one of the first texts on contemporary ballroom dance (Modern Dancing), operated their own dance school, Castle House, owned their own cabaret, and starred in a film biography The Whirl of Life. From the start of their career, their philosophy of dance was imbued with the notion of “civility,” grace, and refinement. But what did that mean in 1915? What shaped these ideals, and why? The Progressive Era, spanning about 1890 to 1930, saw major cultural and social shifts in the U.S. as a result of industrialization, an emerging consumer culture, the Great Migration and huge urban growth. The rise of a new middle-class leisure culture was spurred by the development of restaurants, hotels, and cabarets (precursors of the 1940s nightclub) around the country. Alongside

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the expansion of business and commerce, though, was a strong reform movement that monitored the injustices arising from corporate capitalism and creeping urbanism. Middle-class women, in fact, were among the most ardent advocates for the eradication of social ills from child labor to prostitution and alcoholism.3 For the reformers, unregulated dance halls and ballrooms were another social problem to be remedied; particularly worrisome were the “tango teas,” afternoon soirées for women and men to socialize and to learn ballroom dance from professionals. For the women, this was a kind of surreptitious pleasure as they temporarily operated outside the bounds of conventional coupling. To the reformers, though, these teas could be perilous opportunities for women to succumb to wiles of feckless gigolos. The emergence of new social spaces, including cabarets and restaurant dance floors, spurred this dancing culture, which featured dances set to the syncopated rhythms of rag time.  These “animal dances,” like the Turkey Trot, Grizzly Bear, Bunny Hug, Chicken Reel, and others, were characterized by close body holds and improvised steps and movements. Even though the late-nineteenth-century waltz introduced the idea of the independent couple, dance couples still remained attuned to the movements of their fellow dancers, unlike early-twentieth-century dancing couples who were virtually oblivious to the moving bodies around them. The dances’ close physical proximity, their African American origins, and the changed ethos of social intermingling, set off swift condemnation by Progressive-era social reformers and moral conservatives. Of the Half-­ Time Waltz, a version of these dances performed in working-class dance halls, prominent reformer Rheta Childe Dorr wrote that it contained “a swaying and contorting of the hips, most indecent in its suggestion” (Dorr 1910, p.  9). The enormous popularity of ragtime in many quarters got linked to what music historian Edward Berlin calls “cultural miscegenation” (Berlin 1980, p.  88). The language of “abandon,” “animalistic,” and “primitive” all suggested the deep-seated anxieties about African American-derived forms imagined to arouse women’s susceptible natures and lead to their moral downfall. The denunciation of the rag dances, though, went hand-in-hand with the Castles’ immense popularity. The antidote to what were perceived as transgressive dances was to “civilize” them, a task that fell to the exhibition ballroom dancers, as with the Castles in their 1914 dance manual Modern Dancing. Their admonitions—“Do not wriggle the shoulders, Do not shake the hips, Do not twist the body, Do not flounce the

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elbows”—reveal what was so objectionable to them (Castle, n.p.). The Castles, and others, advocated, for one, a less loose-limbed and weighted stance characteristic of African American dance favoring the more upright positioning characteristic of the European ballroom tradition. In their attempt to codify the dances, they at the same time “moved away from the African improvisational tradition,” as Nadine George Graves notes (p. 64). This entire process of codification, it can be argued, was a means of unmooring the dances from their improvisational roots and containing them in a prescribed (and proscribed) fashion.4 To further transform the dances into “graceful” presentations, the Castles drew on lofty and elitist language to suggest that they were part of a cultured, aristocratic tradition. This was evident in the Castles’ Modern Dancing whose Foreword explained that not only would the book teach the “fundamentals of modern dancing,” it would also show “that dancing, properly executed, is neither vulgar nor immodest, but, on the contrary, the personification of refinement, grace, and modesty. Our aim is to uplift dancing, purify it, and place it before the public in its proper light” (Castle 1914, n.p.).5 The proprieties of the body had to be relearned, then. To instruct readers and audiences in “proper” rag dancing, and to assuage the moralists, the Castles ingeniously drew on an idealized antiquity: in particular, they invoked the pre- and post-World War I propensity toward “Grecian” dance culture. While the Castles did not directly refer to Hellenism, they nonetheless drew from a deep inspirational well. As classicist Fiona Macintosh explains, “The ancient dancer, or rather the ‘idea’ of the ancient Greek and Roman dancer, has exerted an extraordinarily powerful fascination in the modern world” (Macintosh 2010, p. 9). She traces this phenomenon, in part, to Guillaume-Louis Pécour, a famous dancer of the French court of Louis IV who was compared to Roman pantomime dancer Bathyllus (p. 9). The Castles’ cultural precedents for this Greek-inspired ideal included the Greek revivalist movement in art, in vogue since the nineteenth century; the 1893 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition, based in neo-classical architectural style; the 1896 renewal of the Olympic Games (Daly 1995, p. 103); and the frequent invocations of Greek imagery and philosophy in the period’s beauty literature and popular women’s magazines. As historian Lois Banner has noted, since the classical revival was viewed as “grand and asexual,” it enabled artists to “cloak sensual subjects with respectability” (Banner 1983, p. 110).

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While the Castles drew on these re-creations of a mythic past, they also borrowed from their own culture’s shared understanding of traditional ballroom dance conventions and applied them to ragtime dances that had a solidly different basis of rhythmic engagement. Connerton writes that these images of the past “commonly legitimate a present social order … It is an implicit rule that participants in any social order must presuppose a shared memory” (p. 3). The Castles’ audiences and readers presumably had been exposed to these ideas about antiquity, which were already in the cultural consciousness. Although the past that the Castles invoked was idealized and reconstructed, it enabled them to equate “refined” versions of the rag dances with a sense of elegance and grace. And it came to represent, in the public imagination, what might have been expected of the model Greek “citizen.” Dance not only promised physical beauty, but cultural acumen, manners, and moral development. This classical scenario underlined dancing for pleasure, too: A chapter in Modern Dancing titled “Dances of the Past” reads, “Let us greet the dance as an ideal form of healthy pastime, and let us exclaim with Homer that ‘Dancing is the sweetest and most perfect of human enjoyments’” (p. 164). Although she didn’t state it explicitly, Irene Castle also drew on the precepts of Delsarte, the fashionable movement-training system practiced by middle- and upper-middle-class women at the turn of the century. Initiated by Genevieve Stebbins (who adopted the techniques from actor Steele McKay), Delsarte training emphasized the line of the classical body as seen on Greek vases and in statuary, what Fiona Macintosh calls “maenadic incarnations” (Macintosh 2010, p. 190). As historian Taylor S. Lake points out, the three signifiers of this classical body were the Greek costumes, statuesque body, and Delsartean positions, which transmitted certain “attitudes” (Lake 2005, p.  116). More than simply statue posing, however, the body positions corresponded to spiritual ideals; they moved beyond the physical “into the depths of the mind and soul” (Lake, p. 11). “Classical dance” as embodying a timeless beauty through balance, symmetry, and simplicity of line was the same ideal cultivated and promoted by the Castles in Modern Dancing, whose illustrations featured Irene Castle resembling a Delsartean maiden in her flowing silk gowns. Her graceful stance and upright bearing mocked the ungainly arm flaps and awkward, jerky movements of the rag dances decried by the Progressive-­ Era reformers. For women, in particular, the calls to antiquity were tied to their emerging social and cultural status in the 1910s. On the one hand, the Grecian

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theme was employed to defend what was known as “the cult of true womanhood”—the late-nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century ideology promoting women as inherent nurturers, bearers of hearth and home, and creatures of modesty. The chapter titles in Modern Dancing—“Grace and Etiquette,” “Proper Dancing-Costumes for Women,” and “Dancing as a Beautifier”—played into this. Certainly, in visual depictions in Modern Dancing, or in newspapers and magazines, Irene Castle is a vision of genteel womanhood. Yet the Grecian motif also fed the trope of the emerging New Woman who worked outside of home, won the vote, and attended college as well as nightclubs. The supple Grecian draperies and slip-like dresses, unburdened by corsets, also freed the body. Irene Castle represented these liberating possibilities with her bobbed hair and stylish yet easy-to-move dresses; more than that, though, she was a role model for women who were asserting new kinds of public behavior.

Arthur and Kathryn Murray Exhibition ballroom dancers and dance teachers Arthur and Kathryn Murray were heirs to the Castle legacy. Arthur Murray, born Moses Teichman, originally performed with Irene and Vernon Castle during a vaudeville run in the 1910s. He soon taught at Castle House, while dancing nightly “in a dime-a-dance hall teaching dancing for $5 a week” (Black 1943, p. 547). At Castle House, Teichman learned the major social and ballroom dances, including the Maxixe, Castle Walk, One Step, and Fox trot. It was, apparently, on the advice of one Baroness de Cuddleston, a professional dance teacher from Asheville, North Carolina, that Teichman shed his Austrian Jewish name and changed it to Murray “for business reasons” (p. 547). By 1925, Murray had begun the Arthur Murray Correspondence School of Dancing, devoted himself to his mail-order business, and established studios around the country (p. 547). He married Kathryn Kohnfelder, who, as Kathryn Murray, managed the studio personnel and by the 1950s was successfully running their TV program, The Arthur Murray Party. Like the Castles, the Murrays’ appeals to the public were laced with references to the symbolic associations of social ballroom dance with the genteel. The Murrays continued to instill a cultural association of modern ballroom dance with an idea of civility that dated back to the 1910s (if not the Renaissance). Arthur Murray himself, who had studied and performed with the Castles, was imbued with their philosophy of dance. The Murrays’

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books and manuals contained chapters reminiscent of the Castles on topics such as “The Art of Dancing,” “How to Be Graceful,” and “How to Judge Character by Dancing,” along with foot diagrams and pictures of regulation steps for the Waltz, Fox trot, Tango, Cha Cha, Merengue, Rumba, Swing, and others. Of their dance schools, Kathryn Murray noted that Arthur has always believed in handsome, attractive studios, decorated by experts. In the ‘20s, when Spanish and Italian palaces were springing up at Palm Beach, our New York studio became a Florentine show place decorated with heavy walnut furniture, red velvet seats, gold fringe and massive gold doors. (Murray 1959, p. 10)

The Murrays, like the Castles, drew on and invoked the past to support a set of practices, even ensuring that the dances were performed in settings deemed appropriate to their class. While the Castles’ appeals evoked a distant and rarified past to snare an audience for ragtime dance, the Murrays’ allusions were directed to dance from the 1920s to the 1940s to secure a place for rock and roll dances. Rock and roll, after all, signaled everything that ballroom dance was not: if anything, it was viewed by many as anything but civilized. Psychiatrists weighed in claiming that rock and roll was a “communicable disease” and that it represented teenagers’ “deep-seated, abnormal need to belong” (Vaillancourt 2011, p. 17). Even Frank Sinatra declared that Elvis Presley’s music was “deplorable, a rancid-smelling aphrodisiac (Altschuler 2003, p.  170). The 1950s has often been linked to a culture of “consensus,” which promoted the ideology of accommodation to the group as a means of uniting citizens against both foreign and domestic unrest. A growing fear of subversion and contamination initially of the “Soviet menace,” and then of domestic threats, such as the McCarthy witch hunts and House Un-American Activities Committee trials, created a growing sense of discomfort and distrust of political life that translated into social and domestic life. For middle-class whites, in particular, this caused a national closing of ranks: domesticity, and the family—symbolized by a mass exodus to suburbia—served as a deterrent to outsiders bent on destroying the American way of life. The suburb had become a kind of psychological fortress against various societal ills, among them racial segregation and class conflict (Tyler May 1988, pp.  24–25). Rock and roll, an African American-derived musical and dance form, with its often suggestive lyrics,

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pelvic rotations, and heavy beat was seen as one more “subversive” element of the era.6 Throughout their career, the Castles extolled the health, rejuvenation, and psychic benefits of social ballroom dance, linked to the 1910s physical culture movement and the introduction of Freudian psychology. The Murrays, in turn, carried on that tradition linking the ideals of the past with those of their own cultural moment. In their manuals, advertisements, and promotional literature, they borrowed from the Castles’ playbook, but replaced the language with the sociological lingo of the 1950s. “Charm” and “poise,” watchwords of the 1910s, were swapped out with “popularity” as a sign of good character. In 1944, Arthur Murray published Arthur Murray’s Popularity: Vintage Advice and Wisdom from the Greatest Generation; a byline on its cover reads “How to Win and Keep Friends” (reminiscent of Dale Carnegie’s 1936 How to Win Friends and Influence People). The Lonely Crowd, though, the landmark study written by David Reisman, in 1950, was perhaps the most decisive analysis of the tension in late-1940s–early-1950s culture between conformity and individuality. According to Reisman, the “inner-directed” individual has a sure sense of self-reliance and follows his or her own dictates, whereas the “outer-directed” individual is guided by the demands of the peer group and looks to others for his or her self-worth (Reisman 1950, pp. 14–19). The “outer-directed” character type’s conformity “is insured by their tendency to be sensitized to the expectations and preferences of others” (p. 8) Reisman believed that this conformity grew out of the demands of the marketplace and the irresistible lure of advertising; the nation’s citizenry had become socialized into consumption patterns and preferences reinforced by the media, schools, and other institutions (pp. 80–81). In The Arthur Murrays’ Dance Secrets (1946), Murray seems to capture—or cater to—this desire. The first chapter is titled “Good Dancers Are Popular!” (p. 13). The aim of learning to be a good dancer, according to the Murrays, is precisely that: “There is nothing so thrilling in life as to be popular with friends and sought after as a companion” (p. 13). For the outer-directed individual, concerned about the ability to make friends and fit in with the group, dancing provided the “quality that draws your attention like a magnet. Call it ‘charm’—or ‘personality’… however you describe it, it shows in everything you do” (p. 97). One can imagine that for suburbanites, in particular, these appeals were enticing. The consensus ideology championed the white, middle class as the future consumers of American goods and services and the hope of the country. Popularity, then, had

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become an object of consumption, and, according to the Murrays, was simply one more commodity to be attained—and dancing was the means to attain it. Again, invoking the past can be a way to connect with and to “manipulate” (in Paul Ricoeur’s words) the present to conform to present-day values and ideologies (Ricoeur 2004, p.  83). The codification process developed by the Murrays can actually be viewed as a way of clinging to the past by encoding past traditions of dance. Their manifold mail-order dance instruction manuals with “how to” diagrams, illustrations, and texts, emphasize and recall the weight of ballroom dance tradition with which students of popular dance would have been familiar. Rock and roll, of course, departed radically from those traditional precepts. The work of the Murrays and the Castles was to standardize social ballroom dances in easy-to-retain and memorize steps and sequences. But codification, as it was employed by the Murrays, can also be viewed as a way of making that past “usable” for the present. Even while major changes were taking place in popular music and dance, the Murrays were still attempting to codify rock and roll dance according to standardized techniques of 1920s and 1930s dances. Rock and roll music was an amalgam of urban blues, black gospel, and southern country music traditions. Rock and roll dances, inspired by the African American tradition, were characterized by a grounded-ness in the hips, pulsating knees, and propulsive arm movements it can be argued that rock and roll dance, in fact, was un-codifiable; that its very essence was that it was passed on from mover to mover on the dance floor and learned by doing and improvising, which the  Murrays’ standardization techniques precluded. In How to Become a Good Dancer, Arthur Murray even attempts to codify the improvisational breaks that were a part of the new swing dance with anodyne-sounding names such as “The Throw-Out Break,” “The Sugar Push,” and the “Rock ‘n’ Roll Shuffle” (pp. 209–214). The generic social dance of the 1950s seen in dance clubs or on TV— on such televised teenage dance programs as American Bandstand—was in essence a swing dance, but it differed from its 1930s and 1940s counterpart in significant ways. Also called a “jump,” this simplified swing, danced to rhythm and blues, was a slower version of the Lindy that allowed for small slides and shuffles slipped in between changes of weight (Stern 2011, p.  6). This is not the same dance depicted in Murray’s manuals, whose step directions were not literally wrong, but covered up serious deficiencies and omissions. There is no mention, for instance, of the Slow

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Drag, a two-step performed in ballroom position but where the “appropriate” six inches between dancers had disappeared, and sways and turns had been added (p. 6). Also, not emphasized enough were the hundreds of stylistic variations on the basic swing dance. Murray’s codifications reflected, then, the extent to which rock and roll dances—listed in the same manuals with descriptions of variations on the Waltz, Fox trot, Tango, and Rumba—were being folded into the European ballroom dance tradition. Also, the descriptions of dances of yesteryear, or seasons past, were those that the Murrays’ mostly white, middle-class clientele would have recognized from earlier dance manuals or from 1930s and 1940s movie musicals. The Arthur Murray Party, the variety-show-cum-dance-instruction television program that aired for seven years, also demonstrated a narrow and constricted view of rock and roll. Essentially, the TV show was an extension of the dance studio where participants were taught ballroom dance with an emphasis on proper form and decorum. It routinely consisted of a dance lesson, an amateur dance contest, celebrity appearances, a “mystery dance” (for which home viewers sent in their responses), and performances by The Arthur Murray Dancers. In some ways, The Arthur Murray Party was like American Bandstand for adults. One episode featured a somewhat flummoxed Kathryn Murray, as host, who introduced the rock and roll band Buddy Holly and the Crickets as “rock ‘n’ roll specialists” (Thurber 1999, n.p.). An overarching nostalgia (as well as commercialization) clearly permeated the show. Much of 1950s TV programming helped accustom viewers, many of whom grew up in the Depression, to the new ethos of post-war spending.7 On The Arthur Murray Party, this was apparent in the many commercials flaunting products (from Newport cigarettes to Liquinet hairspray); the latest in women’s fashions and hairstyles (modeled by the guests); and the general air of dancing as representing “the good life,” underscored by Kathryn Murray’s sign-off at each show: “Put a little fun in your life; try dancing!”8 As I have explained, in this chapter I am looking at both the social dance club or cabaret and the social dance class as performative sites of activity drawing on bodily and social memory. Connerton, as well as Ricoeur, discuss how these activities can also become moments of cultural forgetting, or what Connerton calls “forced forgetting” (p. 12). In creating and preserving a certain image of themselves, Connerton explains, societies or regimes often negate any cultural practices that might work

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against the creation and perpetuation of that image. Halbwachs suggests that this type of cultural forgetting is “why society, in each period, rearranges its recollections [emphasis mine] in such a way as to adjust them to the variable conditions of its equilibrium” (pp. 182–183). Here, Halbwachs seems to say, societies emphasize some values to the exclusion of others to maintain the status quo. What the Murrays (and to an extent the Castles) omit from their descriptions and practices, in order to maintain their class privilege, are the African American origins and bases of the dances and any memory of the cultural tradition that informed those dances. Glaringly absent from any of the written descriptions of these dances is any mention that the “swing,” for instance, was based on the 1940s Lindy, which, in turn, was derived from the African American Lindy or Lindy Hop of the late 1920s. In How to Become a Good Dancer, for instance, when Arthur Murray first writes about swing, his reference is to teenagers (p. 208), and not where teenagers had gotten that dance— primarily from their black counterparts in schools, local “hops,” or on the set of American Bandstand. As is apparent in their promotional literature and language, dance descriptions and illustrations, composition of their teaching staff, and TV programming, the Murrays appealed to an outwardly middle- and upper-­ middle-­class white clientele/culture. This built into the dance the aspiration toward social mobility; to effectuate that upward mobility, the Murrays had to dissociate their dances from any elements that might be perceived as raw, sexual, “untamed.” Dance historian Juliet McMains, writing about Arthur Murray, has remarked that during the late 1940s and 1950s, particularly while the segregated South defined race relations nationwide, blackness and lower-class status were continuously conflated. Marketing the Murray system as one that improved or secured class status meant that it had to consciously distance itself from the black origins of the dances it taught. (McMains 2006, p. 76)

What is occurring here is, moreover, akin to a strategy Ricoeur describes as the “abuse of memory,” a kind of willful forgetting whose outcome, in this case, was ultimately to perpetuate exclusionary attitudes toward race (pp. 80–81). Clearly, memories and recollections of the past, or calls to revive the past, can be enlisted for good or ill. In so much of social and popular

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dance displayed in mainstream, commercial culture, the past is used to shape, influence, or prevent particular outcomes and desires. Whatever the goal, whether through use of a re-created, “distant” past, or a more contemporary and recognizable one, cultural memory is a powerful tool for harnessing beliefs about the body. Because social and popular dances, in particular, are so aligned with manners, decorum, and styles of public behavior, comportment of the body becomes threatening when it runs counter to prevailing ideologies and social attitudes. What unites the 1910s and 1950s is that both were dramatic periods of cultural change, and recollections or re-creations of the past helped those societies navigate and also normalize that change. The social dance body is an incredibly protean thing, however, and what may get repressed in one generation may get re-remembered, and blossom, in the next.

Notes 1. For further discussion, see my essay “Apaches, Tangos, and Other Indecencies: Women, Dance, and New  York Nightlife of the 1910s” in Ballroom, Boogie, Shimmy, Sham, Shake: A Social and Popular Dance Reader (Malnig 2009). 2. Sociologist Marcel Mauss makes a similar argument in his 1935 essay “Techniques of the Body,” which explores the way bodily functions and actions are learned and are a combination of biological, psychological, and sociological factors. 3. For more on this cultural history, and the phenomenon of the tango tea, that follows, see my book Dancing Till Dawn: A Century of Exhibition Ballroom Dance (Malnig 1994). 4. The rag dances were primarily of African American origin and, as several dance scholars have pointed out, were essentially diluted versions of southern plantation dances. Danielle Robinson, however, explains that many of these dances, also performed by immigrants and working-class women and men, were essentially hybrid forms of black and working-class styles. Nonetheless, the dances were primarily considered “black” and thus needed to be shorn of what were deemed excessive and sexual bodily movement. On the ragtime dances, see Nadine George Graves, “Just Like Being at the Zoo”: Primitivity and Ragtime Dance, in Ballroom, Boogie, Shimmy Sham, Shake: A Social and Popular Dance Reader. Also see Danielle Robinson, Modern Moves: Dancing Race During the Ragtime and Jazz Eras. 5. Exhibition ballroom dancers of the period often referred to their dances as “modern dancing,” when, in fact, they meant “modern ballroom dancing.” This is not to be confused with the early modern dance pioneers

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Ruth St. Denis, Isadora Duncan, and Loie Fuller, also performing at this time. 6. See Andrea Carosso, Cold War Narratives: American Culture in the 1950s, particularly Chap. 8, “The Age of Rock ‘n’ Roll.” 7. George Lipsitz, in his essay “The Meaning of Memory: Family, Class, and Ethnicity in Early Network Television,” deals primarily with ethnic, working-­ class sitcoms of the years 1949–1957, such as The Goldbergs, Mama, Life With Luigi, and others. 8. The episodes of The Arthur Murray Party consulted are: The Arthur Murray Party, 195[?], *MGZHB 12-2655, The Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New  York Public Library for the Performing Arts; The Arthur Murray Party, November 16, 1954, The Paley Center for Media, New York City; The Arthur Murray Party, February 23, 1960, The Paley Center for Media.

References Altschuler, Glenn C. 2003. All Shook Up: How Rock ‘n’ Roll Changed America. New York and London: Oxford University Press. Banner, Lois. 1983. American Beauty. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Berlin, Edward. 1980. Ragtime: A Musical and Cultural History. Berkeley and Los Angeles: The University of California Press. Black, Maxine, ed. 1943. Current Biography. New York: The H.W. Wilson Co. Carnegie, Dale. 1936. How to Win Friends and Influence People. New York: Simon and Schuster. Carosso, Andrea. 2012. Cold War Narratives: American Culture in the 1950s. New York: Peter Lang. Castle, Mr. and Mrs. Vernon. 1914. Modern Dancing. New  York: The World Syndicate Co. Connerton, Paul. 1989. How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Daly, Ann. 1995. Done Into Dance: Isadora Duncan in America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Dorr, Rheta Childe. 1910. What Eight Million Women Want. Boston: Small, Maynard & Co. Reprint ed., New York: Kraus Co., 1971. Graves, Nadine George. 2009. “Just Like Being at the Zoo”: Primitivity and Ragtime Dance. In Ballroom, Boogie, Shimmy Sham, Shake: A Social and Popular Dance Reader, ed. Julie Malnig. Chicago and Urbana: The University of Illinois Press. Halbwachs, Maurice. 1992. On Collective Memory. Edited and translated by Lewis A. Coser. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Originally published in 1941 by Presses Universitaires de France, Paris.

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Lake, Taylor S. 2005. The Delsarte Attitude on the Legitimate Stage: Mary Anderson’s Galatea and the Trope of the Classical Body. Mime Journal, vol. 23, April 30, 113–135. Lipsitz, George. 1990. The Meaning of Memory: Family, Class, and Ethnicity in Early Network Television. In Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press. Macintosh, Fiona. 2010. Dancing Maenads in Early Twentieth-Century Britain. In The Ancient Dancer in the Modern World: Responses to Greek and Roman Dance, ed. Fiona Macintosh. New York and London: Oxford University Press. Malnig, Julie. 1994. Dancing Till Dawn: A Century of Exhibition Ballroom Dance. New York: NYU Press. ———. 2009. Apaches, Tangos, and Other Indecencies: Women, Dance, and New York Nightlife of the 1910s. In Ballroom, Boogie, Shimmy, Sham, Shake: A Social and Popular Dance Reader. Chicago and Urbana: The University of Illinois Press. Mauss, Marcel. 1935. Techniques of the Body. In Techniques, Technology and Civilization, ed. and trans. Nathan Schlanger. New  York: Berghahn Books, 2006. May, Elaine Tyler. 1988. Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era. New York: Basic Books. McMains, Juliet. 2006. Glamour Addiction: Inside the American Ballroom Dance Industry. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Murray, Arthur. 1944; 2014. Arthur Murray’s Popularity Book: Vintage Advice and Wisdom from the Greatest Generation. Oxford: Osprey Publishing. ———. 1946. The Arthur Murrays’ Dance Secrets. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Legacy Reprints. ———. 1954; 2011. How to Become a Good Dancer. New York: Grove Press. Murray, Kathryn. 1959. My Husband, Arthur Murray. Saturday Evening Post, February 14. In Arthur Murray Clipping File, The Billy Rose Theatre Collection, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Reisman, David. 1950. The Lonely Crowd. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Ricoeur, Paul. 2004. Memory, History, Forgetting. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Robinson, Danielle. 2015. Modern Moves: Dancing Race During the Ragtime and Jazz Eras. New York: Oxford University Press. Simmons, Christina. 1989. Modern Sexuality and the Myth of Victorian Repression. In In Passion and Power: Sexuality in History, ed. Kathy Peiss and Christina Simmons. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Stern, Carrie. 2011. Tube Dancing: Television, Rock ‘n’ Roll, and Whiteness. Paper presented at the Congress on Research in Dance and the Society for Ethnomusicology, Philadelphia, PA, November 17.

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Thurber, Jon. 1999. Kathryn Murray; Widow of Dance King Arthur Murray. The Los Angeles Times, August 9. http://articles.latimes.com/print/1999/ aug/09/news/mn-­64038. Vaillancourt, Eric. 2011. Rock ‘n’ Roll in the 1950s: Rockin’ for Civil Rights. MA thesis, The State University at Brockport, Brockport, NY.

Queer Tango—Bent History? The Late-­ Modern Uses and Abuses of Historical Imagery Showing Men Dancing Tango with Each Other Ray Batchelor and Jon Mulholland

Tango and ‘Men Dancing with Men’: A Contested History ‘Tango started with men dancing with each other’. Tango dancers routinely say this, or things like it, to social queer tango dancers like Jon Mulholland and me, reassuring us that our dancing with each other or with other men has a historical precedent. It is kindly meant. They are only repeating a ‘truth’ they may themselves have heard repeated on or

R. Batchelor (*) The Queer Tango Project, London, UK J. Mulholland University of the West of England, Bristol, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Parfitt (ed.), Cultural Memory and Popular Dance, Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71083-5_6

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near a dance floor and had confirmed by the historical imagery which digital media ensures is endlessly reproduced today—imagery which shows, or appears to show, men doing just that. Why were they dancing with one another? Were they all miraculously (and improbably) gay? Jeffrey Tobin describes a ‘tango history’ choreography in the 1987 film, Tango Bar, where men dance with each other—but they stress that they are showing how men in the past practised, the better to secure the dance (and other) favours of women. They ham it up, conspiratorially asserting their heterosexual credentials. In the 1990s in Buenos Aires, older, male dancers told Christine Denniston how, when younger, they practised with other men for up to three years (Denniston 2007). Doubtless they had their reasons for nuancing their accounts of their same-sex dancing in this way. With a historical gender imbalance in Argentina in the early twentieth century of some seven men to one woman (Archetti 2007), almost everyone acknowledges that men did, indeed, dance with men. But were they all just ‘practising’? Always? The nuance starts to seem suspiciously convenient. Suddenly, no one is gay—which is implausible. And no one dances tango with another man for reasons which may have little or nothing to do with the ultimate goal of dancing with women. The nuance in these stories of same-sex dancing is a product of the machinery of cultural memory, where historical veracity, completeness and complexity, such as they were, are freely sacrificed to some of the urgent and evolving demands of contemporary expediency. Much of significance is omitted. In tango, a parallel can be found in the work of Robert Farris Thompson (2006). His forensic, poetic study reinstates tango’s West African origins and the substantial black historical content which, conveniently, had been obliterated by the white dancers who came after them and who were striving for ownership of the dance and for respectability. And so it is with tango’s historical relationships with gender and sexuality. Jorge Salessi (1997) and Magali Saikin (2004) offer alternative, or earlier, or additional accounts of ‘men dancing with men’. Tango, developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries at a time of emergent Modernity and in its ‘savage’ form, was initially viewed by some of the elite in Argentina as a threat to the growth of a modern, European-style state. In Argentina as elsewhere, both sexuality and crime became territories for ‘objective’ scientific investigation. They were documented, described and analysed, signalling the formation, indeed, of Foucault’s ‘disciplinary society’, where the human subject becomes the object of new,

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scientifically underpinned, technologies of knowledge, and regimes of power (Foucault 1990). Using precisely such records, Salessi and Saikin argue that there is evidence that for as long as tango was chiefly danced by those on the margins of society—the poor, criminals, pimps and prostitutes—it was routinely and openly danced by homosexual men and lesbians, free to dance with whomsoever they chose, having little social status to lose. Yet when wealthy young Argentinian men who had encountered tango in the bars and brothels of Buenos Aires took it to Europe, not least, in pre-First World War Paris, they were something of a hit with fashionable women. Accordingly, in Buenos Aires in the late ’teens and early twenties, tango migrated from the conventillos and brothels to the salons, no longer a threat to the nation, becoming instead an emblem of national identity. So, ‘Tango started in the brothels’, but possibly not. This endlessly repeated, neat, attractive, colourful explanation may itself be a product of the imperfect, somewhat selective processes of cultural memory. Ricardo García Blaya, the distinguished tango musicologist and discographer (Blaya 2014), suggests that the source of this mythology of origination was the pioneering tango scholarship of Luis Bates and Héctor Bates in La historia del tango, published in 1936. Blaya takes issue and proposes specific reservations: critically, tango was not the preserve of brothels. It coexisted with other dances and was danced at dance halls, at academias in the suburbs, far from the city centre, as well as being performed on stage in musical episodes in dramas in respectable theatres. He disputes the economic practicalities of musicians being paid to play in brothels. Buenos Aires rents were high, making such, at best, tangentially productive expenditure unlikely. Confusion may have arisen, he argues, where some dance halls or academias had low reputations and may also have facilitated sexual encounters. That is quite a different scenario. It is wrong, too, he asserts, to point to the lascivious lyrics of tangos as evidence of their brothel origins. Lascivious lyrics featured in other types of popular dance music of the time with much cross-fertilisation between genres, yet no one suggests this is evidence that polkas or corridos originated or were chiefly to be found in brothels. Further, there is evidence that tangos were ‘respectable’ long before the Parisian episodes, featuring, for example, alongside other modern dances at balls from 1902 onwards at the Teatro Opera, a venue from which the poor would have been excluded. Finally, of the more than 1000 gramophone recordings made in Buenos Aires between 1903 and 1910, 350 were tangos, and in the decade following when production increased fivefold, nearly half were tangos, to which must be added there

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was a brisk trade in tango sheet music throughout the period. The poor could not afford gramophones, gramophone records or sheet music. Sales in this early period indicate a taste for tangos among the respectable bourgeoisie. Interestingly, Blaya acknowledges that tangos were danced in the street—to street organs—and that men often danced with each other. With characteristic reserve, he stops short of attributing motivations for this practice beyond the indisputable lack of women. Others have been less fastidious. One way or another, eventually, polite tango dancers needed a respectable past and in the process, a variety of incomplete and heteronormatively filtered cultural memories were constructed and proved serviceable. As Salessi and Saikin remind us, lesbians became invisible as a consequence, and ‘men dancing with men’ was re-configured as a benign, demographically necessitated, heterosexual logic of gender imbalance, exclusively of practice, with tango’s inconvenient dangerous, overtly erotic content ruthlessly eradicated. Against such official narratives, queer tango historiography challenges mainstream memorialisations of tango’s origin, as part of a broader reclamation of a subjugated past. Histories and the memories they (re)claim are by their nature emplaced. According to Truc (2012), whilst ‘our memory might be pure invention after the fact, if it can be precisely located and commemorated in a place, the place itself is real. When people regard their memories as real, their consequences, and particularly their spatial consequences, are also real’ (Truc 2012, p. 148). The ‘rivalry’ between social groups that characterises collective memory as an institutional phenomenon is a struggle to localise those memories in particular places, through a symbolic marking of those places (Truc 2012) as a point of origin for tango. There is no memory that is not in principle transient and contestable, and that is not dependent, in its anchoring and resilience, upon a group for whom that memorialisation is real and important (Truc 2012, p. 153). In this way, queer tango historiography challenges the heteronormative claims of mainstream tango’s official history, which insists on tango’s genesis as emplaced in spaces already definitively marked as heterosexual. Queer tango historiography illuminates the heteronormative ‘will’ that energises such accounts and the heterosexist power that emanates from such institutionalised knowledge production (Foucault 1990).

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Representations of Men Dancing Tango with Other Men Meanwhile, whatever was being said or written, or believed, the dance was danced, and it was graphically documented: photographs, postcards, drawings on sheet music and so on. As noted, a persistent quotient apparently shows ‘men dancing with men’: in 1903, the first known photos of tango criollo were published in the popular Buenos Aires magazine, Caras y Caretas, and probably showed Arturo de Navas dancing with another man (Freis 2017) (Fig. 1); in 1912, striking railway workers are photographed with rolled up trousers paddling in the River Plate, posing for the camera as tango couples (Fig. 2)1; in Paris, in 1913, in a comical drawing Fig. 1  One of a set of five photographs in tango poses reproduced in 1903 in the Buenos Aires popular magazine Caras y Caretas (Faces and Masks). Source: Argentina, Archivo General de la Nación, Departamento Documentos Fotográficos o AR_ AGN_DDF/Consulta_ INV: 295459_A

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Fig. 2  Competing origin stories for this photograph, each citing the Archivo General de la Nación in Buenos Aires as their source, suggest it is either: men dancing (or posing as if dancing) tango in a river, 1904; or striking railway workers doing the same in 1912. Source: Argentina, Archivo General de la Nación, Departamento Documentos Fotográficos o AR_AGN_DDF/Consulta_ INV: 22069_A

on sheet music, the young Maurice Chevalier is leading a diminutive Félicien Tramel, while Rollin (Polin?—the stage persona of Pierre-Paul Marsalès always included a hat and sometimes boots) is leading Fortugé— the stage name of Gabriel Fortuné, Paris 1913 (Fig. 3); in another photo, probably taken in about 1909, three male couples stare at the camera in tango poses with their colleagues on the occasion of the demolition of Lorea Market (Fig.  4, habitually mis-identified as traders from Abasto Market)2; while in yet another, undated photograph, men in the street, apparently late at night, casually dance, practise or pose (Fig. 5). The purpose of this paper is not to explain how each of these or similar images came to be, nor to use them to help us understand better what ‘men dancing with men’ might have meant at any one time and place in the distant past. A further paper was needed to begin that process (Batchelor 2016). Instead, acknowledging the fact of their creation, their subsequent digitisation, free circulation and reproduction, allied to the confusion surrounding their precise historical significance, we consider

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Fig. 3  Sheet Music for L’avant dernier tango ou: le tango dinguo (The Penultimate Tango or: the Dingo Tango) Paris, 1913. Source: website Le temps d’un tango http://www.letempsduntango.be/thematique/chroniques

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Fig. 4  Market traders in tango poses at Lorea Market on the occasion of its demolition, c1909. Source: Buenos Aires 1910: Memoria del Porvenir https:// observatorylatinamerica.org/pdf/1910CatalogoPDF/08.pdf

Fig. 5  Men at night in a street in Buenos Aires in tango poses. Source: Wikimedia Commons https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/Tango-­ entre-­homme.jpg

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how these images are used in the twenty-first century, and ask: to what ends?

Queer Tango: Historical and Theoretical Contexts Following a catalogue of significant, generally European and North American precedents in the late twentieth century, queer tango arguably first emerged as a dance practice with theoretical underpinnings in Hamburg in 2000 and has spread to countless other modern, urban contexts (Batchelor and Havmøller 2017). At that time, it appeared to some to have no history at all, beyond a nod towards pre-existent queer theory, or as the latest expression of ‘gay liberation’ (just as it was morphing into something else) which was characterised by the establishment of alternative spaces, apart from the hostile, ‘heteronormative’ world. Certainly, the trans-local ‘diffusion’ (Knopp and Brown 2003) of queer tango danced to the tune of multiple dynamics. To the extent that queer tango was informed by queer theory, it sought to challenge the hetero- and homonormativity of mainstream and lesbian and gay tango, respectively, but did so in a direct relation to those pre-existing forms, and the practices and spaces associated with them. The globalised nature of mainstream, and to a much lesser extent, gay and lesbian tango (in terms of both locally emplaced and international ‘festivalised’ forms, Mulholland 2018) provided a pre-existing trans-local geography and practice upon which a queering could take place. But the trans-local diffusion of queer tango owes much also to a virtual realm in which queer virtual geographies and practices have been elaborated, again in complex but profoundly connected relationships to mainstream, and lesbian and gay, tango forms. Queer tango in its virtual forms reflects and facilitates much of the fluidity associated with queer geography (Browne 2006) and offers a transcending capacity for queer tango communities to form in the absence of locally available, ‘offline’, options. Queer spaces are distinctive. As Brown, Lim and Brown asserted in 2007: Radical queer spaces are important because they provide a constructive and practical attempt to offer a non-hierarchical, participatory alternative to a gay scene that has become saturated by the commodity. They are experimental spaces in which new forms of ethical relationships and encounters based on co-operation, respect and dignity can be developed. The queerness

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of these spaces is constituted as much through the process of building relationships on this basis, as it is from any attachment to specific sexual or gender identities. (Brown et al. 2007)

Inherently post-structural, queer politics intervenes from the margins and grassroots, re-defining and expanding the political, constructing shared meanings linking past, present and future and giving voice to subjugated lives. Juliet McMains argues that the queerness of queer tango spaces depends on who controls them. Queer tango is enabled through the designation and naming of a queer space that creates possibilities for alternate interactions, relationships, and experiences to come into being, even if only temporarily, for the duration of a single milonga, festival, or class. (McMains 2018)

Some locally emplaced queer tango clubs prosper, while others struggle. International queer tango festivals have multiplied, with some closely resembling their mainstream touristic tango, neo-liberal equivalents (Mulholland 2018). As Melissa Fitch demonstrates in Global Tangos, Buenos Aires joins other instances of queer tango activism in the past 20 years becoming queer tango tourism (see Fitch 2015, pp. 103–105). As McMains, Mulholland and Fitch show, queer tango has developed into an entity which at its core remains political and potentially provocative, yet is now less easily distinguished from its more conventional equivalents. In part, it is this tension which creates a need for specifically, recognisably, queer tango historical imagery to set the politics into context, but also to give credibility and legitimacy to queer tango as cultural capital in Bourdieu’s (Bourdieu and Passeron 1990) sense and as an intellectual commodity.

Online Image Searching: Dodges and Dangers Kjølsrød suggests: Leisure communities tend to extend themselves in time and space by establishing carefully edited and attractive websites…[and in so doing facilitate]…interactions between offline and online realms and across territorial borders…[creating]…linkages that enable the diffusion of ideas. (Kjølsrød 2013)

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In 2016, we mounted online searches of four images (Figs. 2, 3, 4 and 5) to establish how and why they are being used. Online image searching has never been easier, nor more treacherous. As has been the case for years, images can be found using computer search engines by dropping key words relating to them into the search box. More recently, it has become possible to drop images themselves into the search box, such that the search becomes, or can become a more visual one, independent of, or at least less dependent on the words in the search engine’s default language. In both cases, once found, the web page provides the image’s context. It may have little or no information about the image, or inaccurate information, or ‘information’ with no indication of sources. Yet, all searches are revealing in terms of what the presence of this image in that context can tell us.

Images in Contexts and the Generation of Meanings In 2016, we found these four images (Figs. 2, 3, 4 and 5) in five types of context: Type 1. Mainstream Websites with Content About Tango or Queer Tango This story in the London listings magazine, Time Out (Fig. 6), was about queer tango dancer Nick Stone inviting Argentinian dancer, teacher and activist, Mariano Garcés to London in 2011. Stone told Ray Batchelor that Garcés probably chose the image used (Fig.  5), suggesting its currency as a contemporary icon of queer tango and providing an implicit historical vindication. In 2016, the English-language Wikipedia entry for tango—not queer tango—included the same image, bizarrely cropped, saying nothing about what it showed, or meant, and a caption which dated it at ‘ca. 1900’—which was improbably early. The image marks an awareness of a tango past, but a past not easily accounted for or negotiated. The tango entry has been re-edited with the image omitted (2020). The Wikipedia entry for ‘queer tango’ includes historical imagery of female couples of the kind generated for mild, heterosexual titillation, but no images of men at all—a bias which may reflect the fact that there are more women queer tango activists than men. Despite their associations with queer tango, these historical images of men dancing together do not invariably support liberal ideas. The street

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Fig. 6  The image shown in Fig. 5 used in an online article in the London entertainment guide, Time Out in 2011 about a visit to London by Argentinian queer tango teacher, Mariano Garcés. Source: http://now-­here-­this.timeout. com/2011/05/13/queer-­tango-­arrives-­in-­london/ (now defunct 2020)

image (Fig. 5) and the placid, 1912 ‘paddling’ image (Fig. 2) crop up in the Russian online magazine, Kulturologia next to links such as that for ‘Singles Dating’ showing attractive young women. Homophobia in contemporary Russia is commonplace (Merkulova 2015). The images are mediated by the accompanying text to support the view that historically, not only did men dance tango with each other in brothels in order to seduce women, but also that: Sometimes male dancers turned tango performance into a real contest for the favor of a beautiful lady, and, unfortunately, there are cases when these

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dance duels ended tragically: a knife strike could cut off the sound of music. (Kulturologia 2016)

What could be more heterosexual? What is interesting here is not what the sexuality of the men shown actually was—we are unlikely ever to know for certain—but that in today’s Russia, their being gay is explicitly ruled out. The reader is left with no doubt that the men in these historical images are heterosexual, not gay and by implication, cannot be pointed to as justifying contemporary homosexual behaviour. Type 2. Mainstream, User-Generated Web Pages Such as Pinterest Usually, the images are pretty much shorn of any contextual information and take the form of visual elements in a mood board for the Pinterest curator’s chosen theme. One such used the image shown in Fig. 2 to support an article arguing that tango was almost killed off by the toppling of Juan Perón in 1955—an odd, asynchronous use. There are countless other, odd image deployments. Plainly, there is work to be done here about the effects of this commonplace, yet apparently illogical usage. Type 3. Mainstream Tango Websites As with Type 1, once again the imagery is usually not much analysed or commented on, but it contributes to a silent system of signs of tango ‘authenticity’—a function found offline, too, where the photo of posing market traders is displayed in a glass case in the National Museum of Dance & Hall of Fame in Buenos Aires. Online, this Australian tango school website uses the ubiquitous ‘street’ image (Fig.  5) where other pages of the website in a similar style feature: the folds of a bandoneon’s bellows and a night-time shot of the Obelisco in Buenos Aires. In the marginally more scholarly website, Todo Tango, Ricardo García Blaya’s article ‘Reflections About the Origins of Tango’ cited earlier, uses the same image once again, more for mood as a signifier of ‘authentic history’, rather than as evidence of anything (Blaya n.d.). Indeed, this is without doubt the most frequently reproduced historical picture of men as tango couples. Where the image of men posing in a river (Fig. 2) is commented on, as in another Australian dance school website, So Tango, ‘Men tangoing with men—why?’, it is used as a kind of ‘evidence’ to support gender-­ based innovations in contemporary practice—in this case, the benefits of

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men learning to follow or in 2016 on the UK Tango Hub website, ‘Same-­ sex tango for straight people’, paradoxically, to advocate women dancing with women (this site has now vanished. 2020). Type 4. Queer/LGBT Websites Qualia Folk’s website uses the ‘street image’—as a banner for the whole group whose averred objectives are ‘…twofold: education and celebration [it] provides the Qualia Encyclopedia of Gay People (QEGP), open access to all and free of charge’. Its entry on ‘Tango’ is illustrated by a chiaroscuro image of queer tango activist, Augusto Balizano, dancing with another man. It says tango is an erotically charged, late nineteenth century ballroom dance that was performed by men with men in Buenos Aires and Uruguay in houses of prostitution and on the streets.…With its origins as an erotic male-on-male folk dance, tango can be considered an LGBTQ folkway with rural gaucho and urban African Argentine roots. (Qualia Folk 2011, defunct 2020)

Setting aside the veracity or not of any of these assertions, we note that the imagery is used to raise queer sensibilities among queer people and the wider world alike. Type 5. Queer Tango Online Presences As we draw towards our conclusions, we offer just three examples of queer tango presences online: the simplest use is on the Facebook Group of the Hamburg-based community, Queer Tango—Jungs tanzen mit Jungs (Queer Tango—Boys dancing with Boys) who have the 1912 paddlers as a banner. It is at one with their deliberate, gentle, gender bias. The second is on the website of the Parisian la Vie en Rose 3 international queer tango event (Fig. 6). The theme of the festival in 2016 was the relationship of queer tango to the so-called Golden Age of tango, conventionally 1935–1955. The image of ten smartly dressed young men posing in five couples (which, as Birthe Havmøller pointed out, with another behind the camera would be enough for a football team) is used here, with no overt discussion of its significance, but as implicit validation. In both cases, the imagery is being used loosely to reinforce queer tango’s sense of its identity and of its place in a historical perspective.

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There is a debate to be had about the legitimacy of this use—a debate deliberately fostered by our third and final example: The Queer Tango Image Archive. Founded in March 2015 following discussions in Montevideo between Ray Batchelor and Gonzalo Collazo, it went public in March 2016. The Queer Tango Image Archive, which is run under the auspices of The Queer Tango Project, offers an online digital archive of historical, pre-digital imagery. It includes ‘men dancing with men’, but its remit embraces all historical imagery touching on the themes and issues connected with queer tango, including women dancing with women, women leading, men following and indeed any imagery which can stimulate and develop the debates surrounding the phenomenon of queer tango. Queer tango is but one case of the queer reclamation, and reconfiguration, of subjugated knowledges and histories for the pursuit of queer political ends. Such a strategy places the ‘virtual’ archive centrally. Judith Halberstam asserted in 2003: In [queer] subcultures where academics might labor side by side with artists [to which we might add, ‘or dancers’], the ‘historic bloc’ can easily describe an alliance between the minority academic and minority subcultural producer. Where such alliances exist, academics can play a big role in the construction of queer archives and queer memory, and, furthermore, queer academics can, and some should, participate in the ongoing project of recoding and interpreting queer culture and circulating a sense of its multiplicity and sophistication. The more intellectual records we have of queer culture, the more we contribute to the project of claiming for the subculture the radical cultural work that either gets absorbed into or claimed by mainstream media. (Halberstam 2003, p. 318)

As we have seen, the emergence of the virtual realm has re-augmented a public sphere in which competing and contesting representations challenge hegemonic norms and meanings. In this final example, not only is this imagery examined to see what, if anything, may be learnt historically from it, but it is also overtly used to reinforce and legitimise queer tango’s sense of its identity and of its place in a historical perspective. It does so in a way designed to stimulate informed debate towards such ends.

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Concluding Remarks This study offers an understanding of the contemporary uses of a rich and suggestive body of material. At its core is the image. We have identified different contexts, each with its different uses of and effects on the image; we have identified a range of means by which meaning is generated and the roles the image can play, ranging from the tacit and implicit to the overt and explicit, with the image as evidence; finally, the product of these two variables is a third: the wide and occasionally contradictory range of different meanings the image can be used to support. Contemporary users are mostly ignorant of what little scholarship there is regarding each image’s origins. The validity or significance of contemporary uses is not necessarily invariably a function of closer adherence to such knowledge. Imperfectly understood historical graphic material can be used to advance legitimate, contemporary social and political agendas. In fact, a queer historiography challenges the very notion of a singular and definitive veracity, cultural memory, or history. We argue that queer tango historiography reveals a dynamic process associated with the co-construction of multiple, partial, ‘interested’, and often competing, memories. We also argue that a queer tango archaeology finds its rationale in giving voice to those whose memories became subjugated by hegemonic heteronormative rendering of the past. Contemporary (re)use of such images, as queer images, works the gaps and cracks of heteronormativity, and less certainly, of homonormativity, ‘revealing the ways in which heterosexism is an incomplete, incongruous, nonhegemonic, and spatially diffuse set of social relations and practices full of possibilities for subversion and reconfiguration, rather than how it is a coherent, complete, spatially fixed, and hegemonic one’ (Knopp and Brown 2003, p.  413). By resisting heteronormativity’s emplacement and circumscribing of tango’s origins in spaces already definitively marked as heterosexual (the conventional ‘brothels’ narrative, etc.), a queer tango historiography can formulate a ‘new’ cultural memory that gives voice to subaltern experiences (Foucault 1990) lost under the weight of, among other things, nationalism’s heteronormative colonisation of the past.

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Notes 1. 1904 and not striking railway workers; or striking railway workers in 1912? The Archivo General de la Nación hold this image in their archive. In 2013, they posted it on their Facebook Page: ‘Buenos Aires. Hombres bailando tango en el rio. 1904. Documento fotográfico Inventario 22069’. https:// www.facebook.com/ArchivoGeneraldelaNacionArgentina/photos/ buenos-­aires-­hombres-­bailando-­tango/651030491588837/. Accessed 10 January 2019. However, a French source claims that in fact this shows ‘[translated from French] the photo was taken in January 1912, and the inscription on the back specifies the circumstances: a “Picnic” on the Rio during a strike of workers of Railway Industries (Archivo General de la Nación, Argentina)’ http://www.histoire-­tango.fr/grands%20themes/ hommes%20et%20tango_copie.htm Accessed 10 January 2019. Visitors to the Archivo access images digitally. In each case, there is an image of the front of the photograph or drawing and an image of the reverse. For this reason, I am inclined to believe the 1912 date, as the author has either literally or digitally ‘seen’ the back of the photograph. A visit to the Archivo by Ray Batchelor in person in 2018 failed to resolve this issue. A historically archaic system of cataloguing based, not on unique inventory numbers, but on subject areas, with all other information held on index cards only, meant the photograph could not be tracked down either digitally or in physical form. 2. Once again, for many years, in the generation of cultural memory, plausibility supplanted veracity. In 2011, at the Academia Nacional del Tango in Buenos Aires, a label in front of this image read: ‘Baile popular en el Abasto (c1910)’. They look like market traders. Abasto is Buenos Aires’ most famous market, therefore… and so on. This is the information which routinely accompanies this image online. It is wrong. As recent research proves, these traders are being photographed by a photographer or photographers from the popular Buenos Aires magazine, Caras y Caretas, recording a dance held to commemorate the closure and demolition of the Lorea Market prior to the construction of the Plaza Congreso which was completed in 1910. http://image.queertangobook.org/market-­traders-­in-­tango-­poses-­ at-­the-­market-­at-­abasto-­buenos-­aires-­1910/ Accessed 5 January 2020.

References Archetti, Eduardo P. 2007. Masculinity, Primitivism, and Power: Gaucho, Tango, and the Shaping of Argentine National Identity. In Gender, Sexuality, and Power in Latin America since Independence, ed. William E.  French and Katherine Elaine Bliss, 212–229. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc.

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Batchelor, Ray. 2015. Uncovering the Histories and Pre-Histories of Queer Tango: Contextualizing and Documenting an Innovative Form of Social Dancing. In Congress on Research in Dance 2014 Conference Proceedings Volume 2015, 24–29. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2016. Queer Tango’s ‘Image Problem’: Men, Intimacy and Pictures from the Past. Delivered at Beyond Authenticity and Appropriation: Bodies, Authorships and Choreographies of Transmission. SDHS + CORD Conference, Pomona College · Claremont, CA., USA, November 3–6. Accessed September 22, 2018. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312085875_Queer_ Tango’s_’Image_Problem’_Men_Intimacy_and_Pictures_from_the_Past. Batchelor, Ray, and Havmøller, Birthe. 2017. The Origins of Queer Tango as Practices and Conceptions: Competing or Complementary Narratives? Presented at The Queer Tango Salon: Dancers who think & Thinkers who dance… . In Queer Tango Salon 2017: Proceedings, 2018. 99–108. The Queer Tango Project. Accessed January 18, 2019. http://queertangobook.org/wp-­ content/uploads/2018/12/QueerTangoSalon2017-­P r oceedings-­ FirstEdition-­Dec2018.pdf. Blaya, Ricardo García. 2014. Tango Argentino: Memoria y testimonio. Buenos Aires.: Prosa Amerian Editores. ———. n.d. Reflections about the Origins of Tango. Todo Tango. Accessed April 2, 2016. http://www.todotango.com/english/history/chronicle/103/ Reflections-­about-­the-­origins-­of-­tango/. Bourdieu, P., and J.  Passeron. 1990. Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture. London: Sage. Brown, Kath, Jason Lim, and Gavin Brown. 2007. Geographies of Sexualities: Theory, Practices, and Politics. London: Ashgate. Brown, K. 2006. Challenging Queer Geographies. Antipode 38 (5): 885–893. Denniston, Catherine. 2007. The Meaning of Tango: The Story of the Argentinian Dance. London: Portico. Farris Thompson, Robert. 2006. Tango: the Art History of Love. New  York: Vintage Books. Fitch, Melissa A. 2015. Global Tangos: Travels in the Transnational Imaginary. Arizona: Bucknell University Press. Foucault, Michel. 1990. The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction. London: Penguin. Freis, Wolfgang. 2017. Tango in the Theatre. El Victrolero Castizo. Accessed September 13, 2017. http://elvictrolerocastizo.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/ tango-­in-­theater.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_ campaign=Feed:+ElVictroleroCastizo+(El+Victrolero+Castizo)&m=1. Halberstam, Judith. 2003. Reflections on Queer Studies and Pedagogy. Journal of Homosexuality 45 (2/3/4): 361–364.

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Kjølsrød, L. 2013. Mediated Activism: Contingent Democracy in Leisure Worlds. Sociology 47 (6): 1207–1223. Knopp, L., and M. Brown. 2003. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2: 409–424. Kulturologia. 2016. Online magazine. Accessed January 19, 2019. https://kulturologia.ru/blogs/090915/26195/. McMains, Juliet. 2018. Queer Tango Space: Minority Stress, Sexual Potentiality, and Gender Utopias. TDR: The Drama Review 62 (2) (T238). 59–77. Merkulova, Natalia. 2015. Queer Tango as a Form of Struggling with Patriarchal Norms—Notes on Queer Tango in Russia. In Havmoeller, Birthe, Batchelor, Ray and Aramo, Olaya eds. The Queer Tango Book: Ideas, Images and Inspiration in the 21st Century, eBook, The Queer Tango Project. Accessed October 31, 2020. www.queertangobook.org. Mulholland, J. 2018. Festivalization and Queer Tango—Meanings and ‘Tensions’. In Ray Batchelor and Birthe Havmøller, eds. Queer Tango Salon 2017: Proceedings, 42–51. The Queer Tango Project. Accessed January 14, 2019. http://queertangobook.org/queer-­tango-­salon-­2017-­proceedings/. Qualia Folk. 2011. Accessed April 2, 2016. Website: http://www.qualiafolk. com/2011/12/08/tango/. Saikin, Magali. 2004. Tango und Gender: Identitäten und Geschlechtsrollen im Argentinischen Tango. Stuttgart: Abrazos Books. Salessi, Jorge. 1997. Medics, Crooks, and Tango Queens: The National Appropriation of a Gay Tango. Trans. Celeste Fraser Delgado. In Delgado, Celeste Fraser, and Muñoz, José Esteban, eds. Everynight Life: Culture and Dance in Latin/o America. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Tango Bar. 1987. Film: For Particular Clip: Accessed April 11, 2016. https:// youtu.be/Ieua_TBp8wc; For Complete Film, Accessed April 12, 2016. https://youtu.be/4n_WkCLCye4. Truc, G. 2012. Memory of Places and Places of Memory: For a Halbwachsian Socio-ethnography of Collective Memory. International Social Science Journal 62: 147–159.

Bomba Cimarrona: Hip Interactions in the Afro-Ecuadorian Bomba del Chota as a Decolonial Means to Remember María Gabriela López-Yánez

In this chapter, I focus on the historical connection between dancers’ interactions through their hips in some Afro-Ecuadorian Bomba del Chota events that I have named here as ‘Bomba Cimarrona’, and their collective memories. I suggest that the understanding of this connection is essential to counteract the widespread colonial Ecuadorian belief that Bomba is a spectacle that is limited to each dancer’s fixed and stereotypical hip movements. Through a qualitative research method based on bibliographical compilations, participatory observations and a “relación de escucha” (relationship of listening; Rivera Cusicanqui 1987, p. 10, 2015, p. 286),1 I want to suggest that Afro-Ecuadorian dancers have strategically maintained, and thus collectively remembered some of these hip interactions within the events of Bomba Cimarrona. Through the performance of Bomba Cimarrona, a sense of transient but recurring decolonial freedom,

M. G. López-Yánez (*) Central University of Ecuador, Quito, Ecuador © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Parfitt (ed.), Cultural Memory and Popular Dance, Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71083-5_7

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that resists the control over their lives and bodies they have historically faced is continuously generated.

Afrodescendants in Ecuador Ecuador is a country located in the northwest part of South America with approximately 15 million inhabitants. In the last Ecuadorian census, 71.9% of the population self-identified as mestizo and 7.2% self-identified as Afro-Ecuadorians2 (INEC 2010). The ancestors of most Afro-Ecuadorians arrived in Ecuador during the period of Atlantic slavery (from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries) and lived as maroons or enslaved people principally in the areas now considered Afro-Ecuadorian ancestral territories, namely, the northern part of Esmeraldas province and Chota-­ Mira Valley (Imbabura and Carchi provinces). Between these two areas, it was in Chota-Mira where the Jesuits first introduced African people (here referred to as Afro-Choteños) as slaves in massive numbers. In 1852, after a long process of manumission and after intense struggles, slavery was officially abolished in Ecuador.3 From then on, Afro-Choteños became servants of mestizo ‘haciendas’ (estates) in the area in a system that was called ‘Huasipungo’. However, through an indebtedness system (similar to apprenticeships in the Anglophone Caribbean after the abolition of slavery), Afro-Choteños were forced to keep working in comparable conditions to those prior to the abolition of slavery.4 Thus, most Afro-­ Choteños with whom other authors (Bouisson 1997; Pabón 2007) and I have talked feel that, during the Huasipungo period, they were still enslaved people. It was only in 1964, through the Agrarian Reform, when a good number of Afro-Choteños were given a piece of land that most haciendas became Afro-Choteño communities. However, since the Afro-­ Choteños who got a piece of land did not receive any type of support to make it productive, their economic income and quality of life continued to be extremely low. Thus, like most Afro-Ecuadorians, Afro-Choteños have remained one of the poorest groups since the Atlantic slavery period (Fundación-Azúcar 2017, p. 11). Currently, most inhabitants of the now 38 communities that comprise the rural and isolated region of Chota-Mira Valley are the descendants of enslaved people. Many Afro-Choteños remained on the same land where their ancestors were enslaved not just because of a sense of belonging to Chota-Mira (Bouisson 1997), but primarily because of the discrimination that originated during the Atlantic slavery period and that still functions as

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a mechanism to tie them to their ancestors’ land. The historical discrimination that Afro-Ecuadorians have faced, understood as “any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, color, descent, or national or ethnic origin…” (UNESCO 1965, p. 2), is part of a process of coloniality. Coloniality has been defined as a specific articulation of power that had its origin in the Atlantic slavery period and that persists into the present day (Quijano 1992; Mignolo 2009). Within coloniality, Afrodescendants, including their artistic practices, have been located in the lowest social position, representing their supposedly inferior intellectual abilities.5 Discrimination is so high in areas of Ecuador that are predominantly populated by mestizo-Ecuadorians that 75.9% of Afro-Ecuadorians report having experienced it (STFS, SIISE, and INEC 2005, p.  32). In this regard, Rahier (1998) affirms that most mestizo-­ Ecuadorians think that Afro-Ecuadorians ‘naturally’ belong to Afro-­ Ecuadorian ancestral territories such as Chota-Mira, which “have historically been looked down upon as places of violence, laziness, backwardness, and unconquered nature” (p. 422). This negative perception of Chota-Mira is precisely why most mestizo-Ecuadorians only visit this area for specific celebrations aimed at tourists. On the other hand, when Afro-­ Ecuadorians are found in urban areas, outside of the rural areas from which they ‘naturally belong’, they are considered as being “out-of-place”, transforming the previously ignored Afro-Ecuadorians into a group who are seen as social predators, with a naturalised propensity to be prostitutes, to take part in crimes and to use illegal drugs (Rahier 1998, p. 425). Here it is suggested that this social stigma is one of the reasons why Afro-­ Ecuadorians are considered a group that needs to be under constant scrutiny and control.

The Categories of the Bomba Event It is precisely within Ecuador’s discriminatory context that Bomba del Chota originated. In this chapter, I address Bomba as an event. This event encompasses a musical genre, dance and instrument, each of them named Bomba. However, a Bomba event comprises not just the performance of the musical genre, dance and the Bomba drum, but also specific interactions among participants that develop as a consequence of the performance of these three integral elements. Here it is suggested that some Bomba events that have been performed in Chota-Mira from the Atlantic slavery period until the present day can be considered as practices of

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freedom6 or ‘cimarronaje’ (marronage) among Afro-Choteños. Shortly after the origination of these Bomba events of cimarronaje, Bomba also began to be performed as ‘controlled events’. Here I have named this second category of events as spectacle. Some travellers (Hassaurek 1868; Festa 1909) and scholars (Bueno 1991; Costales and Peñaherrera 1959; Coba Andrade 1980, 1981; Schechter 1994) have already described in detail the instrument, dance and music genre that are part of most Bomba events. More recently, Ruggiero and Lara have developed insightful research around the role of Bomba in Afro-Choteños’ identity (Lara 2011; Lara and Ruggiero 2016; Ruggiero 2010). However, the critical difference between Bomba being enacted either as a strategy of freedom or as cimarronaje among Afro-­ Choteños or as a spectacle to be consumed by an audience has not been taken into account. Here it is proposed that this distinction is crucial to understanding the opposing historical roles played by Bomba. Thus, it is essential first to appreciate how Bomba, when performed as a spectacle, works as a powerful symbol of the continuous control Afro-Choteños have faced since their arrival in Ecuador. Subsequently, an understanding of Afro-Choteños’ experiences regarding the performance of a non-­ spectacular Bomba event amongst themselves, is crucial to understand Bomba as a practice of freedom. Regarding Bomba as a spectacle, I follow Stuart Hall’s (1997) approach to a spectacle as the exhibiting of stereotypical characteristics of black people controlled by groups of people, or ideologies, in power (p. 263). In this paper it is argued that the spectacular events of Bomba constitute part of this control, by limiting dancers’ creativity and regulating their interaction among each other, with the aim of entertaining an audience that is usually not Afro-Choteño. As can be seen in some travellers’ testimonies (Hassaurek 1868, p. 192; Festa 1909, pp. 332–333), Bomba as a spectacle was first developed during the Atlantic slavery period based on the slave-owners’ desire to entertain themselves or their guests. One of the main ways of controlling Bomba as spectacle was by reducing its dance movements to the exhibition of the stereotypical representation of an Afro-Choteños’ ‘natural sensuality’, which usually includes the over-emphasis of each dancer’s hip movements. The definite association of Bomba with dancers’ hip movements in spectacles is based on the fact that Afro-Ecuadorians’ dances and music such as Bomba have historically been perceived as meaningless, exotic, frenetic and even as hyper-sexual practices (Rahier 1998, 2014).

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The reduction of Bomba as spectacle, focussing solely on each dancers’ hip movements, can also be demonstrated by the lyrics of some Bomba songs of the seventeenth or eighteenth century, such as “Shake your hips, shake your hips, I’ll give you a half, I am already shaking my hips, Where is my half?” It seems that this song refers to a dialogue between a slave-owner and an Afro-Choteña/o who was asked to move her/his hips while dancing Bomba in exchange for a half ‘real’, which was the currency during those centuries (Coba Andrade 1980, pp.  45–47). These practices of monetary exchange were widespread between enslaved people and slave-­ owners during the period of Atlantic slavery. Even after the Huasipungo period, when the hierarchical relation between patrones and Afro-Choteños and, thus, the social position of Afro-Ecuadorians, finally began to change, the control of the Afro-­ Choteños by mestizo-Ecuadorians has persisted.7 For instance, a group of Afro-Choteños, when interviewed by Santillán Cornejo, recognised that they have to adopt specific bodily behaviours while working as, for instance, security guards, maids or factory workers in the smart areas of Ecuadorian cities. Afro-Choteño workers confirmed that they have to adopt bodily codes considered more discrete, meaning for instance that they have to adopt a physical distance and ‘composure’ between them and their employers and customers. The afro-Choteños that were interviewed mentioned that they see these bodily codes as the opposite to their bodily behaviour in their own spaces such as Chota-Mira Valley (Santillán Cornejo 2006, pp. 84–85). Similarly Bomba, through its more widespread version, the spectacular Bomba, is still associated almost exclusively with the display of diverse types of dancer’s hip movements in a more sanitised way. For instance, from the 1990s, Bomba began to be performed as a spectacle under the label of Ecuadorian ‘folk dance’. As has happened throughout Latin America as part of the development of an ‘authentic’ local identity (Chasteen 2001, p. 136), its performance has been manipulated through the politicised notions of pluriculturality (included in the National Constitution of 1998) and interculturality (included in the National Constitution of 2008). With the aim of including Bomba within the ‘national’8 representation of Ecuadorian music and dances, pluriculturality and interculturality have been used as paternalistic tools to officially perpetuate the colonial perception of Bomba based on a series of eroticised stereotypes and rarely as a dance form that reflects communal, reciprocal, creative and joyful interactions among Afro-Choteños. Under the

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paternalistic, colonial notion of spectacle, Bomba cannot possibly be related to, for instance, specific collective memories or knowledges that have been passed down through the generations. On the other hand, when Bomba events are performed as part of communal celebrations mainly among Afro-Choteños, although dancers do emphasise their hips in order to be admired by the other participants, specific ways of interacting through these movements, such as hip-pushing among participants, are as important as the emphasis of the movement itself. These modes of interaction have historically been characterised by their playfulness, joyfulness and creativity, which have the role of continually creating a sense of collective freedom and euphoria. This sense of freedom while dancing Bomba among Afro-Choteños appears to be historically consistent, as expressed through a song compiled by Chalá (2006), “Enough of cutting cane, freedom has arrived, freedom for the blacks, let’s go and bombear [perform Bomba]” (p.  177). Belermina Congo, an older female Afro-Choteño dancer, reaffirms this sense of freedom and creativity generated during some non-spectacle Bomba events; “Whenever we dance, from when I was very young, I feel free. I have another life. I forget about my poverty. I forget about my suffering. When we dance I feel like I am a very important woman, that, I don’t know, who is worth something, at least a bit. When we dance I invent another life with my moves. I am wealthy. I feel rich and so free” (personal communication, November 2013). It is precisely this creation of a collective energy of freedom which Belermina feels part of that differentiates Bomba Cimarrona from the Bomba events performed as a spectacle. In this chapter, I relate the notion of freedom generated in some Bomba events to the practices of cimarronaje that have persisted even after the Atlantic slavery period. Although in the context of Atlantic slavery the term cimarronaje was principally used by slave-owners to refer to the process by which enslaved people ran away from the plantations or mines as a way of rejecting their condition of subjugation and unlimited exploitation and in order to build their lives in liberty (León Castro 2017), there has been a re-appropriation of this term within academic and radical political settings. The term cimarronaje has been extended to signify specific freedom-­related behaviours that originated during the Atlantic slavery period and that have been transformed afterwards according to the needs of each historical moment (Albán Achinte 2008, pp.  233–237). These behaviours are understood as “embodied standpoints that disobey the reign and rule of coloniality and its axes of dehumanisation, racialisation,

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negation, and condemnation…” (Walsh and Mignolo 2018, p.  43) through “a collective consciousness aimed at reconstructing existence, freedom and liberty in the present but in conversation with the ancestors” (Walsh and León Castro 2005, p. 10). Importantly, following Ananya Jahana Kabir (2017) in her research of the Río de Janeiro Carnival, the emphasis on the specific relation of Bomba Cimarrona and freedom does not imply that a sense of liberation through joy or happiness cannot be felt through Bomba or other dances when performed as a spectacle, for instance, as part of an officially national portrayal of music and dances. However, I am more interested in the freedom and through it, the happiness, joy and pleasure generated in Bomba Cimarrona through the embodied expression of not just a set of kinetic movements,9 but also the shared collective memories that have been inherited by them. Moreover, Bomba Cimarrona can be conceptualised as a sort of ‘anti-national’ or decolonial performance where the dancers’ goal has historically been to generate freedom by and for themselves without the presence of an outsider audience which is inevitably—and not always passively—part of a colonial lineage that is waiting to be pleased and entertained.

Bomba Cimarrona and Collective Memories I suggest that Bomba Cimarrona has survived throughout time because of specific collective memories related to the notion of freedom that is rooted in the Afro-Choteños’ need to recurrently, albeit momentarily, liberate themselves from the control they have experienced since their arrival in Ecuador. Collective memories are understood by Maurice Halbwachs (2004) as “the evocation of an occurrence from the perspective of a person or a group of people as a way of reconstructing past events lived and experienced by themselves or other members of the group” (p.  36). Within the context of Bomba Cimarrona and as has been stated by Catherine Walsh (2002), collective memories’ communal aspect is highly important; “it [collective memory] is rooted in modes of coexistence and social organisation marked by communal cohesion…” (p. 69). This communal cohesion that arises during Bomba Cimarrona, due to its relationship to collective memories of freedom, allows Afro-Choteños to “strengthen collective being” (Walsh and Mignolo 2018, p.  43). Importantly, Rafael Narvaez (2006) has stated that collective memories not necessarily are mediated by dialogue but can be generated and

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transferred through people’s bodies (p. 65). Narvaez proposes that collective pasts (memories) become sedimented in individual and “collective bodies”. In this way, each person has the choice of either bringing to life those “sedimented” memories or of responding to them by transforming them (p. 52) to create new “structures of possibilities” (pp. 66–67). The option of creating new structures of possibilities is especially important to understand the expression of collective memories not as automatisms, but as a product of awareness and mediation between each person and collective memories that can lead either to breakages from or to continuities with embodied traditions. Among all the Afro-Choteños’ collective memories of freedom expressed in Bomba Cimarrona, I focus specifically on those embodied collective memories related to the participants’ hip movements. These embodied collective memories go beyond individual hip movements and are always accompanied by ways of relating among Afro-Choteños that have been passed on through the generations through the medium of dance.

Transmitting Collective Memories Through Bomba Cimarrona Dancers’ Hips The transmission of embodied collective memories related to hip movements in the performance of Bomba Cimarrona is unquestionable. This movement is mentioned in most descriptions of Bomba Cimarrona (Coba Andrade 1980; Chalá Cruz 2006; López-Yánez 2020). Moreover, the hip movement is the only movement that is always strikingly present during a performance of Bomba Cimarrona. According to the Afro-Choteños with whom I talked, the particularity of the collective memories related to dancers’ hip movements in Bomba Cimarrona is that they have historically been enacted as a way of generating a shared experience among dancers through specific interactions such as emphasising the virtuosity and beauty of their hip movements and also through dancers’ hip-pushing among each other. The main goal of these interactions has been the generation of a joyful and playful space of freedom. The specific characteristics of dancers’ hip movements during Bomba Cimarrona, including the dance’s transformations over time, become apparent when tracing the embodied collective memories and experiences of elderly (over 70 years old) and adult (20–69 years old) Afro-Choteños. Importantly, the experiences of

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each of these two groups of Afro-Choteños significantly differ, since elderly Afro-Choteños were born during the Huasipungo period, which (as aforementioned) is considered as an extended period of slavery. Their experiences of Bomba are radically different from the experiences of adult Afro-Choteños, born after the Agrarian Reform and who have lived in an era where Afro-Choteños were finally able to own land and were able to progressively improve their living conditions. According to some elderly participants, the events of Bomba Cimarrona used to be held in intimate spaces so that outsiders, namely non-Afro-­ Choteños, could not see the performance. This is mentioned by, for instance, Doña Belermina Congo. Belermina stated; “when there was a party outside, we used to put up mats made out of rush which acted as fences around the yard, screening it off” (personal communication, December 2013). As for the hip movement, it used to be performed in a sideways manner. Most of the elderly Afro-Choteños with whom I talked stressed that this movement should be performed with two defining characteristics that they refer to as ‘cadencia’ and ‘picardía’. Cadencia is a term often used by elderly participants to refer to the ability to perform the hip movements in a fluid, gentle manner, without forcing them, and without a loss of elegance or composure; cadencia can be said to form part of the collective memories of Afro-Choteños. The collective memory of cadencia is acquired by Afro-Choteños from a young age through observation and is to be performed not just while dancing but also while walking (Guerrón 2000, p. 100). I believe I understood the ‘cadencia’ of Bomba Cimarrona after years of debunking the beliefs I grew up with, like that of this dance’s hip movement necessarily having sexual connotations,10 and realising that it was more about a learning process of intimately sensing the dance partners’ body and movements and following them. On the other hand, the notion of picardía is related to playful, daring, strategic and sensual allusions, both embodied and vocal, in a space where this is culturally accepted. For instance, according to the elderly Bomba musician and dancer Don José Urcecino, the lyrics of this Bomba song denotes picardía: “Under your petticoat, I saw how a louse was running, let me put my hand in underneath, and you will see how I can grab it [the louse]. I fell in love with the petticoat…” (Personal communication, December 2012). The sideways hip-movement, performed with cadencia and picardía, is the only hip movement that the elderly interviewees consider as acceptable and ‘bonito’ (beautiful). They consider any other hip-movement, or the lack of cadencia and picardía in the sideways hip movement, as ugly.

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Collective Memories of Freedom in Bomba Cimarrona: Hip-Pushing While Dancing As for the collective memories related to the interactions among dancers, the one that is included from the first descriptions of Bomba (Hassaurek 1868) to more recent descriptions (Costales and Peñaherrera 1959; Chalá Cruz 2006; López-Yánez 2020), is that of pushing their partner while avoiding being pushed by others. Although in the first written description of Bomba Cimarrona (Hassaurek 1868, p. 168), dancers use their heads to perform the action of pushing their partner while dancing, in the rest of the descriptions and according to recent observations, dancers perform the action of pushing with their hip. Costales and Peñaherrera (1959) describe the hip-push of Afro-Choteños during a performance of Bomba Cimarrona as “the main action that makes the whole dance a success…” (p. 193). According to some elderly Afro-Choteños, this interaction was performed in couples and was called the ‘desafío’ (challenge) or ‘caderazo’ (hip push). It consisted of a dancer approaching her/his dancing partner in order to push her/him with her/his hip with cadencia and picardía while the partner tried to avoid being hip-pushed. The hip pushes were sometimes so strong that the dancer who was pushed would fall. In between the hip pushes, the couples would dance, demonstrating the cadencia and picardía of their hip movements individually, while preparing themselves to approach their dancing partner specifically with their hips for a new hip-pushing attempt. The rest of the participants would surround the couple while cheerfully encouraging them to hip-push. To further explain this, Doña Belermina narrates, “we were there, dancing and dancing, with joy, of course, when suddenly, the caderazo (hip push) began. I “bang”! [She moves as if she were pushing someone with her hip] sent him far away… he tried to get close to me, but he didn’t know when I was going to touch him, so slowly he tried to touch my hip with his, and suddenly, I threw him again with mine”. Belermina emphasised that male dancers always tried to push her, but they could never be as good at the hip push as she was, so she used to always ‘win’ (personal communication, December 2012). Although it would seem that the main aim of the desafío was to manage to hip-push the dancing partner in order to win, its primary goal was to be creative, daring and playful in order to make the other participants laugh. In that regard, Don José Urcecino, noted, “when each dancer tried to hip push their partner, they didn’t use their whole strength, but slightly pushed their dancing partner, distracted

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their partner, made their partner smile or feel embarrassed so that the other dancers would laugh” (personal communication, December 2013). Importantly, in more recent decades, the aforementioned collective memory of intimacy while performing Bomba Cimarrona has been re-­ signified. Thus, intimacy as related to performing Bomba Cimarrona in hidden places away from public view has been forgotten. Instead, a notion of intimacy as the choice to perform Bomba Cimarrona just among Afro-­ Choteños, even in public spaces such as the audience space in a performance of Bomba as a spectacle, has developed. As for the collective memory of hip-pushing between dancers of Bomba Cimarrona, it still exists but has been transformed. According to the adult Afro-Choteños with whom I talked and my personal experience in performances of Bomba Cimarrona, terms like desafío, caderazo, cadencia or picardía have been forgotten. However, collective memories related to playful and creative interactions with cadencia and picardía with the aim of ‘winning’ have been incorporated by new generations, and thus, these are still enacted and even encouraged among adult dancers of Bomba Cimarrona. Also, hip-pushes are not only performed in dancing couples but also in dancing groups and with much closer contact between dancing partners not just through their hips but through their whole body. According to Wilson Chalá, an adult Afro-Choteño friend, the close proximity between dancers allows them to push each other with their hips while dancing with different intensities and rhythms, “one should really feel the other’s hip movements” (personal conversation, July 2013). I could comprehend the transmission of embodied collective memories mentioned by Wilson when, after years of continually visiting Chota-Mira and dancing Bomba Cimarrona with my Afro-Choteño friends, they began to tell me, ‘usté baila bonito’ (you dance well). Over time, I realised that bailar bonito meant that I had embodied the importance of sensing and following the hip movements of my dancing friends so that I could move my hips and hip-push with loose and precise but also playful and daring hip movements. This chapter has had the aim of proposing two differentiated categories of Bomba events. By distinguishing Bomba as a spectacle from Bomba Cimarrona, it has been possible to come to an understanding of some interactions among dancers in Bomba Cimarrona as part of a historical lineage of freedom-related behaviours that have existed since the Atlantic slavery period. These behaviours have survived, even if they have changed, because of specific embodied collective memories that have historically been passed from old to new generations as a way of incarnating the past.

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For instance, the historical lineage of collective memories related to hip-­ pushing among dancers in Bomba Cimarrona has persisted as a collective and effective mechanism to provoke collective joy although with different spatial formations and terms. Thus, embodied collective memories, such as hip-pushing with cadencia and picardía, have allowed Afro-Choteños to strategically generate communal spaces to periodically release themselves from the colonial control of their bodies they have faced during slavery and post-slavery periods and to generate joyful and cheerful communal spaces in which they can creatively and fully exist among each other.

Notes 1. A relación de escucha is understood as a collective exercise of disalienation, this is, a long-term, sensitive, creative, honest and open recognition and acknowledgement of the perspectives, needs and objectives of both the researcher and the communities as the basis for producing specific research (Rivera Cusicanqui 1987, 2015, p. 286). 2. The percentage of Afro-Ecuadorians includes the number of Ecuadorian citizens who self-identified either as Afro-Ecuadorians or as Afrodescendants, mulato or black people. 3. For a detailed explanation of the active role of Afro-Ecuadorians in the abolition of slavery from 1770 to 1820 see Chaves (2010) and from 1822 to 1852 see Townsend (2007). 4. For more detailed information regarding the living conditions of Afro-­ Choteños during the Huasipungo, see De La Torre Espinosa (2002, p. 85). 5. The notion of Afrodescendants as inferior beings is also analysed by Birenbaum Quintero (2006) in relation to the music and dances of Afro-Colombians. 6. Here, I use “practices of freedom” as understood by Jessica Marie Johnson (2020) as any attempt to “disrupt the new demands that use and possession placed on their bodies” (p. 9) during the period of Atlantic slavery. 7. Although I draw a clear distinction between the roles of Afro-Choteños and mestizo-Ecuadorians in Bomba as a spectacle, I am also conscious that in some occasions, the directors of Bomba spectacular performances are Afro-­Choteños. I relate this to a process of internal colonialism, understood by Maldonado-Torres (2007, p.  257) as colonialism that is internalised in each colonised subject. But more importantly, I acknowledge the right that the Afro-Choteños have to organise and be part of Bomba spectacular performances as they can represent a financial income that would allow them to improve their living conditions, or because some of them think that the inclusion of Bomba as a spectacle is still better than the his-

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torical exclusion of their music and dance-based events, or just because they have the right of enjoying being seen and admired as they please. 8. Here the notion of ‘national’ refers to the nation-building process that began with Ecuador and other Latin American countries’ independence in the nineteenth century and that continues until the present day. This process revolves around the maintenance of a colonial social order based on a desire to resemble an idealised version of European culture and to be as far as possible from an indigenous or African ancestry. 9. Here, although I acknowledge the fact that dances performed as a spectacle can also include some collective memories, I suggest that generally, these are structured to emphasise on the kinetic movements much more. 10. Although in my previous research, I stated that Bomba Cimarrona has nothing to do with sexual intercourse, it is now my contention that this affirmation cannot be totally proven. I argue that the constant need to justify the non-relation between Bomba Cimarrona and sexual intercourse that can be found in my previous work (López-Yánez 2013, pp. 57–58) is not only unnecessary but could also be morally biased. I consider it crucial to remember what Karavanta (2013) has already pointed out in relation to the intense affective experiences that enslaved people went through, and that are negated in most representations, regarding their attempt to sustain their relationships with their siblings, partners and communities in suffering, whilst sustaining their own existential depth and ontological matter (p. 45). As the Afro-Choteño Paulo Ayala Congo stated during our conversation, “a lot of sexual tensions do get released while dancing” (personal communication, 2018). Thus, even if some of the events of Bomba Cimarrona could be related to sexual encounters, it is the reduction of these events to sexual encounters and the attempt to be continually exposing Afro-Choteños’ sexual life that can become problematic and which has colonial roots.

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Bueno, Julio. 1991. La Bomba En La Cuenca Del Chota-Mira: Sincretismo o Nueva Realidad. Sarance 15: 171–193. Chalá Cruz, José Franklin. 2006. Chota Profundo : Antropología de Los Afrochoteños. Centro de Investigaciones Familia Negra—CIFANE. Chasteen, John Charles. 2001. Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company Inc. Chaves, María Eugenia. 2010. Esclavizados, Cimarrones y Bandidos. Historias de Resistencia En El Valle Del Chota-Mira, En El Contexto de La Revolución de Los Marqueses Quiteños: 1770–1820. In Indios, Negros y Mestizos En La Independencia, ed. Heraclio Bonilla, 130–149. Bogotá: Planeta–​Universidad. Coba Andrade, Carlos Alberto. 1980. Literatura Popular Afroecuatoriana. Edited by Instituto Otavaleño de Antropología. Colección Pendoneros, 43: 283. ———. 1981. Instrumentos Musicales Populares Registrados En El Ecuador, Serie: Cultura Popular. Colección Pendoneros 46: 360. Costales, Alfredo, and Piedad Peñaherrera. 1959. Coangue: Historia Cultural y Social de Los Negros de El Chota y Mira. Llakta 7: 307. Festa, Enrico. 1909. En El Darien y El Ecuador: Diario de Viaje de Un Naturalista. Edited by Translators:, María Victoria de Vela, Ana María Soldi, and José Alvarez. 1993 trans. Quito: Monumenta Amazónica. Fundación-Azúcar. 2017. Informe Alternativo: Examen de Los Informes Presentados Por Los Estados Partes En Virtud Del Artículo 9 de La Convención. Quito. Guerrón, Carla. 2000. El Color de La Canela. Edited by Ediciones Afroamérica. Quito: Centro Cultural Afroecuatoriano. Halbwachs, Maurice. 2004. La Memoria Colectiva. Edited by Ines (trans.) Sancho-­ Arroyo. 2nd ed. Zaragoza: Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza. Hall, Stuart. 1997. The Spectacle of The “Other”. In Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, ed. Stuart Hall, 225–290. London: SAGE Publications. Hassaurek, Friedrich. 1868. Four Years among the Ecuadorians. Edited by C.  Harvey Gardiner. 1967 repri. London and Amsterdam: Southern Illinois University Press. INEC. 2010. Ecuador En Cifras. http://www.ecuadorencifras.gob.ec/ resultados/. Johnson, Jessica Marie. 2020. Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Kabir, Ananya Jahana. 2017. On Postcolonial Happiness. In The Postcolonial World, ed. Jyotsna G. Singh and David D. Kim. New York: Taylor & Francis. Karavanta, Mina. 2013. The Injunctions of the Spectre of Slavery: Affective Memory and the Counterwriting of Community. Feminist Review 104 (1): 42–60.

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La Torre Espinosa, Carlos de. 2002. Afroquiteños: Ciudadanía y Racismo. Quito: Centro Andino de Acción Popular (CAAP). Lara, Francisco. 2011. La Bomba Es Vida (La Bomba Is Life): The Coloniality of Power, La Bomba, and Afrochoteños Identity in Ecuador’s Chota-Mira Valley. Florida State University. Lara, Francisco, and Diana Mabel Ruggiero. 2016. Highland Afro-Ecuadorian Bomba and Identity along the Black Pacific at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century. Latin American Music Review 37 (2): 135–164. León Castro, Edizon. 2017. Lectura Crítica de La Historia de Los Cimarrones de Esmeraldas (Ecuador) Durante Los Siglos XVII–XVIII. Historia y Espacio 13 (48): 149–178. López-Yánez, María Gabriela. 2013. Beyond the Hips: La Bomba as a Shared Experience. University of Malaya. ———. 2020. Sounds of Collective Memories: A Decolonial Counter-Representation of Afro-Ecuadorian Marimba Esmeraldeña and Bomba Del Chota. Goldsmiths College-University of London. Maldonado-Torres, Nelson. 2007. On the Coloniality of Being. Cultural Studies 21 (2–3): 240–270. Mignolo, Walter. 2009. Coloniality: The Darker Side of Modernity. In Modernologies: Contemporary Artists Researching Modernity and Modernism Catalog of the Exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, Barcelona, Spain, 39–49. Barcelona: MACBA. Narvaez, Rafael F. 2006. Embodiment, Collective Memory and Time. Body & Society 12 (3): 51–73. Pabón, Iván. 2007. Identidad Afro: Procesos de Construcción En Las Comunidades Negras de La Cuenca Chota-Mira. Quito: Editorial Abya Yala. Quijano, Aníbal. 1992. Colonialidad y Modernidad/Racionalidad. Perú Indígena 13 (29): 11–20. Rahier, Jean Muteba. 1998. Blackness, the Racial/Spatial Order, Migrations, and Miss Ecuador 1995–1996. American Anthropologist 100 (2): 421–430. ———. 2014. Blackness in the Andes: Ethnographic Vignettes of Cultural Politics in the Time of Multiculturalism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US. Rivera Cusicanqui, Silvia. 1987. El Potencial Epistemológico y Teórico de La Historia Oral: De La Lógica Instrumental a La Descolonización de La Historia. Temas Sociales. ———. 2015. Sociología de La Imagen: Miradas Ch’ixi de La Historia Andina. Buenos Aires: Tinta Limón. Ruggiero, Diana Mabel. 2010. Más Allá Del Fútbol: La Bomba, the Afrochoteño Subaltern, and Cultural Change in Ecuador’s Chota-Mira Valley. Ohio State University.

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Santillán Cornejo, Alfredo. 2006. Jóvenes Negros/as. Cuerpo, Etnicidad y Poder: Un Análisis Etnográfico de Los Usos y Representaciones Del Cuerpo. FLACSO-­ Sede Ecuador. Schechter, John M. 1994. Los Hermanos Congo y Milton Tadeo Ten Years Later: Evolution of an African-Ecuadorian Tradition of the Valle Del Chota, Highland Ecuador. In Music and Black Ethnicity: The Caribbean and South America, ed. Gerard H.  Béhague, 285–305. New Brunswick, London: Transaction Publishers. STFS, SIISE, and INEC. 2005. Racismo y Discriminación Racial En Ecuador 2004. Quito. Townsend, Camilla. 2007. In Search of Liberty: The Efforts of the Enslaved to Attain Abolition in Ecuador, 1822–1852. In Beyond Slavery: The Multilayered Legacy of Africans in Latin America and the Caribbean, ed. Darien J. Davies, 37–56. USA: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, INC. UNESCO. 1965. International Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Walsh, Catherine. 2002. The (Re)Articulation of Political Subjectivities and Colonial Difference in Ecuador: Reflections on Capitalism and the Geopolitics of Knowledge. Neplanta: Views from South 3 (1): 61–97. Walsh, Catherine, and Edizon León Castro. 2005. Afro Andean Thought and Diasporic Ancestrality. In Caribbean Philosophical Association ‘Shifting the Geography of Reason’, 15. Barbados. Walsh, Catherine, and Walter Mignolo. 2018. On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis. Durham: Duke University Press.

Youthful Bodies as Mnemonic Artifacts: Traversing the Cultural Terrain from Traditional to Popular Dances in Post-­independent Ghana Terry Bright Kweku Ofosu

Background The issue of bodies existing as archival materials in the area of dance in Ghana dates back several decades, the reason being that during our remote past, Ghana did not have a comprehensive writing system for documentation, and therefore depended on oral tradition, the human body and art signs, symbols, drum language and song texts. Ghanaian traditional dances and also popular dances are some contemporary examples of embodied archives. For the purpose of this chapter, I use the terminologies ‘traditional dance’ and ‘ethnic dance’ interchangeably to mean indigenous dances that have been passed on for several generations.

T. B. K. Ofosu (*) University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Parfitt (ed.), Cultural Memory and Popular Dance, Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71083-5_8

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This chapter argues that post-millennial Ghanaian popular dance styles such as toh nɔ and aaka of azonto dance are re-significations of some ethnic dance styles as well as current representations of youth experiences. These popular dance styles therefore harbor a combination of current popular and some traditional dance movements and information, all of which I refer to as mnemonic artifacts. In this chapter, the term ‘mnemonic artifacts’ refer to any material or practice that harbors meanings based on past culturally accepted and established attributes. My view is corroborated by Keightley (2008, p. 176): “Our memories are often talked about as stores, or repositories of accounts of the past that we call up when we desire, or sometimes involuntarily in response to a contemporary trigger.” I additionally contend that ‘mnemonic artifacts’ embedded in Ghanaian dances constantly drive the popular dance movement vocabulary and are influenced by socio-cultural exigencies. Several scholars have researched and documented accounts of ethnic dances in Ghana (Yartey 2016; Young 2011; Nketia 1963). Typical examples are Atrikpui and Agbekor warrior dances, which chronicle the historic escape of the Anlo-Ewe people from King Agorkole of Dahomey by making a hole through the city wall and walking backwards to evade the search party (Young 2011). The escapades of the Anlo-Ewes are enacted in the dance and song texts; performance of the dance therefore is a depiction of key experiences and narration of a historical event—a mnemonic activity. Similarly, the performance of Gome dance is also a site of memory for the Ga people in Ghana; Ga experiences in Fernando Po Island in Equatorial Guinea in the nineteenth century are incorporated into dance movements, and the dancer’s body momentarily becomes a mnemonic artifact during performance. The adaption, appropriation or re-signification of any of these traditional dance movements in popular dances therefore re-­animates mnemonic artifacts. I am not by any means arguing that memory and history are synonymous concepts, but rather that they intersect, often complementarily, in performance studies. Therefore, in the examination of my object of analysis—popular dances (which I argue are mnemonic artifacts)—it is important to review how performance studies and historical studies engage each other comparatively, bringing together “the activated now of performance, [and] the performed past of history” (Taylor 2006, p. 68). Documentation of historical accounts were part of the hostile rebuttals from some African scholars and their sympathizers against an earlier schism amongst Western scholars1 who rejected African folklore as a legitimate

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form of historical and factual knowledge (Okpewho 1992; Gyekye 2013; Manuh and Sutherland-Addy 2013). For us as Ghanaians, therefore, these bodily representations of our past are truths and not mere stories. In fact, Mawere Opoku (the first artistic director of Ghana Dance Ensemble, Ghana’s national dance company at the University of Ghana) and J.H. Nketia (the first director of the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana) led the Ghana Dance Ensemble to research and learn these ethnic dances from across the nation. The creation of the Ghana Dance Ensemble and the School of Music and Drama in 1962 also helped in the retention and re-propagation of significant cultural practices in music, dance and drama across the nation. The Ghana Dance Ensemble became a repository of these indigenous dances, and therefore their performances were enactments of past experiences and historical events of various indigenous societies, later to be emulated by the several amateur dance groups across the country (Yartey 2016; Abloso 2013). The bodies of these dancers momentarily became objects of memory, which I refer to in this chapter as mnemonic artifacts and Assmann (2006) refers to as the “memory function of cultural objects” (p. 68): Presentations based on art history, musicology, philology, dance and so forth rely on the structural features of cultural materials that function as cultural memory during their expressive processes. It is such materials with established cultural meanings that I refer to as ‘mnemonic artifacts.’ In dance, the human body is the primary cultural product that expresses memory functions of culture. In providing some explanation for the mnemonic effect of enactments, Ronald L. Cohen (1989) posits that there are four types of memory: episodic, semantic, procedural and memory for actions. My concern in this chapter is to unpack current Ghanaian popular dances mostly performed by the youth on the streets corners, bars and night clubs to identify the motor memory tendencies, which Cohen (1989) further breaks down into two areas; procedural memory—reliant on motor skill that reproduces movement patterns, and memory for actions—ability to remember past events. In Ghanaian popular dances, procedural memory and memory for actions all come together as forms of aesthetic expressions and re-significations of both current and past dances, all of which have mnemonic tendencies. Note that it is within Accra city that popular dances are first created (Collins 2013; Ofosu and Deh 2013) as a result of globalization (Osumare 2012; Robertson 1995). The Ghanaian rural-urban migrant youth who

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embody these ethnic dances (Hargoe 2014) incorporate them into current popular dance forms. The popular dances therefore become ephemeral processes that possess present representations and past accounts. I engage in this work as an experienced Ghanaian dance teacher and Ghanaian popular and traditional dancer engrossed in these forms from fieldwork and reading of extant available ethnographic literature. The method of approach is based on reenactment (simulation) and observation of some select Ghanaian popular dance moves as data. Analyses of these movements were undertaken to ascertain their mnemonic nature by tracing their primary and secondary functions and their distinctive stylistic features, including their connection to the ethnic dances and also the meanings they engender. These original meanings of the ethnic dances make their re-signification in current popular dances multilayered-text memories (Bourdieu 1984) or “polysemic readings” (Keightley 2008, p.  177). It is some of these characteristics that I additionally intend to tease out in this book chapter. This chapter is organized into sections beginning with the background that gives some historical information on documentation of Ghanaian traditional ethnic dances, and the creation of post-independence popular dances. The next section teases out the theories that are evoked to explain how Ghanaian highlife is created and its mnemonic tendencies. The third section discusses how Ghanaian popular dances are framed theoretically, while the fourth section examines what makes postcolonial Ghanaian popular dances mnemonic artifacts. The fifth section unpacks two key popular dances to ascertain their mnemonic potentials while explaining the theoretical processes that pertain.

Theoretical Underpinnings of Dancing Bodies as Cultural Memories It is common knowledge that human beings live in societies and are cultivated through social interaction. Bourdieu (1984) buttresses this notion with his concept of habitus: “The habitus is necessity internalized and converted into a disposition that generates meaningful practices and meaning-giving perceptions; it is a general, transposable disposition which carries out a systematic, universal application” (p. 170). Habitus in dance, from Bourdieu’s assertion, would be: adopted dance movements that can be converted into practices that generate meanings as well as

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meaning-­giving sensibilities. It has a system of production that regulates the production process from within, without any externally created regulatory measures. In essence, Bourdieu’s habitus suggests that social practice is a composite continuum of characteristics generated by the society, and is managed and systematized through a universally applicable approach that later becomes concomitant cultural traits. An example of Bourdieu’s habitus in Ghanaian popular dance is exemplified in the highlife dance, which is often referred to as Ghana’s national (popular) dance. The movements are a combination of Ghanaian dances such as osoode, sikyi, asaadua and adenkum (Ofosu 2009) and Western dances, such as waltz, ballroom, chachacha and salsa. For example, the chachacha is a three-quick-step movement that Ghanaians learned from the foreign legionaries of the colonial governments; for the Ghanaians it was the ‘colonial master’s’ movement, a high-class representation of our colonial past. The asaadua (literally meaning a tree of a sweet berry) basic style is “characteristic of Akan movement,” a dance developed around Ghana’s independence, according to Nketia (1963). The movement consists of: The stride articulating the motor divisions of the periodic pulse, the shuffle, weighting of the body on the left [leg], and the forward swing of the arm as they revolve around each other. But there seems to be more emphasis on sideways motions of the trunk and torso, with the knees kept in longer stretches of bent position than one finds in many other Akan dances. (p. 67)

Nketia’s report suggests that asaadua is a polycentric dance created by Akan male youth and was performed during recreation; a dance meant for sheer enjoyment, hence the name asaadua. Nketia however failed to add the characteristic forward and backward bobbing of the head in asaadua dance; a way of strutting one’s stuff, that is, a Ghanaian way of saying—“I am dancing confidently and expressively; I feel good.” Now, asaadua and most of the other Akan dances were born out of adowa with a basic hand movement: the revolving of the hands around each other. One of the accounts of adowa dance has it that the movement was created by fascinated warriors after observing the antics of a captured antelope. The antelope was tied to a tree, in readiness to be killed to prepare a potion for a very sick Asante queen mother (Aberewa Tutu) as per the instructions of the Abosom (the gods) (Young 2011). The queen mother’s recovery legitimized the adowa dance as a funeral dance. The

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basic Adowa movement employs the soft and calculated steps of the antelope, it involves a posture of a slightly tilted forward body, elbows and knees bent (plié) with the arms in front of the abdomen. As the dancer steps stealthily on every beat, just like the antelope, he/she revolves the hands around each other; the hand that moves up always has the palm turning to face upwards (the rhetorical gesture; ‘why’ question) and the hand that moves down faces downwards in opposition. Quotidian Akan movements such as biting the forefinger, and placing both palms on the stomach to express grief, are some of the moves also employed. Vestiges of such steps, signs, symbols and movement practices can be found in the highlife dance today. The above assertions mean that highlife movements include chachacha (up-market), asaadua (confidently happy and gay), adowa (movement in connection with death and grief) and several others. The dancer’s choice of movement will depend on the context (i.e., a joyous or sad moment), a phenomenon that can best be explained by Bourdieu’s habitus. The resulting performance, Bourdieu (1977) explains, has more meaning than the performer appreciates and “causes works and practices to be immediately intelligible and foreseeable, and hence taken for granted” (p. 80). Such processes produce cognitive structures in kinesthetic modes (Sklar 2001), which represent meaningful behaviors, some of which the dancer performs intuitively.

Popular Dance and Some Theoretical Frameworks Collins (2013, 2014), Barber (1987) and Agordoh (2013) aver that in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, African popular performance genres such as music, dance and drama, are new syncretic art forms, performed by the lower-class youth, by blending elements of local and Western cultures and technology. Now popular culture, including its dance, is born out of youth culture or more specifically, youth subculture (Baker 2004). I draw on the similar and more universal ideas of Clark et al. (1997) who examine “double articulation of youth sub-cultures—first, to their ‘parent’ culture (e.g. working class culture), second, to the dominant culture” (p.  15) as a necessary way of undertaking its analysis. The Ghanaian highlife can be considered a form of youth subculture (mostly precipitated through mass media), consisting of ‘parent’ culture movements (new moves based on Western influences in urban areas, such as chachacha) of

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the working or lower class, in addition to the dominant culture of the key ethnic groups especially the Akans (such as asaadua). Osumare (2012) categorizes the same process into imitation, adaptation and indigenization phases of the local/global mix (p. 15) that resulted in the creation of hiplife; a local version of hip-hop in Ghana. She further describes the dance versions of hiplife as the easiest to be transferred and locally recreated, because most of them had features recognizable in the traditional dances, which is one of my key arguments. By drawing on Collins’ (2014) and Barber’s (1987) syncretism in African popular culture and Osumare’s concepts of imitation, adaptation and indigenization processes, I argue that “double articulation” in dance means a continual draw on a community’s social experience or traditional society (dominant culture), which disrupts the effects of ‘pseudopodic’2 (constantly engulfing) global hegemony on popular dances (parent or class culture), creating indigenized contemporary dance practices. Cynthia J.C. Bull (2001) in a similar argument avers that the human body and movements are realities of social life that interact with and give meaning to other cultural traits. In popular dance performances, therefore, the body unveils crystalized cultural information and sometimes dialogically engages other performers to reconfigure these encoded movements to suit contemporary creations.

Bases of Some Mnemonic Artifacts in Postcolonial Ghanaian Popular Dance Benagr and Ofosu (2016) argue concerning the identity of Ghanaians within the global/local confluence represented by the different cultural practices of the various ethnic groups: “…To represent such an identity in an individual’s body would imply a ‘polybrid’ ethnic representation” (p. 81). Similarly, Ofosu and Deh (2013) suggest that the Ghanaian popular azonto dance, as a result of the influence of Ga traditional Kpanlogo and Gome dances, evolves continuously. The kpanlogo and Gome dance antecedents found in the azonto dance serve as archival mnemonic materials in post-independence Ghana. Azonto dance also serves as a reaction and resistance to the activities of Ghanaian high class and elites, and also as power negotiations of the marginalized youth with political leaders. The power negotiations are triggered by Ghana’s sociopolitical, cultural and economic exigencies so their representation tomorrow becomes memories

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of yesterday. While azonto dance movements that are purely for aesthetic purposes serve as procedural memory, the ones that have present and past meanings are memory for actions (Cohen 1989), and so the bodies that execute both movements momentarily become mnemonic artifacts. It is the captured moment of the body in motion displaying these mnemonic movements that actuates its identity as mnemonic artifacts or ‘objects of memory.’ In the next section, I identify how the Ghanaian youth through habitus and popular dance subculture and/or ‘double articulation’ transmute traditional dance movements into azonto styles. As a pioneer Ghanaian researcher of popular dance, I have used some of my encoded local terminologies for styles that originally did not have names, for simplicity. I have therefore examined two azonto dance movements such as the basic movement that signifies ‘ironing’ of clothes (toh nɔ, pronounced ‘toh nor’— translated as ‘iron it’) and drying clothes on the line (aaka). All these movement mannerisms have their roots in traditional as well as old popular dances, and I explain some of them in the ensuing sections.

Key Movements in Azonto and Their Mnemonic Elements azonto dance consists of several movement practices most of which have mnemonic functions, based on the context and zeitgeist. It is the interpretations and purposes of these old movements in combination with the new movements, their application in contemporary times, and the new meanings they engender that I espouse in this section. Toh nɔɔ or Ironing Movements The key movement in azonto dance is the toh nɔ (ironing) movement, which involves a combination of tweaked kpanlogo movements. Ofosu and Deh (2013) describe the basic movement in azonto dance as: The ironing movement of forward and backward thrust of the arm together with the shoulder to a 4/4-time rhythm, which is sometimes terminated by a punch in the air. Meanwhile, one of the dancer’s legs simultaneously does an isolated twist from the hip, on the ball of the foot… (51)

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Fig. 1  Dancers performing the toh nɔ or ironing movement of azonto dance. (Photo by Solomon Dartey)

The hand movement in azonto simulates ironing and the traditional way of washing, by thrusting one arm, placed low, upwards and downwards or frontwards and backwards, orchestrated from the same shoulder (Fig. 1). The movement is derived from the kpanlogo hand movement, which is also transmuted from the Ga kpa movement. Ofosu (2013/2014) avers: “the use of the left hand to drive away hunger and that of the right hand to draw in a bumper harvest is dominant” (44). The Ga kpa hand movement is executed by throwing the left hand forward, elbows bent and palms facing downward, while flicking the five fingers forward on the first and third beats. The left foot and right foot, with knees bent, alternatively stomps the floor, on every other beat, while the right hand, with elbows bent, alternatively grabs the air on the first and third beats (a gesture that means drawing blessings to mankind). Kpanlogo, which also means twisted kpa dance, combines some kpa and the Twist3 dance movement to create a novel dance. The basic movement of kpanlogo is best described by Paschal Young (2011):

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… legs bent, torso leaning forward and upper back slightly arched… the dancer reaches or extends the right hand out diagonally to the side (as if handing someone something, palm up), the left hand is faced palm down in front of the sternum at the same time, the right heel is extended to the same diagonal… To transition this movement to the opposite side, the dancer twists his or her hips twice (like a washing machine), with the left side of the hip initiating the move by pulling back (counts two and three). (163–164)

The open palm hand gesture is a quotidian Ghanaian movement that means ‘why,’ so a series of such movements would constitute a dance that continually asks the question ‘why.’ Kpanlogo, like the kpa, is danced in pairs, and the historicity of kpa and kpanlogo basic movement narratives suggest a dance that ‘hoots at hunger’ by celebrating bumper harvest, and another that questions ‘why’ a dancing partner is not responding to the opposite sex’s advances, symbolically representing youth freedom of expression. These same narratives, as well as their structural forms, are transmuted into azonto dance, therefore features such as the posture and tweaked hands and feet movements of kpa and kpanlogo dances become significant characteristics of azonto dance. Hence, azonto dance has the hand movement of kpanlogo and kpa fused into one movement, and tweaked twist feet movement from kpanlogo, which derives from the Twist dance of the West and the pseudo stomping of kpa. More importantly the ‘why’ movement, which sometimes is executed in azonto dance, can be a rhetorical question to government, on the plight and challenges of the lower-class youth; ‘why’ the huge unemployment? The blend between kpa and the Twist dances is in itself “double articulation” (Osumare 2012; Clark et al. 1997); the kpa movement represents the local commitment, and the Twist the global style. The creation and performance of kpanlogo dance by the Ghanaian youth falls within youth subculture. I make a similar argument for the azonto dance, which has movements based on kpanlogo and quotidian practices such as hand washing of clothes together with movements depicting communication on the mobile phone: a form of “double articulation” which makes them bodily representations of cultural memory or mnemonic artifacts. It is important to note that in communicative performances, such as dancing, the interlocutors have various levels of competence. A very competent performer or audience of azonto can effectively unpack the cultural memory and historical accounts infused therein. According to Assmann (2006), we deal with memory even in situations where the memory

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function is not obvious, suggesting that dance’s hidden meanings also possess mnemonic functions. Those dances that employ past or traditional dances together with current ones, per Assmann’s thoughts, are mnemonic artifacts. The azonto toh nɔ movement in totality employs kpa movement that has hunger, harvest and peace as its themes, kpanlogo that signifies flirtation and includes urban movements such as the Twist and youth unemployment challenges, all fused together as pieces of the present, past cultural practices and historic memories representing current youth dance expressions (a new Ghanaian identity marker). The period when the Twist came into vogue in Ghana marked a time of excitement and celebration of independence (in 1957). The Ghanaian youth, eager to express themselves in new ways, created their habitus by borrowing movements from the Twist to create kpanlogo, which marked a form of upward social mobility just by practicing the colonial master’s culture. The appropriation of kpa dance in the creation of kpanlogo was a subtle way of recounting a cultural practice (cultural memory)—hunger and a dance of unity. The mnemonic and historic narratives in Twist, Kpa and Kpanlogo are all therefore encapsulated in azonto dance (habitus). Aaka or Drying Movements The aaka or wash-and-wear movements particularly mimic the traditional way of washing clothes with the hands and then hanging them on the drying-line, which fits into one of the azonto dance themes: washing of clothing is a menial job for the Ga marginalized youth. The dancer, with both elbows slightly flexed, swings both arms from the left side of the hip to the front of the upper torso (fully flexed), and then drops the arms to the right side of the body, all done within three quick steps. The movement is then repeated from the right side of the hip to the left side (as depicted in Fig. 2). Even though the movements describe the work activities of the Ga marginalized youth, they are developed from embodied movements of the Ga kple, a religious dance that has movement mannerisms that depict sea waves and other themes. The basic kple movement follows the same three-step pattern as kpa and aaka foot movement, and a similar arm movement pattern to aaka, but in this instance, the dancer is flat-footed and the hands are held in a slight fist or sometimes they handle props such as brooms. The elbows do not flex

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Fig. 2  Dancers performing aaka movements with hands lifted and the arms and wrists flexed on the first beat. (Picture by Benedictus Mattson)

fully but are held at about ninety degrees and are marginally flexed as they move to the front of the torso and are eventually dropped to one side of the body alternately. Aristedes Hargoe (2017) describes how themes of the sea, its waves and fishing boats are addressed in the kple songs as mediums,4 and acolytes5 perform the corresponding movement patterns. By performing the aaka movement, the Ga youth are reliving religious dance movements (cultural memory) that have been practiced for centuries and still serve as catalysts between mediums and the gods. The dancing bodies of aaka dance therefore serve as mnemonic artifacts by bringing religious dance confined to the villages into remembrance in the city, as re-significations of the youths’ current sociopolitical challenges. The dance, in addition, serves as sociopolitical commentary by Ga marginalized youth, concerning their working practices and the need for better jobs (Ofosu and Deh 2013). Interestingly, a dance concerned with activities of and on the sea (water) is employed in a contemporary dance that has washing as its theme (another form of “double articulation”). The movement therefore serves as an unconscious plea to the Ga gods for

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assistance as well as a demand to policymakers for better jobs (Ofosu 2019). The creative process of aaka movement can be explicated by Bourdieu’s habitus, which suggests that social practice is a composite continuum of subjectively motivated but socially generated characteristics that cyclically fine-tunes the creative processes from within. This social practice helps to recollect and perpetuate the existence of aspects of current cultural and historical activities, necessary for development. It is the embodiment of these informative current and historical movement practices (forms of cognitive structures), based on Cohen’s (1989) procedural memory and memory for actions that underscores my assertion that a popular dancer’s body harbors cultural memory and therefore is a mnemonic artifact.

Conclusion The chapter highlights how the remote history of Ghana was handed down orally and through bodily communications, musical instruments, artifacts and several others. I have also argued that the creation of the Ghana Dance Ensemble and the School of Music and Drama, helped in the re-propagation of significant cultural practices in music, dance and drama across the nation. The constant witnessing of Ghanaian cultural performance by the youth resulted in the embodiment of such practices, which therefore became resource materials for new creations. I have also argued that the creative process of popular dances can be explained by the concept of habitus as applied by Bourdieu (1977): “a socially constituted system of cognitive and motivating structures, and the socially structured situation in which the agents’ interests are defined, including the objective functions and the subjective motivations of their practices.” The implication is that popular dance in Ghana is a communal creation of the lower class youth, operating as agents through meaningful cognitive practices that address particular issues based on individual inspirations, which become cultural practices over time. Sklar (2001), by drawing from Mark Johnson’s 1987 model, describes such practices as “cognitive structures in kinesthetic mode.” I have also cited Clark, Hall, Jefferson and Robert’s application of “double articulation” as a theory that explains the syncretic nature of popular dance, while making special reference to Collins and Barber’s syncretism in African popular culture. I have used the Ghanaian highlife as an emblematic explanation of the creative process of popular dance and demonstrated that it is through these

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very processes that popular dances are currently created in Ghana, also advanced by Osumare’s imitation, adaptation and indigenization. A Ghanaian popular dance such as the azonto toh nɔ, involves mnemonic movements of kpa that repudiate hunger, and kpanlogo, through which men and women flirtatiously engage with each other as a form of freedom of expression during Ghana’s independence (a symbolic reminder of the period) as well as questioning the government on the lack of jobs. Their themes are therefore inscribed on the dancers’ bodies and exhibited at set moments. In a similar vein, the azonto aaka movement combines religious kple movements that serve as a conduit during communication with the gods. While the kple movement depicts simulation of sea waves, the aaka movement represents the drying of clothing: a confluence of movements as prayer to the gods and questioning the lack of better jobs. These aforementioned popular dance styles are current dances that exhibit “double articulation” and syncretic practices because they involve local and global or Western dances and musical influences (Osumare 2012; Robertson 1995; Clark et al. 1997). This chapter therefore concludes that in current popular dance practices in Ghana, there exists the transmutation and mixture of several embodied traditional and popular dance movements, which have historical, current, local, foreign materials, including cognitive resources, appropriated as new significations, all of which possess mnemonic qualities. Ghanaian popular dances are knowledge-based, cognitive structures in kinesthetic modes constructed through individual and collective memories: what I term MNEMONIC ARTIFACTS, and which are important materials for contemporary choreographers, historians and dance ethnographers in education.

Notes 1. Okpewho (1992, p. 10) gives an example of such scholarly schisms in earlier researches on folklore: “Where as evolutionists saw the folklore of a present as survival from the past (mostly misunderstood by the users)…Malinowski’s generation saw it in terms of its usefulness for the society—its functions.” Okpewho further argues that “Most [there were others who opposed this thought] Europeans treated African culture…as primitive and inferior to their own,…African scholars approached this culture with a feeling of understanding and pride” (p. 12).

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2. A coined term based on the engulfing nature of the pseudopodia (temporary protrusions acting as limbs) of the amoeba (single-celled animal). 3. According to Smith-Autard (2011), “The dance was originally created by Chubby Chucker and was basically a rotation of the hips in one direction while the knees went the opposite way and the arms moved in counter-­ direction, or circled. Sometimes done flat-footed, variations included pivoting the ball of the foot with the heel lifted, transferring weight from one foot to the other, and raising one leg while twisting” (p. 99). 4. A medium is an individual who gets possessed by a spirit thus giving him/ her supernatural powers, wisdom and soothsaying abilities. 5. An acolyte is an attendee or apprentice of the experienced medium.

References Abloso, A.B. 2013. The Promotion of Unity in Diversity through Dance Theatre: The Ghana Dance Ensemble. In One in the Many: Nation Building through Cultural Diversity, ed. Helen Lauer, Nana A.A. Amfo, and Joanna Boampong, 55–68. Accra: Sub-Saharan Publishers. Agordoh, A.A. 2013. Music in African Communities. In Africa in Contemporary Perspectives: A Textbook for Undergraduate Students, ed. Takyiwaa Manuh, and Esi Sutherland-Addy, 430–444. Accra: Sub Saharan Publishers. Assmann, J. 2006. Form as a Mnemonic Device: Cultural Texts and Cultural Memory. In Aman, ed. Richard A.  Horsley, Jonathan A.  Draper, and John Miles Foley, 67–82. Minneapolis: Fortress. Baker, Chris. 2004. The Sage Dictionary of Cultural Studies. London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage Publications. Barber, K. 1987. Popular Arts in Africa. African Studies Review 30 (3): 1–78. Benagr, S., and T.B.K. Ofosu. Spring, 2016. Ghanaian Screendance Perspectives: The Nuance of ‘Sankofaism’ as Emerging Aesthetics and Rejection of Orthodoxy. The International Journal of Screendance 6: 78–93. Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge, New York (U.S.A), Oakland (Aus): Cambridge University Press. ———. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of Judgment of Taste. Translated by R. Nice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bull, C.J.C. 2001. Looking at Movement as Culture: Contact Improvisation to Disco. In Moving History/Dancing Cultures, ed. Ann Dils and Ann Cooper Albright, 404–413. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Clark, J., S. Hall, T. Jefferson, and B. Roberts. 1997. Subcultures, Cultures and Class. In The Subcultures Reader, ed. Ken Gelder and Sarah Thornton, 110–111. London: Routledge. Cohen, R.L. March 1989. Memory for Action Events: The Power of Enactment. Educational Psychology Review 1 (1): 57–80.

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Collins, J. 2013. A Historical Review of Popular Entertainment in Sub-Saharan Africa. In Africa in Contemporary Perspective: A Textbook for Undergraduate Students, ed. Takyiwaa Manuh and Esi Sutherland-Addy, 445–466. Accra: Sub-­ Saharan Publishers. ———. 2014. Ghanaian Popular Performance: A Century of Changing Urban Venues, Spaces and Identities. In The Performing Arts in Africa: Ghanaian Perspectives, ed. Awo Mana Asiedu, E. John Collins, Francis Gbormittah, and F. Nii Yartey, 43–57. Accra: Ayebia Clark Publishing Limited. Gyekye, K. 2013. Philosophy, Culture and Vision: African Perspectives. Accra: SubSaharan Publishers. Hargoe, A.N. 2014. Dance in Worship: Disposition of Islam and Christianity. In The Performing Arts in Africa: Ghanaian Perspective, ed. Awo Mana Asiedu, E. John Collins, Francis Gbormittah, and F. Nii-Yartey, 96–106. Accra: Ayebia Clarke Publishing Limited. Hargoe, N.A. 2017. Performance Aesthetics of the Klama Dance of Gbgugbla (Prampram), Ghana. PhD dissertation, University of Cape Coast, Ghana. Keightley, E. 2008. Engaging with Memory. In Research Methods for Cultural Studies, ed, ed. Michael Pickering. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Manuh, T., and E.  Sutherland-Addy. 2013. Introduction. In Africa in Contemporary Perspective: A Textbook for Undergraduate Students, ed. T. Manuh and Sutherland Addy, 1–12. Accra: Sub Saharan Publishers. Nketia, J.H. 1963. Folk Songs in Ghana. Accra, London, Glasgow, New York etc.: Oxford University Press. Ofosu, T.B.K. 2009. Popular and Scholarly Choreography in Ghana: A Synthesis of Dance Aesthetics and Current Trends. MFA dissertation, University of Ghana, Legon. ———. 2013/2014. Rap Culture and Its Parallels: The ‘La kpa’ and Akan Praise Singing in Perspective. Journal of Performing Arts. 4 (4): 41–54. ———. 2019. Embodied Rhetoric in Ghanaian Popular Dances: Youth Sociopolitical Marginality. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Ghana, Legon. Ofosu, T.B.K., and Tabitha Deh. 2013. The Azonto Dance-A Ghanaian New Creation: Exploring New Boundaries of Popular Dance Forms. African Performance Review 7 (1): 45–64. Okpewho, I. 1992. African Oral Literature. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Osumare, H. 2012. The Hiplife in Ghana: West African Indigenization of Hip-hop. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Robertson, R. 1995. Glocalisation: Time-Space and Homogeneity. In Global Modernities, eds. Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash and Roland Robertson. London: Sage Publications.

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Sklar, D. Summer 2001. Dialogues: Dance Ethnography: Where Do We Go from Here? Introduction. Dance Research Journal. 33 (1): 91–92. Smith-Autard, J.M. 2011. Dance Composition (4th ed). New York: Routledge. Taylor, D. 2006. Performance and/as History. JSTOR 50 (1): 67–86. Yartey, F.N. 2016. African Dance in Ghana: Contemporary Transformations. London: Mot Juste Limited. Young, P.Y. 2011. Music and Dance Traditions of Ghana: History, Performance and Teaching. Jefferson, N. Carolina: McFarland and Company Limited.

PART III

National Memories and Amnesias

Csángó Space and Time in the Hungarian Táncház Revival Kirsty Kay

It seems to me, my father said wracking his brain long and in vain, that nothing is as sacred as that which we do not remember Péter Eszterházy, Celestial Harmonies

Introduction Travelling from Budapest to the Serketánc1 folk camp in north-eastern Hungary takes the best part of a hot summer’s day. Winding along a long, dusty track into the yellow-green folds of the Zemplén hills, the final destination is a bright, sunny farm overlooking the vineyards of the Tokaj valley. Yurts and big tents dot the corners of the main field: women in linen dresses and shirtless men float in and out; the site of the previous night’s fire a gathering point for the relaxed campers gently ambling around. Music wafts past with the change in breeze, violins that cannot be seen play nearby, and in the bottom corner of the field the Yurta Mare2 stands out: with open sides, the large wooden yurt has windows carved with cut-outs showing musicians, dancers, earth and sky and the

K. Kay (*) University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Parfitt (ed.), Cultural Memory and Popular Dance, Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71083-5_9

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movement in between, capturing the camp as if a scene from a folk tale. Inside the Yurta Mare an earth floor is regularly watered so it does not dry out from all the dancing; the small stage is littered with instruments that people aimlessly pick up and play together. When music starts, someone will get up to lead a dance and invite others to join in. Before long, a circle has formed and others get up and dance to the asymmetric rhythms of the üto ̋gardon, a cello-like percussion instrument, the group propelling itself faster and faster around, holding hands and stamping in time with the music until the earth floor rises up in dust. *** The Serketánc camp is one of many Hungarian folk arts camps held every summer and that make up the season of events within the táncház (dance house) revival—an urban folk dance movement that emerged in Communist Hungary in the 1970s. Part of wider social movements and popular culture that developed during János Kádár’s liberalising ‘goulash communist’ period, the táncház revival began as a form of semi-legitimate youth entertainment that reproduced authentic Hungarian folk dances and their social and aesthetic conditions (Frigyesi 1996; Fülemile and Balogh 2008; Szilárd Jávorszky 2013). Over the 1970s and 1980s, the movement’s increasing popularity contributed to the nascent ethnonational forms of resistance to state socialism (Quigley 2013, 2016; Taylor 2008a, 2008b). In the post-communist era, the táncház revival has become an institutionalised and popular folk-dance movement with a season of classes and events across the country, supported by state funding and a strong local economy. In 2011, the táncház teaching method was awarded UNESCO intangible cultural heritage (ICH) status for its successful and transferable method of kinaesthetic dance teaching (UNESCO n.d.). The táncház revival is an example of popular folk revival (Livingston 1999; Bithell and Hill 2014), and is  a strong example of the heritage industry’s reproduction of culture (Kirschenblatt-Gimblett 2004; Daugbjerg and Fibiger 2011). Reframed in the post-communist era as a form of cultural heritage, the táncház movement is at its heart a political project, a “subtle politics of the everyday” that reproduces forms of the past in the wider social sphere as a means of national governmentality (De Caesari 2012, p. 400). But whereas most cultural heritage adheres to the logic of the nation-state and is administered from within it (Herzfeld 2008, p.  146), in Hungary, the national cultural heritage that is being

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safeguarded transgresses state borders. The táncház model was awarded UNESCO ICH status based on its popularity amongst  the ethnic Hungarian diaspora and national minorities as well as the transferability of the teaching method to other cultural groups (UNESCO 2011). The táncház model therefore promotes an active nation-building project through the embodied collective memory practice of folk dance (Quigley 2013; Taylor 2008a, 2008b). The táncház revival began as a rediscovery of the Hungarian minority groups’ traditional culture in neighbouring countries by young Hungarians and developed in the post-communist period to be part of a broader political project to re-incorporate those minorities into the Hungarian national community. After the collapse of the multi-ethnic empires in Central and Eastern Europe after World War I, Hungary’s statehood was further complicated when the Treaty of Trianon carved up the former Austro-­ Hungarian Empire, creating a Hungarian nation-state that ceded two-thirds of its historical territory to neighbouring countries. The ethnic Hungarian communities that lived in these territories became what Rogers Brubaker terms the “accidental diaspora” of the “post-multinational” empire regions (2000, p. 1). The annexation of territory that was considered to be part of its ethnic homeland, and a significant source of traditional culture, has been largely processed in Hungary as a national trauma (Kovács 2016; Feischmidt 2014). By the 1960s, authentically lived folk culture had all but disappeared from the collectivised and industrialised  state-socialist  Hungary. In their countercultural search for an authentic Hungarian folk culture, young amateur musicians and dancers had to travel further afield to the Hungarian minority groups living in neighbouring countries, where traditional lifestyles had been retained. What they discovered, however, was not only an uninterrupted traditional culture but also an increased awareness of the poor treatment of Hungarian minorities living in neighbouring countries (Kürti 2001, pp. 148–49). The campers in the Yurta Mare were dancing a circle dance from the Moldavian Csángó minority from present-day Romania. Inhabiting rural areas of the eastern Carpathian Mountains, the Csángó are a disparate cluster of communities known as “one of Europe’s most enigmatic and least known ethnic minorities” (Baker 1997, p. 658). Considered endangered due to their declining linguistic participation and extensive outward migration, the Csángó are at times defined by their Roman Catholic religion, their use of the Csángó dialect (an archaic version of Hungarian), their traditional culture or their self-identification (Baker 1997; Vilmos

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2002). Prior to 1920, the Csángó communities straddled the old border between the historical principalities of Transylvania, in the Hungarian kingdom, and Moldavia, which became part of the Romanian state. The Csángó are therefore further complicated by two competing nationalising discourses that have been built up in Romania and Hungary (Barszczewska 2008), as well as being a historical borderland/diaspora culture in the Hungarian imagination (Clifford 1994, p.  303). The Hungarian model defines the Csángó ethnographically through their language, religion and traditional culture, developed in the nineteenth century, whereas the Romanian model, developed in the early twentieth century, defines the Csángó in social scientific and racial terms (Davis 2019). As a result, the Csángó are an ambiguous group that seem to have “radically shifting meanings and boundaries”, guided by national ontologies at various historical moments (Cotoi 2013, p.  434). When investigating Hungarian nation-building and memory production, then, the Csángó as a symbolic connection to the ancient Hungarian past provides a useful lens on how Hungary’s past is constructed in the present. Understood to be an ethnic Hungarian community that migrated from Hungary or the nearby Szeklerland in the Middle Ages, Csángó traditional culture has been part of Hungarian national folklore collecting since the nineteenth century (Baker 1997). Although ethnomusicologists in the early twentieth century included traditional Csángó culture in the corpus of Hungarian folk, by the post-Stalinist period, the region was largely cut off from Hungarian intellectual life and traditional Csángó culture was once again to be ‘discovered’ (Kürti 2001). It was only with fieldwork undertaken by the generation of folklorists that gave rise to the táncház movement in the late 1960s and 1970s that the region was (re)discovered for a new generation of Hungarians (Kallós and Martin 1989; Martin 2001). Undertaking an ethnography between 2013 and 2016, I participated in Csángó táncház in Budapest, attended folk camps in Hungary and Romania and undertook interviews with individuals involved at varying levels of participation in the contemporary and historical scene.

Ildikó’s Return Overlooking the camp at the top of the field there is a white farmhouse owned by the main organiser, Ildikó. Ildikó grew up in the Zemplén region during the late Communist era, a period of political and social turmoil in Hungary. During the Stalinist era, the Hungarian majority and

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minority regions were largely separated and travel between the regions was rare. It was with the increased liberalisation of culture in the Kádár era from the late 1960s that Hungarians became aware that the minority groups retained many traditional forms of Hungarian culture. By the 1970s and 1980s, increasing awareness of the poor treatment of Hungarian minorities by neighbouring socialist governments, in particular those living in Romania under Nicolae Ceaușescu, contributed to the burgeoning national opposition to state socialism and demands for democratic transformation (Kürti 2001). The desire to see a reunified ethnic community was confirmed at the forefront of the national imagination when the first democratically elected Prime Minister József Antall proclaimed in 1990 that he was “in spirit” the prime minister of 15 million Hungarians, a figure which included the minority populations (Schöpflin 2002, p. 371). Ildikó  discovered folk dance during this time. She began attending táncház socially aged 18, and the Moldavian Csángó circle dances spoke the most to her. Whereas most Hungarian folk dances are for couples, the Moldavian Csángó dance in a circle. Ildikó loved “looking and seeing that everyone’s happy and smiling”, and found the Moldavian Csángó style “warmer, more elemental, simpler” and less difficult to approach than other styles of Hungarian folk dance. The simplicity and collective nature of the dance inspired her creativity, leading her and her friends to combine Moldavian Csángó music and dance with arts, crafts and puppet theatre. The early 1990s saw the rediscovery of Csángó culture by Hungarians on a mass scale, and their incorporation into the Hungarian national consciousness via its folk dance culture. In 1990, a táncház group from Jászberény, a town in Hungary, invited Moldavian Csángó musicians and dancers from Romania to an event to draw attention to the plight of the Moldavian Csángó minority and showcase their folk culture. One of the group, Lőrincz Györgyné Hodorog, known as Luca-néni, was an elderly singer, storyteller, dancer and healer from Klézse, a largely Csángó-­ inhabited commune in Moldavian Romania, who often assisted ethnographers visiting the region. Luca-néni had become known in Hungary for her public defence of traditional Csángó culture and language rights in the face of suppression by the Romanian Communist government and she was the subject of a film shown on national television in Hungary in May 1990. Once in Hungary, however, she fell ill and was unable to return to Romania. Allegedly proclaiming that she wanted to be “buried in the motherland”, that is, Hungary, she passed away and was laid to rest in Jászberény (Halasz 1991/1992).3 Her burial site was turned into a

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pilgrimage centre and Jászberény is now the site of an annual Csángó festival4 with a “folk mass” (folkmise) held in Luca-néni’s honour. Luca-néni’s reburial marked a symbolic reordering of the Csángó into the ethnic Hungarian community in the early post-communist period. This is not only an example of how burials and reburials were used to both “create” and “reaffirm the political community” in Hungary, as Katherine Verdery (1999), p. 108) notes, but this also highlights the role the táncház movement, and folk culture more generally, played in reincorporating the Hungarian minorities into the national self in the fractured days of post-­ socialist transition (Kürti 2001, p. 158). After transition to democracy, Ildikó lived in cities around Hungary and in the USA, but returned to the region she grew up in with her husband when they were expecting their first child so that she wouldn’t be considered a gyütt-ment, a foreigner or incomer.5 After giving birth to six children and building a working farm, Ildikó knew that she and her family would not be able to travel to discover the world, so she decided to bring the world to them. With friends from the Moldavian táncház scene and the Győr Puppet Theatre that she had been a part of, she set upon organising a “family” camp, bringing Moldavian Csángó dance to the north-­ eastern corner of Hungary. *** In the 1990s, most newly democratised Central and East European states had some form of ethnic minority “problem” to contend with. The nation-­states that were created after World War I left many minority ethnic groups in neighbouring countries as a result of the redrawn borders, a fact that was suppressed during the Communist period. Fearing the kind of violence seen in the former Yugoslavia, Western states made minority protections a condition for EU membership (Smith 2002). Successive Hungarian governments subsequently pursued a nation-building strategy that can be termed “trans-sovereign” in relation to its external minorities (Csergő and Goldmeier 2004, p. 25). This meant extending national governance beyond state boundaries to include the Hungarian co-ethnic minority groups, but not in a way that made irredentist claims or attempted border change. This strategy supports its minorities in the form of Hungarian citizenship and voting rights,6 and through governmental and civil support for Hungarian language and culture in the regions (see Waterbury 2010; Pogonyi 2018).

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Trans-sovereign support for Csángó culture has developed both formally and informally since the 1990s within the framework of cultural heritage. Governmental organisations and charities support large-scale táncház events,7 folkloristics research departments,8 through formal dance education and teacher training up to university level,9 and with international language and heritage protections.10 At the informal level, three decades of the táncház economy has built a network of Hungarian folk enthusiasts travelling to Romania for folk camps and on ethnographic collecting trips, with Csángó musicians and dancers invited to Hungary to perform and teach at events and folk camps. Ildikó and her friends are part of this wider trans-sovereign cultural exchange. Every year Moldavian Csángó musicians and dancers make the ten-hour journey to the camp, a mixture of old adatközlő[k] (lit. “data provider[s]”), a person from a village or rural area considered to be an authentic source of local musical knowledge who is tasked with transmitting it to the community, along with adults who participate in Hungarian cultural organisations and often, their children. One of Ildikó’s main visions for the camp was to have a natural, family-style environment where multiple generations can interact and learn Hungarian folk dance. The camp structure extends the meaning of “family” to Ildikó and her friends’ wider artistic, and ethnic, community, recreating a pastoral Csángó community for whoever wants to join in. The trans-sovereign nation-building strategy of Hungary’s post-communist era symbolically reunifies ethnonational territory where it is not possible in real, geopolitical terms. But just as transition to democracy failed to deliver a concrete return to a unified national self territorially, so did it uncover an unstable national past in the search for the origins of the political community through the folk dance of its minority groups.

Unstable Transitions and Distant Pasts Ildikó’s generation came of age at a time when the artificiality of state ideology was strongly felt. After de-Stalinisation in the 1950s and the 1956 revolution, there were increasing semi-legitimate avenues for dissent (Tőkés 1996, p. 168). In particular, ethnocultural forms such as folk dance provided young people with a sense of authenticity in a world saturated by ideology. Democratic transition in the 1990s promised to do away with the inauthentic public and political spheres created by 50 years of state socialism. But rather than a sweeping transformation, the new liberal order

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feared right-wing authoritarianism and the potential for regional violence and so aligned themselves with former Communist party elites to ensure stability (Molnár 2016, p.  169). This led to an ongoing political legitimacy crisis whereby democratic transition was seen as “inherently flawed” (ibid.), and the desire for a “return to normality” (Trencsényi 2018, p.  278) that propelled the anti-communist movement continued in the post-communist reality. The ongoing search for an authentic politics outside of ideology formed around what Zsuzsa Gille describes as a “desire to regain a space that is apolitical, where modes of being, other than the political, are possible” (2010, p. 21). János is one of Ildikó’s close friends and another of the camp’s organisers. János’s relationship with folk culture began while working as a radio operator during his military service in the late Communist period. Rather than listening to military news or commands over the radio he was operating, he would instead tune into stations playing Márta Sebestyén and her band Muzsikás, who performed Csángó music and were becoming increasingly popular. János said he felt a great instability when “the world” changed from a Communist to democratic political system. This magnified his discovery of Csángó folk culture into something much more significant, saying that as a result, “meeting with their thousand or maybe several thousands of years of traditions was an enormous, enormous experience”. Democratic transition in Hungary saw “culture wars” (Trencsényi 2018) emerge, ignited over what an authentic vision of Hungary should look like. With ongoing political and social instability in the present, focus increasingly turned to competing visions of the past (Nadkarni 2010). The “nostalgic turn” that enveloped post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe has been well documented: the failures of transition to provide political stability and economic security led to phenomena such as Ostalgie in the former East Germany, a nostalgia for the socialist past that is understood as both a means of coming to terms with recent communist history and to provide a sense of historical continuity from one ideological epoch to another (see, e.g. Yurchak 2005; Berdahl 2010). In Hungary, however, there has been a reticence towards this kind of socialist nostalgia (Nadkarni 2010; Hann 2015). The nostalgic turn in post-communist Hungary is understood not merely as an attempt to construct historical continuity, but is in fact part of a broader social movement that “attempts to revive and relive certain aspects of a distant past” in rediscovering an authentic national self (Kürti 2018, p. 219, emphasis added). This, it is argued, is

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because the twentieth century for Hungary was so tumultuous that it was necessary to reach further back into their past for a stable national and religious sense of self (Hann 2015, p. 103). For János, the Csángó represented a Hungarian people that were not just from the past, but from such a distant past that they lived outside of a time affected by politics. The lack of information about the Csángó minority meant that fragments of their traditional culture were highly valued and information was passed amongst enthusiasts during the late Communist and early post-communist periods.11 The Csángó were first described to János in quasi-magical terms: “They talked about all sorts of amazing things, about how strong these [Csángó] people are. But at the same time how sensitive they are”. This almost mythical nature was confirmed to János on his first trip to Romania, when on entering the Gyimes mountain pass on a train he looked up out of the window: […] then, if I hadn’t seen it and didn’t remember it, then perhaps I would doubt it, I saw a woman walking with a fir tree on her shoulders. […] it was slammed onto one of her shoulders and she was walking. I somehow felt that I had entered the world of the giants.

The desire to reach beyond the twentieth century in its national nostalgia could be understood as an attempt to retreat to a time before the Treaty of Trianon split the ethnic homeland and its people into minority and majority. But Hungary’s history as a nation in Europe has always been an unstable mix of multi-ethnic empire, with shifting national borders, incoming aggressors and internal enemies, leading to a mnemonic search into the nation’s prehistory for its stable origins (Gerő 1995). The Magyars were a group of Finno-Ugric-speaking nomadic tribes that travelled from Asia and, according to the national narrative, settled in the Carpathian Basin and Christianised in the ninth to tenth centuries CE (Berend et al. 2013). A search for the authentic national self in Hungary has therefore always been a search for Hungary’s pre-Christian origins, which until very recently was traced only through linguistic and cultural artefacts (Zimonyi 2005, p.  87) As a result, competing political groups have historically “formed and propagated different models of history and models of peasant culture in order to legitimate themselves” (Hofer 1994, p. 8). With Hungarian national time reaching beyond political, that is, European and Christian, time, the archaic Csángó musical tradition

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provides a sense of continuity to this ancient past and to the ethnic nation’s purported Eastern origins. János placed Csángó music and dance traditions on a universal, spiritual plain, with the Csángó wind instruments and dance styles akin to those found amongst Central and North American indigenous groups. To János, Csángó music and dance culture lies outside of what he perceives to be the “abnormal”, dysfunctional Communist and post-communist worlds. The Moldavian circle dances to János are “a distillation […] of living human communities, communities that work”. In these communities, bodily vernacular traditions are passed down the generations, providing a sense of temporal continuity that cannot be disrupted by the vagaries of politics and ideology. The search for an authentic national community through traditional dance culture has therefore never just been about preserving the dance repertoires, but has been an eventful, sui generis process of nation-building. The táncház movement as a collective memory practice therefore has three interrelated aspects being recreated: the dance itself, the traditional community form in which the dance is enacted, and the act of searching for and discovering the authentic national culture.

The Search for a National Dance By the end of the nineteenth century, popular forms of dance such as the verbunkos had developed to reflect the multi-ethnic, cosmopolitan Habsburg city Budapest had become, with its German, Jewish and Roma alongside Hungarian influences (Loya 2013). But by the turn of the century, composer Béla Bartók was influenced by the increasing national movement and so sought out a more authentic national musical style in opposition to this. In doing so, he created the ethnomusicological method that would be replicated until the present day: travelling to Transylvania to collect folk repertoires in their authentic state, that is, in the peasant village (Schneider 2006; Frigyesi 1996). At the same time, tourist groups and youth movements became part of wider nation-building efforts, leading Hungarian city-dwellers to the countryside to ‘discover’ the origins of the Hungarian people in the authentic peasant communities of the multi-­ ethnic empire (Vari 2006; Szabó 2011). After World War I, the break-up of Hungary meant that the rural regions and peasant groups that were the objects of Hungarian nationbuilding strategies were transformed into external minorities overnight. Intellectual movements developed to justify Hungary’s reunification

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through reaffirming the Hungarian minority communities—largely, the peasant communities—into the national imagination. They did so by reasserting the then-unpopular model of the Hungarians’ “Asiatic” origins using the Romantic, Herderian Volkskunde (folkloristics) model of European anthropology (Sozan 1977; Kontler 2011), which could unite the ethnic nation through their immaterial qualities rather than through territorial unity. By the 1930s, proponents of the népi mozgalom (populist movement) were reshaping the meaning of the Hungarian national self. Writers viewed folk culture as the source of the ethnic Hungarian soul (Taylor 2008b); ethnographers investigated how the “peasant personality and worldview” fostered music and dance traditions (Sozan 1977, p. 252); and, perhaps most famously, ethnomusicologist Zoltán Kodály proclaimed that folk music was the “musical mother tongue of the nation” (1964, p.  145). Folk dance and the traditional lifestyles that engendered it therefore became a form of nation-building through collective memory practice. Understanding the power of a shared past to build a collective future, ethnographers believed that through the performance of traditional dance forms, a strong, united Hungarian ethnic nation could be (re)constructed (Taylor 2008b). If the territory could not be reunified, the soul of the nation could be through its embodied re-enactment. Officially, these ideas were discarded with the onset of Communism after World War II.  Ethnographic collecting continued but was largely yoked to new ideological purposes. Adhering to the Stalinist model of culture that was to be “national in form, socialist in content”, post-war Hungary followed Moscow’s model of the state folk ensemble as established by Igor Moiseyev in the 1930s (Diószegi 2008, p. 5), taking classically trained musicians and dancers to perform state-approved, choreographed repertoires on the stage based on folk elements collected from the rural working classes (Hooker 2002, pp. 54–55). Kodály and his followers were only saved by their popularity: rather than complete dismissal, formerly renowned ethnomusicologists were relegated to forgotten research departments deemed inconsequential by the new regime (Péteri 2016, pp. 128–31). It was in this setting of artificially staged folk performance and impenetrable national borders that young people began to seek out authentic forms of traditional music and dance. With the loosening of regulations in the late 1960s, people were able to organise their own dance events (Greene 2013), and Hungarians could travel to Romania and vice versa.

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This meant that the younger generation, influenced by the Western folk revival led by artists such as Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan, suddenly found a seemingly undiscovered treasure trove of authentic folk music and dance that they could call their own.12 In Transylvania, they discovered not only authentic dances but authentically lived traditional lives (Halmos 2000; Martin 2001). The revival that developed on their return to Budapest was based around the recreation not just of the authentic dance moves and music, but of the cultural milieu in which it was performed. It was not enough to embody the dance moves to build an authentic Hungarian national self, but to recreate the natural, ethnicised, social world and, indeed, the process of national discovery itself. This proved to be a valuable form of protest, providing as it did temporary release from a static and artificial Communist society. It was the very temporary nature of the dance and its social recreation that gave it power. Where the search for an ethnically stable time led young folk dance enthusiasts to a point before political time, its power lay internally, in the embodied, present moment, also a time beyond the reach of politics.

Opening the Doors In creating a space for people to dance the Moldavian Csángó circle dance, Ildikó, her family and friends also reproduce the search for and discovery of the Hungarian national self for the individual. Zsombor and Virág are 18-year-old school friends from Győr in north-western Hungary. They have both learnt folk dance since they were children: Virág has been brought to táncház since she was a young child and has danced Csángó style since she was a toddler; her parents met while working at táncház events and folk camps. Zsombor attended folk dance classes from nursery school before giving up in his teens, now only dancing Moldavian Csángó styles. Zsombor and Virág travelled with friends to the camp after attending another summer music festival, viewing their participation as part of an alternative lifestyle that rejects mainstream culture and the modern style of living they are experiencing in their late teens. Since the 1960s, protest movements have been increasingly narrated by their participants in terms of their eventful nature. Francesca Polletta (2006) argues that these ambiguous, rather than clear-cut stories of a spontaneous coming-together of individuals for a cause make protests more politically effective: they are opened up to personal interpretation, allowing for individuals to ground the political messages internally and

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around notions of personal authenticity. In the well-documented origin story of the táncház revival (see, e.g. Halmos 2000; Kelemen 2008), what started as a private event for a small group of enthusiasts turned into a musical revival and national movement that contributed to the social transformation of Hungary at one event: And then Tinka said the doors must be opened, and whoever wanted to come in should just come. This is how the táncház grew into an open event, […] with the announcement “the doors must be opened!”13

In the 1970s, táncház events were held in kulturház(ak), house(s) of culture—community centres that were built “to civilize people and to spread the socialist lifestyle” (Horváth 2009, p. 176). Beat, jazz and other youth subcultures that were permitted in the houses of culture contained performative elements that had to go through official channels for dissemination (obtaining permits, performing to audiences, etc.). As a result, they were co-opted into the state socialist project. But, as Mary Taylor (2008a, pp. 134–45) points out, the intimate and eventful nature of social dancing at táncház events meant there was nothing tangible for the state to co-opt. It is this intangible, eventful quality that allowed for a powerful protest movement to develop that punctuated socialist time with an embodied ethnic moment and avoided being absorbed into the communist cultural mechanism. In post-communist Central and Eastern Europe, the eventful, embodied moment has retained its power in grassroots social movements, with groups seeking authentic, depoliticised action to bring about social change (see Zhuralev 2018). But the language and methods of the anti-­communist resistance movements have also transferred over into mainstream politics. The young resistance fighters of the 1980s became the new political elites in the 1990s and turned to “the very same national frames, narratives, and symbols that they employed in the freedom struggles” to legitimise themselves (Pogonyi 2017, pp.  242–43). In Hungary, the struggle for the minority communities and the ‘lost homeland’ narrative of Hungarian history proved a vision of ethnic authenticity that could be fought for in the political sphere. The táncház movement has been institutionalised and is part of the wider national heritage regime that supports a politics of ethnic authenticity that Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party utilise as part of their populist, right-wing “illiberal democracy” (Orbán 2014). Since their landslide victory in 2010, the Fidesz government have positioned Hungary in

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opposition to the Western, liberal democratic order that emerged in the 1990s, casting a rhetoric of ‘authenticity’ through the historical narratives of Hungary’s Eastern origins, ethnic conceptions of the nation, and focusing on the plight of the minority territories to continue their authentic position fighting an artificially created, ideological world. Those who attend Csángó táncház often noted that the dance form reproduced in Hungary is distorted from the way it is performed in Moldavian Csángó villages. They related this to the environment in which it is performed, reflective of the artificial city life that people lead in Budapest compared to the authentic, natural lifestyle in the Carpathian mountains, the familiarity amongst communities and the more ritualistic uses of dance in the Moldavian villages. The faster, more jumpy style of Csángó circle dance learnt in Budapest is often referred to as the “Marczibányi style”, named after the venue in Budapest that has been one of the main locations for Csángó táncház since it was a house of culture in the 1980s. Rather than a recreation of a distant past, then, a new national identity is produced. The Csángó dance reflects the distance in lived experience between the majority Hungarian and minority Csángó based on recent history. Rather than erasing the borders, the trans-sovereign process reinforces the difference between kin state and its co-ethnic minority. The underlying ontology of the táncház movement means that the dance form is so embedded in the place the dancer is from that Hungarians involved in the Csángó táncház scene are not able to accurately reproduce the dances and the social conditions of Moldavian village life, it is the function and form of the dances that participants view as valuable. Many people talked about the trance-like nature of the Moldavian circle dances and how they find a collective strength in the physical closeness that the dances bring. This is the essence of the village life that they seek—the social function of an ancient dance that is experienced purely through the present moment of physical intimacy.

Conclusion In Hungary, it is the very ambiguity of national time and space that provides the source of national authenticity, and thus its personal power. In her study on the politics of reburial in post-socialist Eastern Europe, Katherine Verdery says there are two ways that culture and community can be symbolically reoriented: First, “[t]he more modest one of changing how space and time are punctuated”; the second is “[t]he more

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momentous one of transforming spatiality and temporality themselves”. Verdery notes how “socialism attempted both”, displacing “cyclical and linear rhythms” and replacing them with “arrhythmic and apocalyptic” temporalities (1999), p. 39). Democratic transition in Hungary promised a return to a cyclical and linear sense of time, but in fact opened up the ruptures of national space and time, creating an ambiguous national reality, with the power individualised and embodied. For the Hungarian teenagers dancing Csángó circle dances in the Yurta Mare, it is the temporary, collective moment that provides a firm, if fleeting, sense of identity. Zsombor and Virág defined the camp as being different from the “outside world”, natural and free. They both try to take with them some of the “nomadic” way of life that they experience in the camp, in opposition to what Virág calls the “artificial” life of the modern world: “So we come to this camp and are free from all artificial things. And we are just people together and everything is natural. And of course there’s no rush—everything’s peaceful, calm”. After a week at this camp, Zsombor and Virág were moving on to another arts camp and then to a festival. Virág’s favourite thing about the camp is “being with my friends, having fun with them, sleeping together with them in the yurt and going for a walk together at night under the starry sky. Because the friends I have here live very far from me and I only meet them once a year, at this camp”.

Notes 1. Serketánc is a name made up by the camp organisers. Literally “nit dance” (Serke = nit, tánc = dance), and a play on the word serkent, “urge, stimulate, rouse,” it gives a playful sense of the energy and jumping movements that come with the Moldavian circle dancing and the general energy of the camp. 2. Mare means “large” in Romanian, so the name reflects the mixed (Hungarian-Romanian) dialect of the Moldovan Csángó. 3. Peter Halasz (1991/1992). “Meghalt Luca néni” [Aunt Luca died]. Honismeret [The homeland association journal] 19.2: 90–92. http:// klezse.ro/Hodorog%20Luca.htm 4. “Miért éppen Jászberényben?” [Why in Jászberény?], http://csangofesztival.eu/node/67. 5. Gyütt-ment is a dialect version of jött-ment, meaning a transitory person without a homeland or any roots. 6. Achieved after the Fidesz-KDNP’s landslide victory in 2010. The amendments to the Act on Hungarian Citizenship in 2010 allowed all ethnic

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Hungarians to apply for simplified naturalisation if they could prove evidence of their Hungarian ancestry and Hungarian language skills, and the subsequent Act on the Election of Members of the Parliament of Hungary in 2011, which granted voting rights to Hungarian co-ethnics in Hungarian elections. 7. For example, the annual Táncháztalálkozó (dance house meeting), a festival held since 1981  in Budapest, http://tanchaztalalkozo.hu/2021/ index.php/hu/; the Csángó Bál, an annual ball, https://csango.hu/; summer camps held across Hungary and the minority regions, http:// tanchaz.hu/index.php/en/summer-camps. 8. For example, the Hungarian Heritage House,  http://www.hungarianhouse.org/en/hungarian-heritage-house-budapest/, or the Folklore Research Institute at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, https://nti.btk. mta.hu/hu/. 9. For example, the folk music department at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Budapest https://lfze.hu/folk-­music-­department, and the ethnography department at the University of Debrecen https://neprajz. unideb.hu/en. 10. See the recommendations by the Council of Europe (2001). 11. Interview with Támás Kiss (aka Kobzos Kiss Támás), 28 March 2015. 12. Interview with Támás Kiss (aka Kobzos Kiss Támás), 28 March 2015. 13. Interview with Jolán Borbély, 25 July 2015.

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National Identity in Philippine Folk Dance: Changing Focus from the Cariñosa to Tinikling Declan Patrick

The issue of identity, both personal and national, can be seen to be bound up in the idea of the nation. This includes the grand narrative of nationalism itself; the story of the nation and how it came to be, with its roots in the ‘ideal’ past that has been lost, the heroes and heroines of various revolutions, the great leaders, the ‘uniqueness’ of the country, and the nostalgic, politicised imaginings of the people. With the story of the nation as a backdrop, dance and cultural studies expert Anthony Shay explains how traditional dance functions. …the very choice of traditional dance, arguably the most visually spectacular form of performance expression, showing an innocent youth engaged in wholesome folk activity, actually achieves the highly political choice of

D. Patrick (*) University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Parfitt (ed.), Cultural Memory and Popular Dance, Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71083-5_10

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depicting and representing the nation in its essentialist entirety in this “non-­ political”, “innocent” cultural fashion. (Shay 1998, p. 29)

Shay’s analysis provides a guide to understanding the approach I am taking in this chapter. The use of the spectacular, the idea of the ‘innocent youth’ and the political nature of the choice of dance are all examined in the light of nostalgia, gender roles, sexuality and colonial domination. Dance academic Theresa Buckland brings together the ideas of dance and the nation using the idea of performative cultural memory, as well as taking the extra step of using dance to formulate character in nineteenth-­ century England when she explains, ‘This socialisation of young, mostly female, children through dance into national citizenship drew on the past in order to influence the future’ (2013, p. 50). In the world of Philippine folk dance there has been a particular dance that has represented the whole country: a national dance. Over the last 60 years or so, a shift of emphasis has occurred. In 1945, the national dance of the Philippines was proclaimed by Francesca Reyes Aquino (also known as Tolentino), the great collector and folk dance scholar, to be the ‘Cariñosa’, a dance from The Maria Clara Suite. However now, according to Filipino author and choreographer, Basilio Esteban S.  Villaruz, the national dance has changed to the ‘Tinikling’ (Villaruz 2006). In this piece of writing, I utilise contextual analysis to consider the change in the dance that represents the Philippines—a change that has much to do with the ways in which the country sees itself, and aligns itself within the greater community of nations.

Nationalism and Folk Dance The central question of ‘who are we?’ has enormous significance and is politically loaded, especially in a post-colony such as the Philippines. Faced with political instability, nationalism offers a sense of belonging and security to some of the population, an idea that connects the past and present through the grand narrative of the nation-state. Folk dance is often associated with a sense of nostalgia—the present as a site of crisis, compared to the past as a site of perfection. This opens the question of which past hosts the site of perfection. Is it the colonial fantasy or the romantic rural idyll? The institution of a national dance invests the

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competing dances involved with representational authority, and as such, it is worth taking a closer look at exactly what is being represented. The connection between nationalism and folklore is explained by cultural studies academic John Storey (2003). He considers that the whole concept of folklore and its composite parts (such as folk dance) was invented in the mid-eighteenth century in Europe. This, according to Storey, happened out of fear of the changes brought about by the industrial revolution and urbanisation; particularly the fear that some essential element of national identity might be lost, and the sneaking suspicion that modern life lacked authenticity. This authenticity was to be found in the reminiscences of the oldest members of society from whom memories were collected, and this is a pattern that was utilised in the Philippines.

Aquino and the Beginnings of Collection Aquino started collecting folk dance in the Philippines in the mid-1920s. This culminated in her Master’s thesis in 1926 entitled Philippine Folk Dances and Games. Aquino utilised a narrative connected with the model of folk dance as being under threat from development, of folk dance being associated with nature, and of its eternally unchanging aspect. She also connected with the idea that folk dance must be found, perhaps implying that it had previously been lost. But it was not enough that the dances be found. They then must be protected. National Artist for Music, Ramon P. Santos, points out that the ideas of fixing and standardising forms (such as notation) are ‘western’ based (1998). In the same way, Aquino began her collection from the University of the Philippines during the American colonial era, using a form of participant observation, her field notes then written-up to formally codify dances, which were then processed for the stage, and then re-introduced to the original culture. The alterations to the form that came from being investigated and recorded, Santos calls ‘processing’ and explains how the alterations continue into the present day. This ‘processing’ has become so extreme that Teresita Salvador, an influential folk dance teacher, considers some dances have changed too much and ‘…can no longer be used as a point of reference to trace the true meaning of our glorious past’ (Salvador 1998, p. 108). For Salvador the dances have a clear function, which they are no longer performing. That function is connected to the past, and to ways of remembering that past, and its singular ‘true meaning’.

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Aquino added new dances to the folk dance canon, such as the Ba-o, created especially for the 1933 Philippine Exposition, or Baranggay, Aquino’s own creation (Tolentino 1945). This free and easy approach allowed changing the name of dances, re-arranging the dance to make it more interesting and more ‘typically native’ (ibid., p. 40). Ramon P. Santos also discusses the alterations in foot and hand movement made by Aquino, who was scared that the dances would be ‘too boring’ for an audience (Santos 1998, p. 114). The idea, that the dances somehow represent the past, or hold the key to understanding it in a meaningful way, is presented too by National Artist for Literature N.V.M Gonzalez in his introduction to Aquino’s ground-breaking work Philippine National Dances. [the dances] have a charm of their own and are not too far removed from present tendencies so that they represent a rare and welcome opportunity for foreigners to look into a past that is fast receding into oblivion. (Gonzalez in Tolentino 1945, p. iii)

This allows, even in the collecting stage, for the collectors to view the dances with nostalgia, already simplifying the historical and social contexts of the dances into one word, ‘charm’, and forgetting the realities of the colonial situation. However, the publisher’s note, following the introduction to Aquino’s book, reveals a very real and strangely complex historical danger posed to folk dance that helps the reader to understand just how difficult this whole undertaking was. Publication was delayed for five years due to the impossibility of contact with Mrs. Tolentino, whose first letter following liberation of the Islands in 1945 reported that all her other source materials, books, records, pictures, costumes and musical instruments had been burned or wantonly destroyed by the Japanese. (Tolentino 1945, p. iv)

The sense of threat then was, to a degree at least, real. The dances, or at least the physical evidence of them, were in danger of destruction and that threat of destruction was realised. Perhaps, on some level, the dances did need to be saved. The question to ask is possibly why the Japanese felt

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the need to destroy (wantonly or otherwise) evidence of folk dance if it is, as Aquino claims, …a wholesome form of entertainment, enjoyed by children and adults whether participants or spectators. It is simple, inexpensive recreation. (ibid., p. viii)

Aquino begins her preface with these claims and, goes on to list the materials she utilises to process folk dance. Her list includes ‘…dances and songs for all occasions—weddings, christenings, “fiestas”, in town or “barrio” (village), religious ceremonies and celebrations, war and victory dances …torture dances of the Negritos, funerals and courtships’ (ibid.: viii). This list details the social structure of the variety of cultures that make up the archipelago, and it is this that was so threatening to the Japanese colonisers. If dance can be a physically encrypted way of learning and remembering, then the body can become the repository of both knowledge and memory for a pre-literate society, the act of remembering containing the possibility of resistance to the current regime. This possibility is echoed by theatre academic Honor Ford-Smith, who discusses ‘embodied repertoires of meaning’ as a form of resistant communication in the context of cultural subordination (2019, p. 155). Aquino’s approach offers the possibility of rapid change within the concept of ‘tradition’, perhaps conforming to the concept of ‘invented tradition’ later posited by Eric Hobsbawm in the introduction to The Invention of Tradition (1983). Her system has the best of both worlds. While appearing to conform to tradition, she managed to utilise agency in the development of the dances. This directly relates to Hobsbawm’s concept of the nation-state supported and shaped through the emergence of cultural practices, as Aquino’s work gave shape to a type of dance map of the Philippines through the creation of the dance suites. As an approach, hers is less rigid but also more responsive to context than the later methods used by the Philippine Folk Dance Society (PFDS), which carefully categorises and documents each dance. With the example of Aquino, there is clearly one person influencing the direction folk dance takes, and making decisions about what can be considered folk dance. However, the suites themselves, and within the suites the two dances considered national dances, the ‘Cariñosa’, and the ‘Tinikling’, reflect very clear societal values and institutions.

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The Maria Clara Suite The Filipino dance folkloric canon, when performed by dance companies, usually comprises five suites of dances. The Maria Clara Suite is one of these. It is a collection of dances that represents both a physical area—the urban dwelling, lowland Christianised Filipinos—and a theme also; courtship and love in the Spanish colonial Philippines of the nineteenth century. This type of dance is perceived in the Philippines to be different from ethnic dances in that it was danced by the Christian lowland majority. These are the dances that have a strong ‘western’ flavour, having travelled from elsewhere in the world to the Philippines, and as such can be considered less tied to the concept of Asia, and more attached to the idea of a ‘western’ influenced colonial past. However many commentators, starting with Aquino herself, argue that the Maria Clara dances are ‘overdanced’ (Tolentino 1945, p. viii), and there was an assumption that the ‘Cariñosa’, one of the dances from The Maria Clara Suite, was the national dance of the Philippines, based on its popularity. The dance became popular during the nineteenth century and continued to increase in popularity until the late twentieth century. Its status changed, however, when nationalism became more institutionalised in the 1970s, when there was a more official movement to make ‘Cariñosa’ the national dance. However: Immediately, objections were voiced out by many sectors, claiming that Cariñosa is not the appropriate dance to exemplify the Philippine character, sensitivity, feelings, norms and values. (Guillem 2003, p. 19)

It is interesting that the PFDS has criticised the decision not to make ‘Cariñosa’ the national folk dance (Guillem 2003). This sites ‘Cariñosa’ as a pivotal dance in the folk dance canon and as a representative dance that has explicit public arguments around its suitability as such. There is also an implication that the PFDS expects, from its national folk dance, a great deal. It must exemplify Philippine character, sensitivity, feelings, norms and values. This argues in an essentialist manner that these things exist. There is no suspicion that these national characteristics might be constructed or that construction is in turn affected, even achieved, by the

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label of ‘national folk dance’. This can be seen as another function of Philippine folk dance—the construction and maintenance of stereotypes, which is achieved through strategies of representation.

Visualised and Embodied Strategies of Representation The Maria Clara dances in general, and the ‘Cariñosa’ in particular, embody a certain type of behaviour. ‘Cariñosa’ is a courtship dance, which entails the whole heavy weight of the political construction of the institution of marriage, as well as the social construction of courtship. The ‘Cariñosa’ is a dance that is characterised by the ‘Filipino system, no touch’ (Guillem 2003, p. 19). However, other dances from the same time period and from a similar place of origin do not have the same physical restrictions. ‘Pasakat’, for example, is also a couple dance, with its origin in a French ballroom quadrille. The ‘Cariñosa’ seems to exist as a teaching tool; to teach, and enforce, a European version of romantic love and courtship exported to the Philippines, but taken and adapted to particular circumstances. The public nature of the dance, especially during its heyday in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, meant that it became a public display of heterosexuality and religious orthodoxy. The name ‘Maria Clara’ calls to mind virtue, virginity and saintliness; she was the heroine of the great Philippine nationalist author, Rizal’s novels Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo (Rizal 2006a, b). The two novels were appropriated by the nationalist cause, making Rizal the hero and martyr of the 1896 Philippine revolution and the Philippine national hero. The fictional Maria Clara still epitomises the perfect Filipina for many, and has given her name to the suite of dances that represents a specific space and time; the Philippines colonised under Spanish rule. The dances exist almost as a sort of manual on the relationships between men and women according to the Spanish Catholic colonisers. The space between the dancers’ bodies is carefully circumscribed. Male-female couples are created and performed, with intimacy inferred by the displaced, heterosexual touch, as described by Filipina choreographer Cynthia Lapeña. …a hanky held on opposite corners by the man and woman was the closest they were allowed to touch—a practice that resulted from the strictness of the friar’s teachings, which prohibited unmarried men and women from holding hands. (Lapeña 2008)

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Clearly, even the action of holding hands carried with it too much explosive sexual significance for the Spanish friars and was an act that had to be controlled, perhaps showing a European fear of the overwhelming perceived sexual productive capacity of Asia, as suggested by critics such as postcolonial theorist Robert Young (1995). The management of this sexual capacity can be seen in the manipulation of gender identity in The Maria Clara Suite.

Gender Identity Are the ostensibly natural facts of sex discursively produced by various scientific discourses in the service of other political and social interests? (Butler 1999, p. 10)

Young answers this question with a resounding ‘yes’, pointing out the various scientific discourses that have contributed to the naturalising of a ‘western’ viewpoint in colonised countries (Young 1995). When Butler talks about gender being a performative act, she seems to have looked straight into the heart of the matter in the Philippines. The binary frame of naturalised, compulsory heterosexuality so prevalent in ‘the West’ did not exist in the pre-Hispanic islands now known as the Philippines, and Spanish, the language of the colonisers, is a gendered language: nouns are masculine or feminine. Wittig discusses how (in the case of French, a romance language similar to Spanish) persons cannot be signified in language without the mark of gender, siting or re-siting gender within a closed binary pair (Cited in Butler 1999). Gender roles in the pre-Hispanic Philippines did not fit this structure. It was something the colonisers brought with them. Women were the principal shaman figures, wielding spiritual power, wrestling for secular power and community leadership—even leading a population into battle—traditionally in ‘the West’ masculine attributes. Men also had access to these roles. Gender scholar Carolyn Brewer explains the tensions between systems in the early colonial Philippines. These consisted of a patriarchal system of colonisation where women were confined and controlled, supplanting a pre-contact bilateral system where religion was largely matrifocal, but where women did not need to control and constrain men (Brewer 1999). This suggests some discrepancy in the notion of colonised woman, where gender is placed in an imperial hierarchy of ‘otherness’, along with those ‘less than

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men’—animals, slaves, savages, serfs and children—who need the ‘civilising’ influence of the masculinised coloniser (Owen 1999). Even today, male gender roles are a great deal more relaxed in the Philippines than in Europe, with few restrictions on same-gender sexual relationships. There are no local terms distinguishing between hetero/homosexual acts; rather gender is defined according to the degree of effeminacy a person enacts or the extent of their participation in the ‘feminine’ realm of culture. (Matthews 1998, p. 125)

The very fact that gender still has different (local) names (such as sward, bakla, bading, tomboy) to refer to different degrees of effeminacy reveals how important these concepts are in the Philippines. Indeed, one of the Philippines’ leading experts in alternative sexualities, J. Neil C. Garcia, in his essay ‘Was Rizal Gay?’ (2003) has argued that the idea of ‘gay’ simply did not apply to the nineteenth-century Philippines, and this Euro-­American construct was appropriated by the Philippines at a much later date. On the other hand, scholar in Philippine culture, Norman Owen, in his discussion of masculinity in the nineteenth-century Philippines, dismisses what he calls ‘the third sex’ with a simple comment that ‘transvestism’ could be traced back to pre-Hispanic shamanism (Owen 1999). However, Alcina, a seventeenth-century commentator on the Philippines, described how a male shaman would behave, doing the work of women, and dancing as they did (Alcina cited in Brewer 1999). Brewer also points out that all knowledge we have of this phenomenon is filtered through the ‘hispano-catholic gaze’, that is, the missionaries and sailors who travelled to the Philippines. Brewer explains that the essentialist position, where sex is equated with sexuality, nature, women, nurture and gender was imported by missionaries. She proposes that it was the identification with the feminine (at least in the Philippines) that imbued the male shaman with spiritual power. This reveals a link with the spiritual power that the male shamans held within a pre-Hispanic society and perhaps after colonisation as well. This leads to the idea that perhaps the Spanish and Americans used The Maria Clara Suite to maintain some type of hegemonic control over spiritual power, as well as control of gender definitions. Elizabeth Holt, specialist in Philippine women in the nineteenth century, discusses the myth of woman as a potent symbol of danger in the Philippine social sphere, prevalent from the mid-nineteenth century, and ties this into the colonial

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context, where gender relations needed to be firmly controlled (Holt 2002). Part of this control came through the use of clothing. For indeed, the Spaniards clothed the Filipina in order to muffle and subdue the free spirited and spontaneous primordial woman who, in the observations of Loarca, Chirino and Colin, and many other early chroniclers was sexually liberated and uninhibited in many ways. (Santiago 2007, p. 32)

Poet and educator Santiago’s view of the Filipina is a complete contrast to the Bayanihan view, in which The Maria Clara Suite presents ‘…the typical refined, shy and modest Filipina’ (Bayanihan Instructional Video Series 1 2002). Cultural expert Rolando B. Tolentino reports a different image of the Filipina, represented by American servicemen in the 1980s as ‘LBFMs (“little brown fucking machines”)’ (Tolentino 2001, p. 6). There is a range of gender identities still available in the Philippines. That this has survived several colonisers also points toward a system of bifurcation: the colonisers using The Maria Clara Suite as a spiritual and sexual control mechanism, while the Filipinos use the suite as a way of convincing their imperial masters of their orthodoxy, while continuing, in less public ways, an older, more indigenous gender identification system, and perhaps other systems as well. The dances that make up The Maria Clara Suite were brought to the Philippines from a variety of sources. They were all social dances, with a significance of their own before coming to the Philippines. Their introduction came in the nineteenth century, when they were presented as entertainment for high status events—as spectacle—and then disseminated to urban Filipinos through copying and repetition. They were danced at local fiestas, although not formally collected, grouped and described as a suite until Aquino collected them. Pre-Aquino, the dances in The Maria Clara Suite became ´Filipinised’. This involved changing the context of the dances, formalising them in a different way, changing costumes, props and assigning a local meaning to the dances. They also became popular social dances again, albeit in a hybrid form. In this case, the hybrid form, the popular dances that make up The Maria Clara Suite, involve elements of various cultures, both colonising and colonised, and elements of indigenous cultures, but also go beyond these individual elements. According to Homi Bhabha, the moment of

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hybridity itself is interesting as it is when colonial authority no longer entirely controls meaning and instead can see the ‘Other’ in a different way. Here the transformational value of change lies in the re-articulation or translation of elements that are neither the One…nor the Other…but something else besides which contests the terms and territories of both. (Bhabha 2007, p. 41)

This idea of hybridity clearly works for the Maria Clara dances but also brings criticism of them that they are not ‘pure’ in the way that folk dance needs to be in order to command authority in the Philippines. Author Guillermo Rivera simply denies there is any hybridity in the dances at all, even though he categorises the dances as ‘creole (kriolyo)’ (Rivera 2006, p. 13). Thus the music is purely Spanish. But their Jota, Fandango and Sevillana steps when executed by Filipinos end up reflecting the native expression and temperament thereby becoming purely Filipino in soul. (ibid.)

This denial of the process of hybridity reveals an essentialist, but widespread attitude; that the nationality of the dancers transforms the dances so that they reflect something ‘pure’ about them. While the ‘Cariñosa’ ostensibly celebrates the best of the colonial period, its rival for the title of national dance, ‘Tinikling’, comes from a very different background. Although both dances were developed during the same time frame and in the same country, both were widespread enough for a knowledge of each to be commonplace.

The Rural Suite ‘Tinikling’ is the other major contender for the title of national dance, and it is the most popular of the folk dances in terms of performance (Villaruz 2006). This dance comes from The Rural Suite, also codified by Aquino; dances that originate in the countryside rather than the cities, and that have their origin in everyday life. These dances are not imported, but rather tend to be mimetic, utilising activities such as winnowing rice, planting, various activities to do with fishing, or even everyday occurrences such as getting a surprise or shock.

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The ‘Tinikling’ itself is a dance where dancers jump in and out of clashing bamboo poles. The poles are hit together to a specific beat. The tempo can (and frequently does) change throughout the dance, speeding up towards the end. The dance is spectacular to watch, and involves a certain amount of virtuosity, even though the basics can be learned very quickly. The dance is identified with children’s games (Goquingco 1980). It has also been associated with farming practices, specifically trying to trap the Tikling bird to prevent the ruination of crops. The dance is associated with ‘fun’ by Aquino, especially ‘…catching the feet of dancers…’ (Tolentino 1945, p. 341). Like the ‘Cariñosa’, the dance is made to be enjoyed by the participants. Unlike the ‘Cariñosa’, the dance is not based on courtship rituals. The dancers are a team. There is usually a male-female pair, who are joined by the ‘clappers’; the pole holders who hit the poles together in rhythm. In performance companies, there is rarely only one dancing pair, but many pairs performing the same choreography. This makes the dance very dependent on social interaction, but with a very different focus from the ‘Cariñosa’. ‘Tinikling’ is a group dance that can look like a couple dance. The movement quality between the two dances is very different too. While the ‘Cariñosa’ requires fluid movement, gliding, inclining and swaying, the ‘Tinikling’ requires a much more athletic quality; jumping, hopping and running from the ‘dancing’ pair, a more stationary but equally intensive and focused movement from the ‘clappers’. Even more important, it requires a sense of trust between the ‘clappers’ and the dancers, and a large amount of teamwork. The emphasis in ‘Tinikling’, according to Santos (2004), seems very much one of happiness, and it is interesting that in most company performances ‘Tinikling’ is the dance that finishes the performance; this is the dance that carries the lasting impression, coming at the end of the programme and being the last thing an audience will see. This gives it a huge amount of status, and power to determine how an audience will remember the performance. The dance builds tension in the audience as well as in the dancers. Once the bamboo is moving, the audience becomes eagle-eyed, watching for mistakes, for flaws in the performance. The performance is a spectacle celebrating virtuosity and timing. ‘Tinikling’ is taught in schools and universities in the Philippines, and it is as popular as a children’s game as it ever was, as well as a marker of identity. But more than this, it is taught in schools around the world as an intercultural children’s game, but also as a Philippine children’s game. Because the basic ‘Tinikling’ steps are comparatively simple to learn, the

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dance is often taught as part of an interactive tourist experience, giving foreigners an embodied glimpse into Philippine cultures. This can be seen as problematic, as Roger Bresnahan explains. ‘Endlessly performed before curious foreigners, the dance misrepresents Philippine life by reducing it to the merely primitive…’ (Bresnahan cited in Gonzalez 2010, frontispiece). This analysis seems to lack nuance, considering the complexity dance anthropologist Sally Ann Ness encountered in the dance while experiencing it from the perspective of a tourist: The tinikling is a dance made for learning about temptations, entrapments and diversions, and about understanding cumulative disorientation. (Ness 1996, p. 136)

In other words, for Ness, ‘Tinikling’ is another learning dance, but this time, in contrast to ‘Cariñosa’, the dance teaches survival mechanisms for life in an unstable present. Ness’ point here, that there is so much physically happening in ‘Tinikling’ that the dance becomes disorienting for the dancers, makes it an excellent metaphor for modern life in the Philippines The dance has been used as a metaphor for social constructs in this way by N.V.M Gonzalez in his 1959 novel The Bamboo Dancers. Meanwhile, Philippine folk dance companies, as well as groups all around the world, push further and further the virtuosic boundaries of the dance, increasing the sense of disorientation by changing rhythms, shifting poles, blindfolding dancers and so on. Interpretations of the dance can be pushed even further: The popular indigenous dance tinikling which showcases performers lithely skipping between bamboo poles, is an evocation of the farmers’ movements as they tried to escape punishment and evade the painful rods of the Spanish colonial masters. (Varona 2009, p. 14)

According to Berenice Varona, the dance is tied to a colonial past. This past is very different to the past portrayed in the ‘Cariñosa’. While the ‘Cariñosa’ is associated with a nostalgic colonial past, ‘Tinikling’ is associated, at least in this example, with the opposite—a postcolonial reminder of an oppressed past. Varona also ties the dance into the dangers associated with oppression.

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So it seems the ‘Tinikling’ is desexualised in a way. The gentle, controlled flirting and gender commodification of the ‘Cariñosa’ has vanished, but it has not been replaced by a more sensually charged dance. It seems the opposite has happened, and the dance that has replaced ‘Cariñosa’ has no time for sensuality at all. The heterosexual touch displaced in the ‘Cariñosa’ is realised in the ‘Tinikling’. Male and female dancers hold hands, but in a context that precludes any sense of sexuality: the dancers are being watched, not only by an audience, but by the ‘clappers’. The dance is so fast-paced that the dancers barely have time to glance at each other. Dance patterns emerge, shift and re-emerge, with heterosexual pairs of dancers’ only one permutation in the growing dance.

Conclusions The national dance in the Philippines has changed over the course of the twentieth century, as the country has shifted from a colony to an independent nation. ‘Cariñosa’, a dance that looked backward to a nostalgic colonial past, complete with the gender and social structures it was set up to promote and strengthen, has been replaced by ‘Tinikling’. ‘Tinikling’ reflects and constructs a totally different set of ideas, a set that seems much more open to interpretation, dissemination and development, perhaps exploring changing identities in a nation in flux. Utilising ‘Tinikling’ in this manner, the Philippines is not unique, but, part of a larger pattern. Folk dance is often presented as an ethnographic object that can somehow represent the nation. The dance is seen as embodying the nation. However, instead of representing a colonial relationship, the national dance now represents a type of independence; an exploration of a way through the turbulence of the political, social and physical situations in the Philippines. The shift of focus, from a fond, nostalgic remembrance of a colonial system of classification and rule to a multi-layered exploration of shifting interpretations and meanings, demonstrates a change in the way the Philippines sees itself and presents itself to the world.

References Bhabha, Homi K. 2007. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Brewer, Carolyn. 1999. Baylan, Asog, Transvestism, and Sodomy: Gender, Sexuality and the Sacred in Early Colonial Philippines. Intersections: Gender,

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History and Culture in the Asian Context [online]. Accessed April 28, 2008. http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue2/carolyn2.html. Buckland, Theresa Jill. 2013. ‘Dance and Cultural Memory: Interpreting Fin de Siècle Performances of ‘Olde England’. Dance Research 31 (1): 29–66. Butler, Judith. 1999. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London/New York: Routledge. Ford-Smith, Honor. 2019. The Body and Performance in 1970s Jamaica. Small Axe. 23 (1): 150–168. Garcia, J., and C. Neil. 2003. Performing the Self: Occasional Prose. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press. Gonzalez, N.V.M. 2010. The Bamboo Dancers. Makati City: The Bookmark. Inc. Goquingco, Leonor Orosa. 1980. Dances of the Emerald Isles. Manila: Benlor Publishing. Guillem, Josefina B., ed. 2003. Sayaw: Dances of the Philippine Islands Volume v. Manila: Philippine Folk Dance Society. Hobsbawm, E. 1983. Introduction: Inventing Traditions. In The Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Holt, Elizabeth Mary. 2002. Colonising Filipinas: Nineteenth Century Representations of the Philippines in Western Historiography. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. Instructional Video Series Volume 3 Maria Clara Suite. 2002. [VCD] Prod: Bayanihan Folk Arts Foundation. Manila: Ivory Records. Lapeña, Cynthia. 2008. [email] communication with the author Matthews, Lydia. 1998. Camp Out: DIWA Arts and the Bayanihan Spirit. TDR Winter 42 (4): 115–142. Ness, Sally Ann. 1996. Dancing in the Field. In Corporealities, ed. Susan Foster. London and New York: Routledge. Owen, Norman G. 1999. Masculinity and National Identity in 19th Century Philippines. Illes I Imperius 2 Primavera: 23–47. Rivera, Guillermo Gomez. 2006. Bayanihan: The Treasure Chest of Filipino Dances and Culture. On Golden Wings of Dance. Programme notes. Manila: Cultural Centre of the Philippines. Rizal, José. 2006a (1891). El Filibusterismo. Translated by Guerrero. Manila: Guerrero Publishing. ———. 2006b (1887). Noli Me Tangere. Translated by Guerrero. Manila: Guerrero Publishing. Salvador, Teresita P. 1998. Revolutionising the Teaching of Folk Dance in Philippine Schools. In Manila International Dance Conference, 108–109, Manila. Santiago, Lilia Quindoza. 2007. Sexuality and the Filipina. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.

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Santos, Isabel A. 2004. Bayanihan, The National Folk Dance Company of the Philippines: A Memory of Six Continents. Pasig City: Anvil Publishing. Santos, Ramon P. 1998. Traditional Expressive Cultures in Modern Society: An Issue of Survival in Change. In Manila International Dance Conference, 113–117, Manila. Shay, Anthony. 1998. Choreographic Politics: The State Folk Ensemble, Representation, and Power. In Manila International Dance Conference, 28–43, Manila. Storey, John. 2003. Inventing Popular Culture: From Folklore to Globalisation. Oxford and Philadelphia: Blackwell Publishing. Tolentino (Aquino), Francisca Reyes. 1945. Philippine National Dances. Quezon City: Kayumanggi Press. Tolentino, Rolando B. 2001. National/Transnational: Subject Formation and Media In and On the Philippines. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. Varona, Berenice P. 2009. Dance Fever. The University of the Philippines Forum. Ed. Hidalgo. 10 (5): 14–15. Villaruz, Basilio Esteban S. 2006. Treading Through: 45 Years of Philippine Dance. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press. Young, Robert J.C. 1995. Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race. London/New York: Routledge.

Archive and Memory in Cuban Dances: The Performance of Memory and the Dancing Body as Archive in the Making Elina Djebbari

“You have 350 years of slavery in your blood,” says Pedro Acosta to his young son Yuli, on the premises of a former sugar cane factory in the region of Pinar del Río in Cuba.1 Principal dancer Carlos Acosta remembers this scene as an adult in the biopic movie Yuli released in July 2019. Through this powerful evocation, the famous Cuban dancer conveys to his troupe of young dancers as well as to the movie spectators one of the many tropes that have often characterised Afro-diasporic dances until now: the slaves’ descendants’ capability to perform through dance the memory of slavery. Four years earlier in August 2015, Carlos Acosta presented Cubanía at the Royal Opera House in London. The first act of the performance consisted of four short pieces based on the artistic collaborations developed by

E. Djebbari (*) Paris Nanterre University, Nanterre, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Parfitt (ed.), Cultural Memory and Popular Dance, Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71083-5_11

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Acosta throughout his career: two duets, a solo, and a piece performed by four dancers of the company Danza Contemporánea de Cuba. Entitled Tocororo Suite, the second act contained a series of short pieces, choreographed according to an autobiographical inspiration. Whether demonstrating the virtuosity of the dancers who have learned the famous técnica cubana [Cuban technique], or the evocation of the rumba and the atmosphere of Havana’s calles [streets], the Cubanía programme acts as a mise en abyme of Acosta’s career within the wider evocation of the choreographic heritage of the island. The reception of this piece in terms of a “homage to the culture and traditions of its native country”2 makes the dancer’s body the transmission medium of a history of Cuban dance in its various aesthetics, from popular dances to classical ballet and contemporary dance. By mixing different aesthetics, the choreographic gesture thus offers a contemporary variation to the long history of the staging of Cuban dances, as it has been undertaken since Fidel Castro’s accession to power in 1959. If the body of the dancer and the repertoire of movements he performs are conceived of as able to convey this choreographic history to international audiences, can it then be considered a “living archive”? How is the process of artistic creation enshrined here in a process of recollection that is not limited to the evocation of the dancer’s life both in Cuba and on the international stage, but also suggests an inscription within a broader Cuban choreographic heritage? Moreover, to what extent can dance and the dancer’s body pass on the memory of the slave trade as Acosta’s quote acknowledges? These questions feature at the core of this chapter. Cubanía’s choreographic material subtly summons up the notions of archive and memory to evoke the initiatory journey of the dancer, marked by the frequentation of different spaces of performance and choreographic practices. Following on the efforts of many contemporary artists who explicitly question these notions in their art works and performances, scholars have interrogated the use of the body as an archive (Lepecki 2010) or the archival potential of live performances (Reason 2003). The mobilisation of the body as a resource for archiving actually reflects upon questions of the status of the archive and its transformative and performative agencies. In addition, the joint practices of “artification” (Shapiro 2004; Heinich and Shapiro 2012) and archivisation that are played out through performance confront and juxtapose temporalities that are usually conceived of as supposedly deferred over time.

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Based on the collection of empirical data using both ethnographic fieldwork and archival research, the chapter looks at various popular dances attached to specific musical genres that generally bear the same name— such as danzón, son, chachachá, rumba, and so on—and interrogates singular modes of memory making and transmission through dance and the dancing body.3 First, it addresses the documents produced and archived by the Cuban government from the 1960s with regard to popular dance practices. Then, it focuses on the creation of the Conjunto Folklórico Nacional [National Folkloric Ensemble] in 1962 and the tasks entrusted to this institution. The analysis thus questions the political, identity and heritage stakes that preside over the simultaneous conjunction of art-­ making and archive-making processes. The notions of archive and “repertoire” (Taylor 2003) and their differentiated temporalities will then be confronted with the idea of “post-archive” (Franco 2015). Finally, based on a theoretical discussion of the “body as archive” (Lepecki 2010) and the body of the dancer as a remembrance site, the chapter aims at showing how individual practices and discourses convey emotions that go beyond the personal level to reach out to a collective memory that transforms the body of the dancer into an archive in the making.

Popular Dances in Cuban Archives The general struggle over documenting and archiving dance, and more broadly the performing arts, has often been invoked with regard to its ephemeral and intangible nature, to which video recording only provided a lacunary solution, whether for contemporary dance (Reason 2003: 83; Vaughan 1984) or popular dance practices (Buckland 2001). The research I carried out in several Cuban archives showed similar difficulties where, moreover, access to documents is tightly controlled. My research draws on documents produced under the auspices of the Consejo Nacional de Cultura [National Council for Culture], an institution responsible for implementing the Cuban cultural policies between 1961 and 1976 before being replaced by the Ministerio de Cultura [Ministry of Culture]. Although the texts of the documents produced by the Consejo Nacional de Cultura are sometimes anonymised, I realised that they often reproduce the works of the main Cuban musicologists, such as those of Fernando Ortiz, Argeliers Léon and Odilio Urfé.4 The appropriation of Cuban musicologists’ works in the creation of cultural policy documents as well as the recurrent quotation of the same texts under different titles actually

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contribute to the creation of a consensus around the apprehension of the history of Cuban popular dances (Argyriadis 2005; Malcomson 2011). Although the researcher’s interpretation of the archives can of course be called into question, their consultation leads nevertheless to the apprehension of the making of an official history of Cuban music and folk dances.5 The ordered opacity of the Cuban archives suggests how early Cuban musicologists and anthropologists somehow selected and produced coherent narratives which the State validated and then spread as such at large scale over time. As Kali Argyriadis (2005: 64) pointed out, “the way in which the categories of folklore textbooks are produced and repeated in Cuban dance and music lessons” shows how official discourses have penetrated artistic, academic and later touristic fields. In a similar manner with regard to danzón, Hettie Malcomson acknowledges, “while these Cuban authors do not always concur, their material has been sufficiently coherent to form the basis of what [she] shall call a ‘standard’ history of danzón” (2011: 264). From this consensus around the history of music-dance genres, clearly identified in their succession by precise dates and names, emerges a linear and supposedly chronological timeline. A cultural genealogy is therefore instituted along the elaboration of a history of Cuban musical creation. According to this official chronology, Miguel Faílde created the danzón in 1879, Aniceto Diaz the danzonete in 1929; the creation of mambo is attributed to Perez Prado in 1947, the chachachá to Enrique Jorrín in 1954. Numerous archival documents testify to the creation of festivals, seminars, symposia, and events dedicated to the commemoration and anniversary celebrations of these different genres. In 1979, for instance, both the centenary of the danzón and the 50th anniversary of the danzonete were celebrated. The document Centenario del danzón indicates how the event is considered “an homage to the twentieth anniversary of the Cuban Revolution,” illustrating quite tellingly how the celebration of the national dance is turned into a commemoration of the Cuban revolution instead.6 This linear and coherent apprehension of the history of Cuban dance favoured by official documents has, of course, been questioned and complicated by researchers, especially ethnomusicologists (Malcomson 2011; Manuel 1987; Moore 2001). However, this consensus is still diffused and mediated in various forms, whether it be through the dance shows offered by the Conjunto Folklórico Nacional or the Tropicana cabaret, or through the tourist attractions of the “Buena Vista Social Club” type, or in the

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Cuban dance classes provided in Cuba and elsewhere in the world. For instance, in the field in Havana, when I explained that I was interested in the history of Cuban dances to a dancer who offered to give me dance classes, she told me that the learning process should ideally take place as follows: If you want to know the history of salsa, then you have to start with the danzón, then we will do some danzonete, then after the mambo, the chachachá, the son, salsa and we arrive at the timba. That’s the base, the historical base.7

While saying this, the dancer laid down on paper this precise order, again suggesting the importance of the chronological apprehension of the different popular dances as the basis of her pedagogy “to learn salsa.”8 Documents pertaining to the development of Cuban cultural policies produced in the early 1960s9 also suggest that the State would have paid relatively homogeneous attention to popular dances, classical ballet, and modern and contemporary dance. Castro’s socialist project indeed entailed the clean sweep of bourgeois elitism by putting popular practices (and among them the Afro-Cuban genres) to the fore, especially those considered to have been marginalised and despised during the period preceding the Castrist revolution (Argyriadis 2005; Casanella Cué 2014: 120).10 Accordingly, the government created dance schools and choreographic ensembles in each region of the country, in order to promote access to culture for the whole population (Anteproyecto 1963: 7). The creation of the Conjunto Folklórico Nacional thus accompanied a political demand.11 The previous regime overthrown by Castro is considered responsible for the “prejudice and abandonment” of folk dances and, as such, “the revalorisation and disclosure of this cultural heritage is one of the fundamental objectives of the revolutionary process” (Conjunto 1963). The Conjunto Folklórico Nacional then added to the existing state-sponsored choreographic institutions: Ballet de Cuba,12 Conjunto de Danza Moderna and Conjunto Experimental de Bailes de la Habana (Anteproyecto 1963). However, according to Peter Manuel (1987), the Castrist government did not actively support popular music and dances. For Robin Moore (2001: 153), the government’s ambivalent attitude towards popular dances even led to their significant decline until the 1980s when the genre of timba came to the fore. Nevertheless, the State used them in parallel to gather people, especially youngsters, during the Parti’s celebrations for

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instance (ibid.: 156–157), the success of the música popular bailable being used as a tool for mobilising the masses. The joint processes of producing knowledge and instrumentalising popular culture for political purposes contributed not only to the creation of a Cuban national identity but also to the heritage policies developed at the same time.

Conjunto Folklórico Nacional: Intersecting Temporalities of Archive and Performance  As stated in the Anteproyecto del plan de cultura de 1963 (1963: 7), the Conjunto Folklórico Nacional “was born in order to satisfy a need of the country […]; it will select the forms of dance performances of real artistic value and organize them according to the most modern theatrical requirements, but without betraying their folk essence.”13 The tension between the heritage mission and the supposed artistic value of the dances selected and organised to meet the conventions of the modern theatrical scene appears as a dialectic common to other postcolonial national choreographic ensembles (Djebbari 2013, 2019). The process of adapting to the stage so-called folkloric or traditional dances within state-sponsored choreographic institutions reveals a process of artification (Shapiro 2004; Heinich and Shapiro 2012), which gives the dances a new status and thereby a new legitimacy. A repertoire is created to show a “panorama” of the country’s choreographic heritage. In the realm of dance, the notion of repertoire refers to the pieces presented during shows—the repertoire of a company—as well as to the specific movements that a dancer can produce—a repertoire of steps (Franco 2015: 17–18). Beyond this, the repertoire can also be considered in opposition to the notion of archive according to Diana Taylor’s theorisation. In her book The Archive and the Repertoire she indeed proposes “shifting the focus from written to embodied culture, from the discursive to the performatic” (2003: 16). According to her definition, the repertoire “enacts embodied memory: performance gestures, orality, movement, dance, singing—in short, all those acts usually thought of as ephemeral, nonreproductible knowledge” (ibid.: 20). She considers “embodied practice as a form of knowing as well as a system for storing and transmitting knowledge” (ibid.: 18). The temporalities usually associated with the notions of repertoire and archive are therefore considered

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incompatible: ephemerality, immateriality, orality of the repertoire versus durability, materiality and writing of the archive (ibid.: 19). While the distinction between archive and repertoire proves to be effective in illuminating differentiated heritage and transmission processes, it nevertheless appears that these concepts cover superimposed meanings and converge at certain levels. The example of the Conjunto Folklórico Nacional features a simultaneous policy of creating a repertoire and at the same time an archive of this very repertoire. This joint process tends to blur what separates these two notions in Taylor’s analysis, even suggesting that the repertoire may become an archive and vice versa. Indeed, one of the objectives clearly indicated in the Conjunto’s programming plan indicates that “all the new shows presented will be filmed and recorded, and that this material will enrich the company’s archives and will be used for other disclosure campaigns of our folklore” (Anteproyecto 1963: 7). The Conjunto’s repertoire can therefore be considered to some extent the depository of a form of archive. Interestingly, the state validation of the archives created by the Conjunto as representative of “Cuban folklore” is still effective today. Indeed many of the archivists and dancers I met in the field directed me to recordings of the Conjunto’s shows on national television. This testifies to the way in which these recordings are considered today a primary source for the knowledge of Cuban folklore. The production of archives by the Conjunto in the form of audiovisual recordings of their shows that were then transmitted as legitimate documents to testify to cultural practices suggests that they might constitute what Susanne Franco terms “post-archives,” able to represent both “the idealized past and the dreamed future of the postcolonial state” (2015: 18). The idea of “post-archive” proves indeed revealing with regard to the intertwining of different temporalities induced by the Conjunto’s juxtaposition of artistic creation and archiving processes. The heritage temporality is here simultaneously associated with the temporality of the artistic action. Paradoxically, the immediate preservation of what is created and the creation of what must be preserved appear as two concomitant phenomena that eventually merge artistic and archival motivations. Beyond this, the temporalities of the performance and the archive, thus superimposed in several layers of meanings that inform one another, make the preceding questions even more complex. Indeed, the supposedly deferred temporalities between the moment of the performance and the moment of the archiving are gathered here in the same unit of time and place, exceeding the contradiction between the ephemeral time of the

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performance and the objective of long duration of the archive. The Conjunto’s shows become an immediate archive, which can later be used and presented as such by the government during “disclosure campaigns.” Moreover, as Jacqueline Shea Murphy rightly points out, this “asserts contemporary performance as archivally valid” (2009: 49). Therefore, the Conjunto’s archiving policy in the 1960s actually prefigured the questions over archiving and documenting live performances that arose later in the field of performing arts (theatre, dance) in Europe and the United States (Reason 2003). The archiving of the performance realised in the present time serves both to overcome the absence of traces of the past and to constitute documentation for the future. At the same time, the artification of choreographic practices appears in political discourse as the concatenation of these temporal layers: for instance, Afro-Cuban dances such as rumba are considered as traces of the past, to which are added values of resistance to colonialist oppression. As such, they thereby also determine the present and the future of cubanidad. The regulation of the performance in terms of time and space—as required for the adaptation of Afro-Cuban repertoires to the modern theatre scene—actually reflected other ways of imagining the body of the nation (Berry 2010: 64). The malleability of the moment of performance—deemed as the manifestation of a living cultural expression that must be archived at the same time—echoes the apprehension of a new political temporality instituted by Castro’s socialist regime. Legitimising the creation of archives, and the archiving of present-time creation, appears then also as a matter of political manipulation of time. By putting past and present on the same temporal level by the archiving process, the annihilation of a certain historicity occurs—though arising from it—and accordingly, a new chronological starting point arises. Like the National Ballet of Cuba (Vessely 2008), the repertoire of the Conjunto Folklórico became the support for a history of Cuban dance linked to the Castro revolution (Berry 2010: 68). In the case of the Conjunto, the authority of the archive consecrates therefore popular dances as a form of performing art a posteriori as much as it categorises creation as heritage “by anticipation” (Puig 2006: 110). This contributes to asserting the performative dimension of archival repositories that are seen “as a place of active remembering rather than simply a place of documents” (Scott 2002: 197). Beyond the dialectic between state, archive and artistic institution, what is the place of the body in this apparatus?

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Body, Memory and Transmission In the frame of the Conjunto, the dancers subjected their bodies to the institution’s goals, which conflate temporalities of archive and creation— their bodies were thereby seen as present vectors of movements of the past that were to be recorded and archived for contemporaneous and future times. In other settings, how is the link between body, memory and archive performed with regard to Cuban dances? An ethnographic example from Afro-Cuban dance taught in Europe provides a divergent yet complementary dimension to explore this question. During a workshop organised in London and devoted to the Afro-­ Cuban dance related to the Palo religion in which I participated in August 2015, Cuban dancer and teacher Osbanis Tejeda and his partner Anneta Kepka transmitted a repertoire of steps accompanied by pictorial explanations on their origin linked to the slave trade. The notes taken at the end of the workshop describe a particularly evocative scene of the way the body became a vehicle for a broader history that was precisely (re)produced and transmitted through the body. Arranged in several rows, Osbanis asked us to extend our arms horizontally and to swing the chest on one side then the other while keeping the knees slightly bent so as to breathe some flexibility into the movement. However, assessing that the whole group’s execution of the movement was too stiff, he began to explain to us where this dance step came from. He explained that in the holds of slave ships, slaves chained to the feet had to compensate for the loss of balance caused by the roll of the boat by making wide arm movements. He asked us to redo the movement by imagining ourselves in the hold of the boat, fighting against the roll and seeking to restore our balance. He added that the slaves came to help one another by holding each other’s shoulders. He therefore prompted us to get closer to each other to create this chain of human solidarity, reminding us that the living conditions cramped in the holds required a great physical proximity. Perhaps embarrassed by the incongruity of the situation, some laughters burst but everyone nevertheless clinged seriously to the shoulder of his neighbour, encouraged by Osbanis to feel how the body seeks its balance in response to the pitching of the boat, making us swing on one side then the other synchronously, first slowly then faster and faster, which of course ended up dislocating the human chain. (Field Notes, London, August 1, 2015)

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On the one hand, this description illustrates the teacher’s pedagogy that seeks to put the students in a kind of somatic situation so that they can cognitively experience a certain type of movement that would have been created according to a specific spatio-sensory context. On the other hand, it also testifies to the diffusion of didactic modes resulting from the process of cultural globalisation that one finds in other cases of mediation of so-called traditional dances in the western metropolises (Raout 2009). The teacher here used his students’ bodies to both transmit a historical narrative (the formation of Cuban dances such as Palo as arising from the slave trade) and create a dynamic space of remembrance through the bodies themselves. The choice to focus on the production of a dance movement linked to the slave trade reflects the cultural interactions arising from the “Black Atlantic” space (Gilroy 1993). The teacher’s dynamic apprehension of history through the body can be discussed here in relation to other theoretical approaches of Afro-diasporic practices, which are often considered as carrying a memory linking them to Africa. Thus writes Yvonne Daniel: “African-derived dance and music has been stored in the ancient archives of the dancing body” (2011: 14). The notion of “body as archive” has been especially theorised by André Lepecki, focusing on the processes of “reconstitution” and the artistic questions that arise from it in the field of contemporary dance (2010). According to Lepecki, the body becomes archive in that it is a bearer and repository of a memory form that can be (re)activated during the performance. Like the notion of repertoire proposed by Taylor (2003), “the body as archive replaces and diverts notions of archive away from a documental deposit or a bureaucratic agency dedicated to the (mis)management of ‘the past’” (2010: 34). Accordingly, the body paradoxically becomes the mobile and precarious vector of a form of archive with specific dynamics, whose performative and transformative nature becomes a constituent in its own right (ibid.). The mobility and the performative and transformative capacities of the body in movement to act as a living archive put in tension notions such as intangible and incarnate, and make the notions of body-archive and body-­ memory developed here go beyond the essentialism contained in Bourdieu’s notion of corporal habitus (Foster 2009: 7). Indeed, on the contrary, it shows how the body conveys emotions and sensations referring both to a personal relationship to the past and to a certain collective memory that actually make sense in the present moment of the performance. In this, the apprehension of the past offered by the body of the

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dancer meets the concerns of ethnomusicologists in that just like dance, music allows exploration of “the ways in which echoes and legacies from the past can still be heard in the present and to consider the extent to which musical practices in the present are shaped not only by the past experience but also by ideas, feelings and beliefs about the past” (Bithell 2006: 4). The intertwined values ​​of the body-archive and body-memory are thus implicitly reinjected into the discourses related to the teaching of Afro-­ Cuban dances in Europe, as the example above suggests, attesting to the “transnational circulation of memory” (Rothberg 2013: 40) as well as to the modes of memory making and dissemination. Thus, unlike David Vaughan’s view that “the very nature of dancing makes its practitioners concerned with the present and the future rather than the past, the opposite of the historian’s preoccupation” (1984: 61), the performances and interviews conducted with Cuban dancers show, on the contrary, the importance of evoking the past through their bodies in the present time of performance in order to continue to transmit this memory to future generations. Thus, for instance, a young rumbero [rumba dancer] I met in Havana in March 2016 told me: “When I dance, it is not only myself that I express, it is also the history of my ancestors.” Afro-Cuban dance is thus more broadly based on these popular choreographic practices “where the past is perceived as being of key significance” (Buckland 2001: 1). In fact, according to Tejeda’s narration, the cognitive experiences and the bodily perception of the enslaved Africans in the ship’s hold and in the plantation would not only have turned into dance steps but would have also lasted until they were transmitted to a cosmopolitan audience in London by the fact of the survival of this repertoire for several centuries through the dancers’ body. The focus on the pastness of the movement and its capacity of survival over time, space and oppression presents therefore a different relation between body and archive compared to the one explored with the Conjunto example. Whether the meaning of this or that movement is reimagined at a later moment does not matter per se, what is highlighted here is the way in which the dancer’s body becomes, through discourse, practice and performance, one of these “places of memory [which] live only on their aptitude for metamorphosis” (Nora [1984] 1997: 38), or even a “memory knot” (Rothberg 2010: 7). According to Michael Rothberg’s theory, it is more a question of performing a “multidirectional memory” inasmuch as “such processes of reconstruction always

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involve temporal and spatial displacements and thus new layerings and constellations of time and place” (2013: 43). The way Tejeda uses his own body as well as the bodies of his students as a possible receptacle of a centuries-old history can certainly be read as “a specifically choreographic ‘will to archive’” (Lepecki 2010: 29). The intention of the artist is here what undeniably extends “the meaning and domain of archives” (Bernstein 2007: 9), possibly making the dancer’s body an archive in the making. In this respect, if the concept of “post-­ archive” could be applied to the audiovisual recordings of the Conjunto Folklórico Nacional due to their inscription in a material medium and their relative stability, the notion of archive in the making provides perhaps a better account for performative and intentional dynamics that traverse and are produced by the dancer’s body in the present time of performance. When Tejeda prompts a cosmopolitan assembly in a European metropolis to sense through their own bodies the conditions of enslaved Africans transported by boats centuries ago through words and physical and cognitive experience, the dancer also embodies a postcolonial discourse that considers the black body an instrument of resistance to oppression by “using the resources of the body to re-embed itself in place” (Kabir 2013: 73), thus conjuring up the traumatic displacement of the slave trade. The dancer’s body, conceived of as an archive in the making, guarantees a certain capacity of agency and empowerment to the postcolonial subject, where it is no longer a matter of unconsciously reproducing a gesture inherited from the past but, on the contrary, of consciously making it a manifesto for the future. Therefore, the clock of memory is reset either to the time of the Conjunto’s performances that substitute for traces of the past or to the moment of the embodiment of a movement that is conceived of as an actual pathway to the memory of the past. In any case, the dancing body represents a doorway, a liminal space, where temporalities of archive and performance are infused with memorial intentions and where past, present and future might conflate in the very moment of the live performance, although arising from and tending towards divergent directions.

Conclusion This text has put into perspective different types of archives regarding popular Cuban dances: the “classical” archives kept in the Havanese libraries and documentation centres and produced under Fidel Castro’s

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government; the “post-archives” of audiovisual recordings made by the Conjunto Folklórico Nacional created in 1962; and the dancer’s body as potential archive in the making. These different perceptions of the archive in relation to dance performance have helped to show how a “performative space of memory” is therefore created which reveals “a set of synchronies and asynchronies, symmetries and asymmetries, resonances and relations, across time and place” (Saltzman 2013: 38). Whether in Cuba or abroad, a genealogical narration of Cuban dance and music has been invented and exploited, both by dance artists and by teachers, as well as Cuban cultural policymakers. Linking different music-­ dance genres to each other according to an allegedly chronological progression, danzón and son are therefore seen as ancestors of casino and timba (and what is perceived as “Cuban salsa” abroad) via rumba and other Afro-Cuban dances. This genealogy embodies for the spectator, the tourist or the dance apprentice a history that catalyses local and globalised social dynamics, where dance acts both as a cultural and historical resource for Cuban identity and as an economic resource related to the development of tourism from the 1990s. The tensions induced by the juxtaposition of the moments of archive and creation as made by the Conjunto Folklórico Nacional showed how the control of the different temporalities of the archive and the performance actually revealed an important political issue of the socialist regime. Through the dialectic archive-memory-­ heritage/body-dance-creation, postcolonial politics of affects, trauma and survival eventually emerged through the Cuban dancers’ body. The confrontation of the dynamics of the archive with those of the performing arts indeed revealed the melting of the temporalities and the performativities inherent to the archival, artistic and choreographic gestures. This greatly complicates and blurs binary oppositions such as written/oral, lasting/ephemeral, tangible/intangible. Through the practice of the Cuban dances mentioned here, the body of the dancer certainly appears as a medium of memory and remembrance but also as a palimpsest that “keeps and transforms the choreographies of meaning” (Taylor 2003: 20), keeping in the present and through live bodies the traces of a certain past, while being always invested with new meanings in contemporaneous and future times. The chapter looked at Cuban dancing bodies in their diversity and in various spaces: the international stage through the evocation of ballet dancer Carlos Acosta, the national stage with the Conjunto Folklórico Nacional, and the diasporic scene with Cuban teacher Osbanis Tejeda

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teaching in London. Through these examples, the exploration of the making and transmission of cultural memory through dance actually related to the expression of Cuban identity performed at home and abroad. Cuba’s postcolonial politics eventually emerged from the questioning of archival and artistic temporalities, outlining the crafting of a postcolonial national time through careful and selected use of the past and consecration of what kinds of popular dances would indeed become part of the expression of cubanidad or even of cubanía as claimed in Acosta’s show.14

Notes 1. All translations from Spanish and French to English are mine. 2. https://www.roh.org.uk/news/dance-­essentials-­carlos-­acostas-­cubania. 3. I carried out this research in the frame of my postdoctoral research position at King’s College London within the ERC-funded project Modern Moves (2013–2018). I am therefore grateful to the project’s director Professor Ananya Jahanara Kabir and the ERC for having enabled this research. 4. León Argeliers, Urfé Odilio, La rumba, Consejo Nacional de Cultura, La Habana, Ediciones del Consejo Nacional de Cultura, ante 1979, 14 p. 5. Música Cubana, Consejo Nacional de Cultura, Centro de Documentación, 1975. 6. Centenario del danzón, Ministerio de Cultura, Dirección de Patrimonio Cultural, Museo Nacional de la Música, 1979, 42 p. 7. Interview, Havana, 10 December 2014. 8. Although I did not mention “salsa” but my interest in Cuban dances at large, the dancer assumed that I was interested in salsa. Interestingly she precisely employed this term instead of “casino” which is more commonly used among Cuban dancers. The term “salsa” spread in the 1970s as a commercial label linked to the development of Fania records to describe a genre of Latin dance music initially performed in New York City. It was much later used in Cuba to designate casino/timba dancing, especially with regard to a foreign audience. 9. Anteproyecto del plan de cultura de 1963, Consejo Nacional de Cultura, 1963; Proyecto. Plan para 1964, Consejo Nacional de Cultura, 1963, 43 p.; Seminario Preparatorio del Congreso Cultural de la Habana, Consejo Nacional de Cultura, Dorticos Torrado, Osvaldo, 1967. 10. La Cultura en Cuba Socialista, Ministerio de Cultura, 1982. 11. Conjunto Folklórico Nacional, Consejo Nacional de Cultura, 1963; Apuntes sobre el Conjunto Folklórico Nacional de Cuba, XV aniversario, Ministerio de Cultura, 1962–1977.

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12. The Ballet Nacional de Cuba is actually based on the existing Alonsos’ ballet dance company created in Cuba in 1940 (Vessely 2008: 243). 13. Various dance genres form the Conjunto’s repertoire, from Afro-Cuban genres such as rumba to contradanza such as tumba francesa. 14. In the words of Fernando Ortiz, “cubanidad” designates the “generic condition of being Cuban” while “cubanía” is rather a “complete, felt, conscious, and desired cubanidad.” Lecture given at the University of Havana on 28 November 1939, in Revista Bimestre Cubana, vol. V, XLV, no. 2, 1940: 161–86.

References Anteproyecto del plan de cultura de 1963. 1963. Consejo Nacional de Cultura, La Habana. Argyriadis, Kali. 2005. Les batá deux fois sacrés. La construction de la tradition musicale et chorégraphique afro-cubaine. Civilisations 53 (1–2): 45–74. Bernstein, Carol L. 2007. Beyond the Archive: Cultural Memory in Dance and Theater. Journal of Research Practice 3 (2): 1–14. Berry, Maya J. 2010. From ‘Ritual’ to ‘Repertory’: Dancing to the Time of the Nation. Afro-Hispanic Review 29 (1): 55–76. Bithell, Caroline. 2006. The Past in Music: Introduction. Ethnomusicology Forum 15 (1): 3–16. Buckland, Theresa Jill. 2001. Dance, Authenticity and Cultural Memory: The Politics of Embodiment. Yearbook for Traditional Music 33: 1–16. Casanella Cué, Liliana. 2014. Música popular bailable cubana. La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales. Conjunto Folklórico Nacional. 1963. Consejo Nacional de Cultura, La Habana. Daniel, Yvonne. 2011. Caribbean and Atlantic Diaspora Dance. Igniting Citizenship. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Djebbari, Elina. 2013. Le Ballet National du Mali : créer un patrimoine, construire une nation. Enjeux politiques, sociologiques et esthétiques d’un genre musicochorégraphique, de l’indépendance du pays à aujourd’hui. PhD.  Dissertation, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris. ———. 2019. Decolonising Culture, Staging Traditional Dances, Creating a New Music-Dance Genre: The National Ballet of Mali’s Postcolonial Agency. Journal of African Cultural Studies 31 (3): 352–368. Foster, Susan Leigh. 2009. Worlding Dance—An Introduction. In Worldling Dance, ed. Susan Leigh Foster, 1–14. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Franco, Susanne. 2015. Reenacting Heritage at Bomas of Kenya: Dancing the Postcolony. Dance Research Journal 47 (2): 3–22. Gilroy, Paul. 1993. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

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Heinich, Nathalie, and Roberta Shapiro (dir.). 2012. De l’artification: enquêtes sur le passage à l’art. Paris: Éditions de l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales. Kabir, Ananya Jahanara. 2013. Affect, Body, Place. Trauma Theory in the World. In The Future of Trauma Theory. Contemporary Literary and Cultural Criticism, ed. Gert Buelens, Samuel Durrant, and Robert Eaglestone, 63–75. London, New York: Routledge. Lepecki, André. 2010. The Body as Archive: Will to Re-Enact and the Afterlives of Dances. Dance Research Journal 42 (2): 28–48. Malcomson, Hettie. 2011. The ‘Routes’ and ‘Roots’ of “Danzón”: A Critique of the History of a Genre. Popular Music 30 (2): 263–278. Manuel, Peter. 1987. Marxism, Nationalism and Popular Music in Revolutionary Cuba. Popular Music 6 (2): 161–178. Moore, Robin. 2001. ¿Revolución Con Pachanga? Dance Music In Socialist Cuba. Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 26 (52): 151–177. Murphy, Jacqueline Shea. 2009. Mobilizing (in) the Archive: Santee Smith’s Kaha:wi. In Worldling Dance, ed. Susan Leigh Foster, 32–52. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Nora, Pierre. 1997 [1984]. Entre histoire et mémoire. In Les Lieux de mémoire, ed. Pierre Nora, vol. 1, 23–42. Paris: Gallimard. Puig, Nicolas. 2006. ‘Shi filastini, quelque chose de palestinien’. Musiques et musiciens palestiniens au Liban : territoires, scénographies et identities. Tumultes 2 (27): 109–134. Raout, Julien. 2009. Au rythme du tourisme. Le monde transnational de la percussion guinéenne. Cahiers d’études africaines 193–194: 175–202. Reason, Matthew. 2003. Archive or Memory? The Detritus of Live Performance. New Theatre Quarterly 19 (1): 82–89. Rothberg, Michael. 2010. Introduction: Between Memory and Memory: From Lieux de mémoire to Noeuds de mémoire. Yale French Studies 118 (119): 3–12. ———. 2013. Multidirectional Memory and the Implicated Subject: On Sebald and Kentridge. In Performing Memory in Art and Popular Culture, ed. Liedeke Plate and Anneke Smelik, 39–58. London-New York: Routledge. Saltzman, Lisa. 2013. Life or Theater, Diary or Drama: On the Performance of Memory in the Visual Arts. In Performing Memory in Art and Popular Culture, ed. Liedeke Plate and Anneke Smelik, 25–38. London-New York: Routledge. Scott, Rebecca J. 2002. The Provincial Archive as a Place of Memory: Confronting Oral and Written Sources on the Role of Former Slaves in the Cuban War of Independence (1895–98). New West Indian Guide 76: 191–209. Shapiro, Roberta. 2004. Qu’est-ce que l’artification? Paper at XVIIe congrès de l’Association internationale des sociologues de langue française, Tours. Taylor, Diana. 2003. The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

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Vaughan, David. 1984. Archives of the Dance: Building an Archive: Merce Cunningham Dance Company. The Journal of the Society for Dance Research 2 (1): 61–67. Vessely, Pauline. 2008. De la propagande révolutionnaire cubaine. Le Ballet National de Cuba au cœur des idéaux castristes. Sociologie de l’Art 11–12: 243–280.

Courting Disaster (“I Don’t Remember Anymore”): The Forgetful Dancer and the Body Politic in The Sound of Music (1965) Priya A. Thomas

The camera closes in on the ländler’s quintessential turns. The couple, eye-to-eye, stands gridlocked, paralytic. The breezy pleats of Maria’s peasant dress, having swept across the marble terrace with jubilant accelerating ease just moments earlier, ripple and stop. Flushed and breathless, Maria shakes her head and steps back. “Your face is all red.” “Is it?” Reaching up to hide her face, she offers a brisk, anxious admission: “I don’t remember anymore … I don’t suppose I’m used to dancing.” At the narrative crest of Rogers and Hammerstein’s 1965 movie musical, The Sound of Music, Maria, the pious Catholic orphan turned

P. A. Thomas (*) Texas Woman’s University, Denton, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Parfitt (ed.), Cultural Memory and Popular Dance, Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71083-5_12

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governess (played by Julie Andrews), and Austrian naval officer Georg von Trapp (played by Christopher Plummer) perform an iconic screen duet that has enjoyed continued popularity over more than half a century, not only in the United States and other English-speaking countries but also in Japan and India (Graml 2005: 193). Set in Salzburg, Austria, in 1938, on the eve of World War Two, the Hollywood adaptation of the couple’s courtship (based on the memoirs of the real-life Maria Augusta Trapp published in 1949, as well as a 1959 stage musical by the same name), depends crucially on this aforementioned duet which comes to a premature conclusion when its female protagonist evocatively forgets her steps. Corroborating a trope deployed in Hollywood romances, the duet occurs at the movie’s pinnacle, magnifying the couple’s growing intimacy within the movie’s overarching narrative. And while generally speaking, historians of musical theater and musicologists argue that The Sound of Music is written almost completely around its musical numbers, the near singular focus on dance in its signature courtship scene makes a distinctive statement about dance as the apparatus of romantic cohesion (Lamb-­ Faffelberger 2003; Knapp 2004). Additionally, the movie’s particularly climactic use of a ländler (an Austrian folk dance popularized in the late eighteenth century), to depict the couple’s fraught intimacy raises questions around what a forgotten ländler signifies within the movie’s broader sociopolitical and cultural metanarratives. The symbolic currency of this particular folk dance, coupled with the context of its forgetting, in Austria on the eve of World War Two, suggests that Maria’s amnesia, and the breach it exposes, issues a caution that surpasses the arc of its romantic narrative. In “Dance Breaks and Dream Ballets: Transitional Moments in Musical Theatre,” musical theater historian Mary Jo Lodge argues transitional moments in which “characters suddenly begin to stop singing and/or dancing,” appear frequently in movie musicals in order to dramatize obstacles or transformative opportunities for its main characters (Lodge 2013: 76). The conflation of forgetting with the ländler in The Sound of Music substantially augments this trope by turning to dance as the axis of its characters’ encounter with a broader political destiny. In its representation of a memory lapse, The Sound of Music’s carefully choreographed transitional moment appears to far exceed a narrow dramatization of the promises and perils awaiting the paradigmatic couple as an isolated unit, exposing more crucially, a body politic that analogizes the forgetful dancing body with an unruly political macrocosm.

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This wouldn’t be the first time that a Hollywood movie presented the heteronormative love story between man and woman as a prototypical microcosm of mass politics. In Crowd Scenes: Movies and Mass Politics, film theorist Michael Tratner observes that Hollywood sales strategies have long relied on setting love stories against the backdrop of violent political upheaval. Scrutinizing Gone with the Wind (1940), which is set against the struggles and bloodshed of the US civil war, alongside Doctor Zhivago (1965), and Titanic (1997), both of which unfurl within the growing tensions of class warfare and the Russian Revolution, Tratner argues that romantic turbulence on the silver screen “parallels, supports, and often directly causes the love affairs” (Tratner 2008: 52). Film theorist Rosemary Welsh accordingly identifies that silver screen romances also follow a distinct pattern of cinematography, insistently mirroring a correlation between conflict in a romantic pairing and that occurring in the world at large. Gone with the Wind, for instance, “moves between two polarities of structure, the immediacy and intimacy of the close-up shots and the long, panoramic view of the cosmological-eye view or what has been called the God’s eye view (52).” In this way, paradigmatic Hollywood romances visually reference desires, aspirations, and upheavals beyond a romantic nucleus, pointing equally to those wrought by mass social and political movements. Still other cinematic strategies poignantly animate the embeddedness of the paradigmatic couple in their tumultuous political context throughout The Sound of Music. In its momentous wedding scene, silver cathedral bells celebrating the von Trapp union cross-fade into an ominous crimson, as Nazi flags are hoisted up onto Salzburg monuments. The strategic use of chilling political cross-dissolves and cross-fades, here as elsewhere in the movie, visually signals the couple’s union as mirror of a broader political merger: namely, the Anschluss, the so-called peaceful annexation of Austria by Germany in 1938 (Knapp 2004: 133). In other words, The Sound of Music’s love story is not just informed by political turbulence; instead, romantic turbulence (and the bodily forgetting dramatized in its climactic duet) is represented as complicit and participatory in the grand, possibly uncontrollable social and political forces of World War Two. A range of careful cinematographic strategies suggests, then, that this particular ländler does not belong to the couple alone, emblematizing social and political forces far greater. By this reasoning, the script and choreography which culminates in a forgotten step unveils anxieties about the body’s role as site and agent of these overwhelming forces, and dance as an axial modality in the creation and maintenance of a body politic.

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The scene in question opens onto the terrace of the naval officer’s villa, where two of the young Von Trapp children simulate a dance overheard from the elegant, illuminated ballroom adjacent. When asked to identify the permeating music, Maria replies, “it’s the ländler … it’s an Austrian folk dance” (Wise et al. 1965). When the children implore her to teach it to them, she gently hesitates, foreshadowing the memory lapse to follow: “I haven’t danced it since I was a little girl” (Wise et al. 1965). Despite her initial reluctance, Maria proceeds to introduce its steps to Kurt, the Captain’s youngest son. When the Captain steps in as replacement for Kurt, the couple begin their signature duet, which the camera initially captures (in keeping with Welsh’s framework), at wide angles, offering a sweeping panorama of the couple’s ease across the floor. A constant rhythm, a fervid push-pull, approach and retreat dynamic animates the geography of their fluid footwork. His clapping hands prompt her twirling, sliding feet, skirt flung left and right, she lifts up onto her slippers alternately advancing toward him, and surrendering to the ground. A halting tension builds through the sequence, most palpable as Maria reaches for the Captain, her fingers hovering, never quite landing on his shoulder. At the closest point of their encounter, the camera closes in on the taut couple and their circling friction. Face to face, they revolve arms locked fast overhead, before the spin unravels, and the camera follows their slow turns in soft focus. At the drowsy cusp of the ländler’s spiral, their eyes meet. Heated and claustrophobic, the microcosm falters, and the couple let go, the canopy of their clasped hands released from overhead. Maria briskly retreats several steps before stopping altogether. Gasping, she offers a breathless justification for her forgetfulness: “I don’t suppose I’m used to dancing.”

Dancing the Body Politic: A Choreonecrology of the Forgetful Dancer Read without recourse to dance history, Maria’s comment appears little more than self-effacing politesse. Yet, the fact that she draws attention (however unwittingly), to bodies “not used to dancing” reproduces analogies drawn between the individual body and state body disseminated in European dance manuals since at least as early as the sixteenth century. Discourses specific to choreography as a civilizing force reach back to French dance master Thoinot Arbeau who, in his treatise Orchésographie

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(1589), positioned the moving body, perfected by training, as a means of regulating the social and political body. Aiming at what he deemed “correct social intercourse,” Arbeau’s text details how dance might salvage the untutored masses from becoming “a hybrid monstrous body, half man, half animal” (Siegmund 2012: 210; Arbeau 2012). The predictable performance of a dance, in effect, was an edifying, humanizing practice said to be capable of conferring social legibility and political legitimacy for those so-called monsters untutored in the norms of French nobility. Reconsidering Maria’s words in the context of a body politic that identifies the trained dancing body as arbiter of normative behavior exposes the social and political significance of a body that moves predictably through the choreography, and by extension, the symbolic importance of remembering the steps of a dance. A dancer’s cultivated recall may in this sense also represent a kind of “self-policing,” as is described by performance theorist Andre Lepecki (Lepecki 2013: 17). Perfected through dance, the trained body predictably re-members (reshapes) and is re-­ membered (shaped) by its cultural context through dance training and, more specifically, choreography. An antidote to the disorderly, ungovernable body, the dancer’s body remembers so as to avoid missteps, mishaps, and disasters. Read along these lines, Maria’s forgetting body exposes a body politic that new media theorist Eugene Thacker argues constitutes “… a response to the challenge of thinking about political order” (2015: 37). Discourses in political philosophy and literature (from notions of the Platonic polis to Dante Alighieri’s “political demonology” in The Inferno (1321), and later through Thomas Hobbes and John Locke) clarify this body politic was not only conceptualized via an anatomized, medicalized approach to the body as state/church or a combination thereof, but “expressed itself through a dialectics of health and illness” (Thacker 2015: 48). By extension, Thacker argues that “every attempt to formulate the constitution of the body politic must also confront its dissolution” (48), making it possible to read Maria’s abrupt arrest (by way of forgetting), as a transgression, a pathology, or even a necrosis, which exposes a dangerous limit to the body’s health (and by extension, that of civilization more generally). By extension, a choreonecrology of Maria’s amnesia (“necrology,” from the Greek nekros, meaning “a treatise or account of the dead”), links choreography to these medicalized discourses, serving to foreground the untrained or ill-trained dancer’s memory lapse as cautionary, and as

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co-­extensive with disintegration, disease, and death. But more importantly, by reading Maria’s forgotten (i.e., not-remembered) ländler as a kind of dis-membering of Austria as nation, we can start to see how a choreonecrology of the forgetful dancer analogizes the disrupted dance (and more specifically, the Austrian ländler) with potential political decomposition, drawing vivid attention not just to choreography, but to the forgetful dancer as a nexus of discourses about bodies on the brink of political disaster.

Austria and the Pastoral Ländler Having gained popularity in The Hapsburg Empire around 1720, the etymology of the ländler (German, from the German dialect Landl referring to upper Austria, where it originated), fuses it with the land and folk dances of present-day Austria. The Sound of Music’s iconic ländler however, was choreographed in Hollywood by Louisiana-born dancer/choreographer/actor and director, Marc Breaux (who trained with Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman), and his wife at the time, Broadway dancer/choreographer Dee Dee Wood (who trained with Katherine Dunham). Together Breaux and Wood were responsible for the larger-­ than-­life screen choreographies of Mary Poppins (1964), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), and The Slipper and the Rose (1976) (Taft 1999, 2017). In spite of obvious deviations from its Austrian predecessors, Breaux and Wood describe their ländler as the end-result of careful archival research conducted in order to adapt the Austrian folk dance not just for the silver screen, but in light of the existing aptitudes of its co-stars, Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, neither of whom were specifically trained as dancers (Taft 2017). Likewise, not only is The Sound of Music’s romantic duet tellingly identified as a ländler within the movie’s script, but the choreographic team’s desire to represent the original folk dance through archival reconstruction also reveals thematic attention, if not homage, to the ländler’s land of origin. The ländler’s deeply held association with the land of present-day Austria, and with pristine rural life more generally, which was so carefully reproduced by Breaux and Wood in Hollywood in 1965, is best understood by juxtaposing its history with that of its close choreographic (and musical) cousin, the minuet. Where the minuet had emerged in the court of Louis XIV and quickly assumed the position as the “queen of all dances” (von Feldtenstein 1767: 37), by Mozart’s (1756–1791) time, the minuet

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was considered an ancient dance. As the eighteenth century wore on and other aristocratic court dances fell aside, the noble associations of the minuet nonetheless strengthened. In the process, the minuet became a cultural and historical icon representing the power and authority of the ruling class, or the ancien régime. As the ideals of liberalism and republicanism spread, the minuet was used as a social ritual that responded to widespread social and political unrest by glorifying and reaffirming the divinely ordained order and power of the Habsburg monarchy and aristocracy” (McKee 2005: 420). In contrast, the ländler was (and still is), considered a dance of the folk. More pertinently, unlike the courtly minuet, the dynamic stomping and clapping of the ländler which required close body contact was in the eighteenth century (perhaps partially on account of its association with the Italian author/libertine adventurer, Giacomo Casanova), seen as transgressive by the church which attempted to forbid it on several occasions. Choreographically too, the ländler offered liberation from the minuet, occupying a central role in Goethe’s description of the ball in The Sorrows of Young Werther, for instance. Epitomizing a newfound freedom of movement on the dance floor, the ländler comes to be viewed by Werther as “an amorous pledge” (Edgecombe 2006: 66) on account of the increased contact between partners. This proximity between partners, and its distinctive sliding style, is retained in the waltz for which the ländler was a forerunner. In fact, “schleifer” (“slider”) was another name for the ländler, referring “to the action of the feet … preserved in the waltz” (64). By the time Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868) composed his opera, Guillaume Tell (1829), the ländler “had become a topographical marker for the [rural regions of the] Hapsburg Empire, as well as an index to rustic innocence” (71). Historian Rodney Stenning Edgecombe accordingly postulates that the ländler’s pastoral influence is also musically audible in composer Adolph Adam’s waltz for the ballet, Giselle (1841), which, while resembling the music of a minuet, was in fact, set in accordance with the popular, “horizontalizing” intervals of the ländler (64). The melodic idiom of the ländler likewise appears in Giacomo Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable (1831) (68). By the 1930s, the dance’s pastoral aesthetic had become a particularly potent instrument and barometer of Austrian culture (Bröcker 1996). It would be fair to assume then that The Sound of Music’s twentieth-­ century ländler would at the very least, carry vestiges of this cultural and aesthetic history, functioning as a “vector of rustic values” (68), as well as

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a marker for national identity. The adapted Hollywood ländler likewise conforms to the aforementioned paradigm situated as it is out of doors, on the terrace, at a distance from the Viennese sophisticates gathered indoors, in the opulent ballroom, possibly to perform the more evolved waltz. Maria’s costume, the simplicity of her dress, and the presence of the captain’s unadorned children in the scene likewise reinforce this ländler’s distinction as a rural, alpine folk dance. Additionally, as one might expect on account of its “volkstumlichkeit” (or popularity on account of its folkishness), the ländler also fed into and refracted a diverse range of political ideologies of its Hapsburg (and later Austrian) milieu. In the words of social historian Gundolf Graml, “From the Habsburg monarchy to the short-lived First Republic, from the desire to be part of the National-Socialist Third Reich not to mention its status as a neutral country after 1945, Austria’s national identity was always difficult to delineate and, most importantly, was always under the spell of the close linguistic and cultural ties to German Kultur” (193). On the eve of World War Two, the ländler’s embodiment of those Hapsburg folk traditions (associated with both Germany and Austria), assumed particular mnemonic significance in both countries, becoming closely intertwined with National Socialist ideology and the overarching imperative “not to forget” German Kultur during the 1930s.

The Ländler, Memory, and World War Two The Union of German Dance Circles (Verband deutscher Tanzkreise) founded in 1928, and which most folk dance groups joined in the following years, offers a focal point for understanding the historical relationship between the ländler and the rise of National Socialism in Germany. Like all other independent organizations (e.g., the diverse groupings of the Youth Movement) in the Weimar Republic, “the association only existed a few years before 1933, by which time, all these organizations were either dissolved or utilized by the National Socialistic movement and its ideology” (Bröcker 1996: 26). Notably, this process of unifying associations could take place easily because most of those responsible and the well-known folk dance teachers immediately accepted what was not exactly a new ideology, but one that disclosed nationalist ideals already stated in 1927. The invitation letter for the Union of German Dance Circles written in 1927 identified as its goal, among others, to fight against “exotic dance” and to reject “popular

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music, which has now overrun the authentic German waltz, Ländler and other melodies” (Lange 1994: 103). The commemorative spirit of the 1930s was, however, crucially also tied to reconstruction and invention. Not forgetting invariably requires not only regulation but also rejection and erasure, resulting in a careful curation of dances to remember, and dances to forget. With increased attention around not forgetting crucial elements of German culture, regulation around folk dances in the 1930s included new stipulations around the qualifications of educators for folk dance. This regulation was a good means of ensuring the transmission of the “right” dances, which was not so easy to regulate because of different viewpoints about the repertoire. The National Socialists made further efforts at consolidating this selective memory when, in 1933, the regime took new measures “to create new German dances with a communal spirit” (Bröcker 1996: 26). In rural Austria (the region foregrounded in The Sound of Music), where the majority of citizens supported the National Socialist agenda, this process of remembering and reconstructing the post-war Hapsburg legacy was likewise Janus-faced, resulting in a concerted effort toward forgetting those cultural performances that might threaten the dominant heimat narrative (or, Austria as “homeland”), bringing the atrocities of World War Two to bear on Austria’s narrative of neutrality. By the 1950s, the pronounced emphasis in Austria on cultural memory (and forgetting), enabled the establishment of a national and cultural identity based on the notion of political neutrality and centrality within Europe, thus differentiating its peoples as the “better Germans” of Europe (Lamb-Faffelberger 2003: 292). In this context, Maria teaching the young Kurt her almost forgotten ländler in the scene in question carries symbolic gravitas. Dramatizing choreography as a social process that begins long before a dance begins, Maria tells the watchful Kurt that he must bow first, then she, in response, must curtsey. She then leads the child to face the ballroom and calls out the triple meter of the dance, “one, two, three … step together, now step hop, step hop, now turn under …” When the sequence is repeated a second time, Kurt, locked in an awning of arms, struggles to make room for Maria in order to complete the ländler’s signature turns. The bemused, elder Von Trapp (watching unobserved), moves out of the shadow, stretches into his white gloves, and with a paternalistic pat on the boy’s head, interrupts: “Do allow me, will you?”

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In spite of her confessed memory fog, Maria’s tutelage of young Kurt unfolds sequentially and methodically, a-step-at-a-time. She playfully issues a series of verbal (and embodied) commands used to develop habitual recall of Hapsburg culture, and the child dutifully mirrors her gestures. Similarly, the Captain’s regulatory presence as patriarch and naval officer confirms the importance of completing the dance’s ordained steps and sequences. If the “art of command” (Franko 2007: 17), according to Lepecki (referencing choreographer William Forsythe and dance historian Mark Franko), “produces, and reproduces whole systems of obedience” (Lepecki 2013: 16), then Maria’s careful, near-maternal instruction (fortified by the Captain’s presence as patriarch and naval officer), aims at restoring a forgotten cultural heritage (and social order), through the detailed re-membering and reproduction of its steps. This kind of commemorative attention to cultural artifacts/performances as markers of German Kultur and, by extension, heimat Austrianness pervades the movie. As fitting musical parallel to the danced ländler, The Sound of Music also stages “Edelweiss,” an invented homeland folk song which the Captain performs prior to the movie’s forgotten ländler, and then later reprises in its depiction of the family’s performance at another symbolically charged event, an Austrian folk festival. Significantly magnifying the mnemonic significance of the performance, the Captain also forgets crucial lines of “Edelweiss” in his reprise, thereby confirming The Sound of Music’s sustained emphasis on memory as a theme in the construction of national identity. Historian of musical theater Raymond Knapp offers that the narrative’s ubiquitous homage to “the folk” by way of the “Edelweiss” is not entirely innocuous, given that it alludes to the actual existence of an Austrian folk tradition that actively opposed Nazi ideology, and by extension, an Austria uniformly opposed to the Anschluss (Knapp 2004). More egregiously, it suggests that the genteel, rural Austria embodied and given shape in the song was, like the von Trapp family itself, victimized by the Third Reich. And despite the movie’s narrative bent, compared to almost any part of Europe outside of Switzerland, rural Austria (especially Upper Austria and the area in and around Salzburg, the movie’s prime location), suffered the least on account of the war. Salzburg, Knapp recalls, “was neither ravaged by the war itself nor targeted for postwar retaliation (unlike Vienna, much of which long remained under Russian control)” (135). Identifying this perspective as a “scandalous reversal of historical realities” (135), Knapp argues that not only was rural Austria the “remarkably fertile soil that

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produced Hitler himself, but also much of Hitler’s grassroots support” (135). Moreover, the majority of Austria’s population actually favored the Anschluss. The movie’s outlandish depiction of Austria as a victim of Nazi aggression more than two decades after World War Two, while confounding, does coincide with shifts in mid-century US cultural and foreign policy. On the one hand, the expulsion of a vast number of Viennese intellectual and cultural elites after the Anschluss made the United States heir to Austria’s vast cultural legacy, leading to a growing sense of America’s cultural kinship with Austria (Vansant 1999: 175). And given its production during the Vietnam War (1955–1975), the movie’s nostalgic, Hollywood glorification of an idyllic, pre-war Austria additionally suggests a longing to return to a 1950s, pre-Vietnam, American golden age (Graml 209). Analyses offered by historians Raymond Knapp, Margarete Lamb-­ Faffelberger, and Gundolf Graml accordingly point to the strong possibility that the Hollywood ländler, like its predecessors, constellates a “nostalgic mythology that undergirds most nationalist ideologies” (Knapp 137). The Hollywood ländler, tied to “the myth of a rural world, close to nature … retains the essence of a lost paradise threatened by the complexities of modern urban life” (137), functioning as a kind of shorthand for the nationalist vision that gave birth to America as a nation-state. Effectively then, in appealing to the ländler, this paradigmatic Hollywood courtship scene evokes an Austrian nationalist narrative that, since the 1950s, evaded any public discourse around Austria’s relationship to World War Two and complicity in the Holocaust. In so doing, it upholds an imagined history of Austria (and its cultural traditions) based on mnemonic processes activated through embodied performances of the ländler. On the one hand, the Hollywood ländler functions as a cultural axis for remembering (that is, reinventing) Austria as a thousand-year-old country with a rich European history, splendid cultural traditions, and blessed with natural pastoral beauty. In equal measure, Hollywood’s revitalized ländler reflects both American and Austrian efforts to differentiate Austria from Germany. On this basis, German cultural historian Margarete Lamb-Faffelberger theorizes that the show and film version of The Sound of Music are, in fact, an attempt to reconstruct and contextualize American history. Peppered with the clichés of heimat Austria, The Sound of Music “may be seen as the ultimate gift bestowed upon Austria by the United States” (Lamb-­ Faffelberger 2003: 294). This narrative includes an array of farcical tropes

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including the simple peasant girl, catholic piety, the aristocratic manor, the proud patriotic naval officer, the singing children hiking in the Alps, and, of course, the ländler, a dance that defined both pre- and post-war Austrian identity in terms of its connection to the land and the rural folk (294). Not surprisingly, this pastoral heimat narrative continues to pervade Austrian Sound of Music tourism, as many popular Sound of Music bus tours attempt to hide the negative historical aspects of Austria’s places, highlighting the ongoing cultural ambiguities around national narratives that evade Austria’s troublesome Nazi past. In this vein, Graml notes the frequency with which “Sound of Music tour brochures and tour guides do not really underline the fact that the tours are actually crossing the border into Germany and, therefore, into another realm of national identity. …. (an) inclusion (that) also hints at a repressed past, at a spatial overlap between historically fraught notions of Austrian and German culture and history that re-insert themselves into the mechanisms of cultural representation” (200).

The Dis-Ease of Forgetting, the Disastrous Body On the one hand, Maria’s memory lapse signals her body’s vulnerability to the romantic courtship in question, thereby reproducing familiar heteronormative, Hollywood power asymmetries. However, Maria’s von Trapp’s momentary (albeit climactic) amnesia in Rogers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music doesn’t just dramatize a crisis occurring within a Hollywood courtship, but transfixes the spectator’s gaze on the medium of dance itself as the arbiter of a broader body politic, pointing to the forgotten ländler as a symbol of the unruly, untrained body’s vulnerability to dis-­ ease, and political disaster. Tied, as it is, to a particular construction of Austrian (and American) cultural legacy and history, the forgotten ländler discloses Maria’s dancing body as a potent axis of history and culture. As such, her momentary forgetfulness and the social vulnerability it instigates (so closely associated with death, disease, and disorder), is conspicuously overdetermined by its existence within the medicalized (heath/illness), anthropocentric (human/monster), binaries articulated by a longstanding western European body politic. By way of example (and as fitting physical parallel to forgetting), we might want to think of the role played by the falling body within these existing paradigms. In “Theorie de la demarche” of 1833, Honoré de Balzac delivers an anecdote about a friend who observes a man exiting a

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carriage. The man, noticing an acquaintance, leans forward to reach toward him as he loses balance and stumbles. The involuntary stumble, like the illegible motions of a Tourette’s patient, is what brings Balzac to develop his “treatise on elegance” (Hewitt 2005: 86). In observing the influence of this philosophical trajectory on “social choreography,” Germanic languages scholar Andrew Hewitt theorizes, “Balzac’s instance of a failed salutation, a failed interpellation, marks precisely that moment where any natural, palpable social order is lost” (86). The parallel drawn between forgetting and falling, then, pertains to the fact that both events disclose the unruly body as a threat to social order. In other words, forgetting a dance, and the related fact of losing one’s footing in it, dramatizes forgetting as a visceral experience of a failed interpellation. That is to say, it exposes the forgetting body as calamitous and beyond social control, as one that has failed the processes of health and cultural domestication articulated in western European dance and choreographic traditions reaching back to the sixteenth century. Capable of overwhelming, and outstripping the body’s agency, Maria’s forgetting, in this sense, is involuntary and convulsive. It is a dis-eased other-than-remembering that dis-members (or de-composes) an implicitly overarching social and political order. Historian of religions Monica Osborne points out that “there is something both terrifying and compelling” (Osborne 2011: 165) about this kind of absence of memory, about the ways in which bodies can forget, and then misstep, thereby transgressing, or falling away from what was once known. Yet, Maria’s vexed narrative of forgetting also invites a commemorative afterlife. Giving shape to what has disappeared, changed, or is changing, Maria’s amnesia sheds light on a network of cultural fissures that characterized life on the eve of World War Two, inviting not only recollection and reconstruction of the ländler, but the multiple, overlapping national narratives (American, Austrian, and German) that are its underpinning. In this way, the forgotten ländler makes a narrative claim on both the past and the future. And if, as historian Hayden White reminds, narratives in general introduce a subjective perspective, a moralizing impulse into our understanding of the world (1980: 4), then The Sound of Music’s climactic plotline about the forgotten dance offers a window into modern Austria’s problematic apolitical identity in the post-war years. Structured around its climactic scene of forgetting, its disrupted duet exposes 1938 (the year in which the movie is set), as a historical moment in which forgetting was an active reality, forcefully propelling a stubborn amnesia

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surrounding atrocity, and a concurrent kneejerk quest to anoint particular folk traditions as authentically Austrian, and as differentiated from a shared German ancestry. Equally though, the preoccupation with forgetting is also suggestive of America’s shared historical lineage with Germany not only represented through a concerted appeal to the prevailing heimat Austrian narrative triptych of “mountains, meadows and Mozart” (Graml 2005: 198), but provocatively embodied in Breaux and Wood’s reworked ländler as the heart of the couple’s Hollywood courtship. In this sense, the ländler forgotten (reworked as American), not only “thematizes Austria’s role in the Holocaust” (201) within the discourse of dance, but also addresses America’s troubled, repressed relationship with the same historical trajectory. In so doing, The Sound of Music’s disrupted ländler exposes how the forgetting body, and more specifically, the body “not used to dancing,” poses a monstrous threat within a longstanding European body politic that reaches from Arbeau through Balzac, associating the healthy human body with sovereignty. And this is no small point. One could say that this lingering conception of human sovereignty, and the threat of its dissolution, is the very reason that this Hollywood movie musical so deftly focalizes and depicts forgetfulness as a dancing event and experience. Embodied as a romantic duet at the very apex of the musical, it vividly depicts memory loss as carnal vulnerability, magnifying the body’s loss of control as a cultural event that is both deeply intimate and precariously political. This kind of forgetting overwhelms and dis-members not just the paradigmatic couple, but the body politic, becoming the kind of disaster that announces the existence of multiple pathologies to an existing social order.

References Arbeau, Thoinot. 2012. Orchesography. London: The Noverre Press. Bröcker, Marianne. 1996. Folk Dance Revival in Germany. The World of Music 38 (3): 21–36. Edgecombe, Rodney Stenning. 2006. The 19th-Century Ländler: Some Thoughts. The Musical Times 147 (1897): 63–76. Franko, Mark. 2007. Dance and the Political: States of Exception. In Dance Discourses: Keywords in Dance Research, ed. Susanne Franco and Marina Nordera, 11–28. London: Routledge.

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Graml, Gundolf. 2005. The Hills Are Alive…Sound of Music Tourism and the Performative Construction of Places. Women in German Yearbook 21: 192–214. Hewitt, Andrew. 2005. Social Choreography: Ideology as Performance in Dance and Everyday Movement. Durham: Duke University Press. Knapp, Raymond. 2004. History, The Sound of Music, and Us. American Music 22 (1): 133–144. Lamb-Faffelberger, Margarete. 2003. Beyond ‘The Sound of Music’: The Quest for Cultural Identity in Modern Austria. The German Quarterly 76 (3): 289–299. Lange, Karl-Heinz. 1994. “Verbano deutscher Tanzkreise.” In Der Tanz in der 1. Hälfte des 20. Jahrhund, Klotzsche, ed. Tanzhistorische Studien IX.  Informationen zum Tanz 22. Remscheid Bundesverband Tanz e. V., 103–13. Lepecki, André. 2013. Choreopolice and Choreopolitics: Or, the Task of the Dancer. TDR/The Drama Review 57 (4): 13–27. Lodge, Mary Jo. 2013. Dance Breaks and Dream Ballets: Transitional Moments in Musical Theatre. In Gestures of Music Theatre: The Performativity of Song and Dance, Dominic, ed. Taylor Symonds, 75–91. Millie. McKee, Eric. 2005. Mozart in the Ballroom: Minuet-Trio Contrast and the Aristocracy in Self-Portrait. Music Analysis 24 (3): 383–434. Osborne, Monica. 2011. Making the Wound Visible: On Midrash and Catastrophe. Religion & Literature 43 (2): 164–171. Siegmund, Gerald. 2012. Negotiating Choreography, Letter, Law in William Forsythe. In New German Dance Studies, ed. Susan Manning and Lucia Ruprecht. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Taft, Steve. 1999. Interview with Marc Breaux. Sites.uni.edu, June. https://sites. uni.edu/taft/breauxinterview.html. Accessed 1 March 2019. ———. 2017. Interview with Dee Dee Wood. The Website of Steve Taft. https:// www.stevetaft.com/the-­m arc-­b reaux-­s tor y/dee-­d ee-­w ood-­i nter view/. Accessed 1 March 2019. Thacker, Eugene. 2015. Tentacles Longer Than Night. New York: Zero Books. Tratner, Michael. 2008. The Passion of Mass Politics in the Most Popular Love Stories. In Crowd Scenes: Movies and Mass Politics, 51–72. Fordham University Press. von Feldtenstein, C.J. 1767. Die Kunst Nach Der Choreographie Su Tanzen Und Tänze Zu Schreiben. Brunswick: Schröderschen Buchhandlung. Vansant, Jacqueline. 1999. Robert Wise’s The Sound of Music and the ‘Denazification’ of Austria in American Cinema. In From World War to Waldheim: Culture and Politics in Austria and the United States, ed. Ruth Wodak and David F. Good, 165–186. New York: Berghahn Books. White, Hayden. 1980. The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality. Critical Inquiry 7 (1): 5–27. Wise, Robert, et  al. 1965. The Sound of Music. Beverly Hills, CA: Twentieth Century Fox.

PART IV

Im/mediate Memories

Feeling with, Moving Toward: Empathetic Attunement as Dance Reconstruction Methodology Danielle Robinson

Introduction Since 1998, I have been in a long-term relationship with ragtime and early jazz social dancing. I didn’t realize at the time that we were going to settle down together. At first it was just a fling. But we seemed to really enjoy each other’s company and appreciate one another’s sense of humor. I first wrestled with the ideas in this chapter in 2016 as part of a keynote address at the Dancing with Memory Symposium II at the University of London and a subsequent invited presentation for the Temple University Dance Colloquium Series. Sincere thanks to the organizers of these two events (Clare Parfitt, Sherril Dodds, Sally Ness, and Mark Franko) and to the audience members who shared their thoughtful comments. Special thanks also to my colleagues Jonathan Osborn and Marlis Schweitzer for their support and encouragement along my humanist, new materialist journey. D. Robinson (*) York University, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Parfitt (ed.), Cultural Memory and Popular Dance, Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71083-5_13

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Hesitant to commit, I initially stalked these modern social dance practices by eavesdropping on dance teachers telling students how to dance, in dance manuals. Captivated, I progressed to peeking into movie theaters by way of brief, silent dance clips that miraculously survived. Some of my richest experiences, though, happened when I lurked in committee rooms—via archived meeting minutes—where social reformers described in detail and complained about this dancing and worried about its impact on America’s youth, in particular its young white women. After several months of keeping these dances at arm’s length, I eventually invited them out … to the studio. It was quite awkward at first, neither of us knowing what to do. But eventually we found a rhythm together, going back and forth between movement, imagination, reading, and writing. Together we built a repertoire of a sort, a series of interlocking improvisational structures through which we could explore not only the social dancing of the early twentieth century but also the reconstruction process itself. This anthropomorphic approach is, of course, not how I learned  how  to reconstruct dances, but how my reconstruction process eventually taught me to research. To be sure, I began with a one-sided “scavenger approach”, which gives all the power to the researcher and none to the dancing, people who danced, or the sources that remain to testify to both. For years, I searched high and low for evidence of past dancing—scooping up remains, assessing their value/validity, and either pocketing them for later investigation or casting them aside. But once these sources induced me into an intense, embodied, and creative relationship, my perspective began to shift. Indeed, I wrestled with a tension between my desire to “know” these dances as things and my overwhelming curiosity about the people who practiced them. The more I learned of the dances, the more I wanted to know why they were danced the way they were? What they meant to the people involved? How they fit into people’s complex lives? In the end, key for me was keeping the source materials I explored strongly connected to the people who produced them and their intended audience. In this chapter, I offer a potential new approach to dance reconstruction, “empathetic attunement”, that is strongly influenced by New Materialist ways of thinking in order to query the power relations— between the researcher and the researched as well as between different kinds of dancers—inherent in reconstruction as a bedrock methodology of Dance Studies. This field of study was founded to recover dances that had been lost to time—“the aim is to ‘fill in the blanks’ of the (hi) story of dance and provide some continuity to the tradition (Kriegsman 1993;

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Morris 1993)” (Thomas 2003: 121). The tradition in question was fairly singular in scope, extending from ballet into twentieth-century modern dance, with a strong emphasis on connecting prominent choreographers and their works across time into clear lineages. In this endeavor, dancers and audiences were not of much interest, as they were viewed as the vehicles for choreography and the receivers of meaning, respectively—it was the dance as an art work that mattered most. My intention is to find a way to give more agency to past dancers and their dancing, by focusing on what the historical materials can tell us about the complexity of human interactions in the past and dance’s role in them. Indeed, I am a Humanist interested in how engaging with objects differently can render dance reconstruction a less hierarchical research methodology. According to Mark Franko, “Historical dance reconstruction has too often been characterized by a condescending attitude to audience and performer alike” (Franko 1989: 57). Typical approaches to dance reconstruction position the researcher as a type of savior who rescues lost dances from the passage of time. It also privileges choreographers’ perspectives on dance over all others’. But, what would happen if dance reconstruction focused on (different kinds of) dancers instead? How would this enable us to tell much more complicated and interesting stories, and thus histories, about dance and dancing through both performance and writing? Dance reconstruction is inherently a physical and imaginative process, which can be used to bring into focus past dancing and the people who did it. It doesn’t have to extricate dance from its material conditions and turn dancing into an art object. It can instead investigate how dance is generated by, and in turn generates, its socio-cultural world. Reconstructed in this way, dancing itself becomes empowered as a vital form of expressive culture that is intrinsic to how people live their lives and view their world. With this, I amplify what Linda Tomko wrote in the International Encyclopedia of Dance, “scholars may now also conceive reconstruction as a methodology, as a means of pursuing answers to still other questions. Rather than frame and fix a stable and unitary bodily phenomenon, reconstruction may illuminate kinetic and kinesthetic ways that dance made meanings in specific historical societies and moments” (Tomko 1998). Despite often being classed as “ephemera”, the sources that dance reconstructors rely on—dance cards, sheet music, old shoes, letters, grainy videos—are materials, not ephemerals. They have embedded animation, activity, and even life. The choreographic practices of the past might be ephemeral, but the people who danced them were certainly not, nor were

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their “remains”. Here I reference the important work of performance studies scholar Rebecca Schneider on re-enactment, which is closely related to reconstruction (2011). “If the past is never over, or never completed, ‘remains’ might be understood not solely as object or document material, but also as the immaterial labour of bodies engaged in and with that incomplete past: bodies striking poses, making gestures, voicing calls, reading words, singing songs, or standing witness” (33). In this way, dance source materials could be viewed as evidence of not only movement but also different kinds of entangled labors. What I am calling for here is for dance reconstructors to endeavor to get to know and connect physically and imaginatively with the people involved in their source materials—the people who created them and the people who engaged with them once created. One way to do this, I will suggest, is by querying more deeply the materiality of these sources, by not just treating them as scraps of information that can be pieced together like a puzzle into a singular version of a dance. Engaged with differently, source materials can be windows into people’s lives as well as complex cultural moments and the ways in which dancing made them possible and meaningful. In this way, our research can be more about celebrating the power of dance in the world and less about accruing power for dance as an artistic or academic discipline or for us as its saviors.

New Materialism and Performance Studies I came to consider this shift in direction by way of a growing conversation happening between the humanities and sciences around the animation and, some might say, the agency of matter. The scholars involved, often called New Materialists, operate through sometimes-separate discourses— from “thing” theory to vital materialism and from actor-network theory to object-centered ontology (Brown 2001, 2003; LaTour 2004, 2005; Bennett 2010). Nonetheless, they are all trying to dramatically shift our thinking about the nature of subjectivity and objectivity. Despite their differences, these thinkers all see objects as having the potential to act on, influence, and affect humans, thereby decentering humans as the only source of agency on the planet. Sociologist Bruno Latour, philosopher Jane Bennett, and literary scholar Bill Brown, for example, suggest that while objects do not necessarily possess agency as defined by the ability to make choices, they do have the ability to inform and provoke action.

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In case there are a few skeptics, I will offer a few examples: Orange traffic cones choreograph our movement—steering us in a particular direction; books bid us to turn their pages in a particular order; and an illuminated smart phone screen draws our gaze and fingers to it like moths to a flame. If you still feel doubtful about how things might influence your subjectivity, think about how disoriented you feel when you can’t find your cell phone. Try to imagine transitioning from reading a favorite, highlighted, dog-eared paperback to reading this same book on your ipad where you have to swipe right and left. And, see if you can picture trying to navigate those orange cones in a car in a different country, from a different side of the car and road… This is not to suggest that I think a pair of toe shoes has a soul or that a dance manual can force me into a tarantella. There are limits to this line of thinking, to be sure. Nonetheless I do think that there are advantages if dance reconstructors can begin thinking of historical materials as more active than passive; more alive than dead; and more agentive than docile.

New Materialist thinkers often draw upon the language of theater to explain their ideas. They talk of objects as actors that can influence or “script” human performance. And, performance studies scholars, like Marlis Schweitzer and Joanne Zerdy as well as Robin Bernstein, are becoming influential in how the New Materialist scholars are theorizing these borrowed terms (Schweitzer and Zerdy 2014; Bernstein 2009, 2011). In particular, they are looking at the human-object relationship in terms of its “performativity”, by which they mean its ability to inspire “complex, variable performances [of implied actions] that occupy real space and time” (Bernstein 2009: 69). I would like to see dance scholars join this conversation, as I feel that our theorizations of movement through the concept of choreography are even more useful for describing how humans and objects relate to one another. I could be biased, coming from Dance Studies, but to me the concept of scripts privileges the voice and language—given that stage directions that typically describe physical relationships on stage are minimal and bracketed off from dialogue. Alternatively, choreography, with its organization of material and symbolic interactions within time and space, positions the body as our primary mode of engagement with the world, which feels more accurate when describing human relations with objects.

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Some performance studies scholars also see a potential synergy between dance and New Materialism. Robin Bernstein writes in her article titled “Dances with Things”, “A chef’s knife, a laptop computer, and a wooden caricature all invite—indeed, create occasions for—repetitions of acts, distinctive and meaningful motions of eyes, hands, shoulders, hips, feet. These things are citational in that they arrange and propel bodies in recognizable ways, through paths of evocative movement that have been traveled before” (70). She calls such objects “scriptive things”, though, and describes human interactions with them as a performance, not a choreography. Marlis Schweitzer, a theater historian, takes these ideas even further by suggesting that we apply the term “choreographic thing” to materials that “move their human counterparts” (38). Importantly, neither of these scholars suggests that objects choreograph all humans in the same way, but that a type of collaborative, unique dance occurs between each human and each object, as a result of synergistic interaction. Dance Studies is beginning to awaken to the possibilities of New Materialism. Sally Ness has explored performative relationships between human movers and actant natural landscapes in Yosemite, drawing upon the work of both Bruno Latour and Jane Bennett (Ness 2016). But, to my knowledge, no one has considered this new field’s potential within dance reconstruction.

A New Materialist Approach to Dance Reconstruction So, how might it change dance reconstruction practices if we allowed our source materials to move us, not just physically, but also intellectually, emotionally, and creatively? At the very least, this would query the power relations between researchers and sources inherent within most scholarly processes. At most, this could upend enduring illusions and idealizations of objectivity, no pun intended, within this inveterate research practice. And more generally, what would happen if we started paying more attention to the materiality of dance’s sources as well as dance’s material conditions? What possibilities does this open up not only in terms of methods, but also in terms of the kinds of questions we can even ask about dancing and dancers?

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There is an enduring and implicit investment within Dance Studies in dance’s lack of materiality—indeed, ephemerality is what supposedly makes dance different from all the other art forms (Goldman 2007; McFee 2011; Kraut 2015; Pakes 2020; Elswit 2018). To quote one of the founders of Dance Studies in the United States, Marcia Siegel: “Dance exists at a perpetual vanishing point” (Siegel 1972: 1). But what is the consequence of our embrace of dance’s ephemerality? As a result of this notion, I suggest, we have, at times, lost touch with the material processes, people, experiences, and conditions that make dance possible. At first glance such considerations are surely not as dazzling as the performance of dance, but they are nonetheless crucial if we want to advocate for the importance of dance in people’s lives and in society as a whole as well as its power to evoke social change. Contexts are not tertiary concerns, but what lend dance its vitality, relevance, meaning, and value. To explore some of these provocative questions and issues further, I would now like to pivot into a more concrete discussion, one that sketches out what a dance reconstruction process could look like that attempts to respect not only the agency of our materials but also the agency of the people who interacted with them over time. For the sake of clarity, I am calling this process “empathetic attunement” to differentiate it from past reconstruction practices, including my own (Robinson 2015). By coincidence, this term has been used, in quite a different context, by Fred Seddon (2004, 2005, 2009a, b, 2012, 2015), a music psychologist, to describe how members of a performing group achieve a de-centered, group flow state while playing a common score. In both cases, it seems that we are trying to describe how “feeling with” others can transform the experiences of those involved.

Empathetic Attunement As I am proposing it, empathetic attunement attempts to bring together the subjectivity of the researcher with the subjectivity of the people connected with a particular source in order to bring into the foreground the complex world that generated both the source itself and the dancing to which it testifies. Such a process would emphasize the people behind, within, and around dance objects—the ones whose complementary and conflicting agendas, experiences, memories, and emotions created them in the first place, as well as the people who are drawn to these objects. In this

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way, the dance object itself becomes a gateway through which to access, explore, and perhaps inhabit an “other” world. There are likely many ways to empathetically attune oneself with the people whose experiences are entangled with a particular source. Today, I will propose just one model for how to do this, which has three distinct steps. As an illustration of this process, I will use a source material from my own research on early jazz social dancing: an article published in 1927 in The Dance Magazine called “Low Down Dancing: The Low Down on the Real Negro Steps” that was authored by Elise Marcus and illustrated with images of jazz dancer Buddy Bradley (Marcus 1927, 1928). This object purports to be a series of four dance lessons focused on early jazz steps/ dances: Ballin’ the Jack, Baltimore Buzz, Black Bottom, and Birmingham/ Cincinnati Breakdown. 1. I suggest beginning with an imaginative exploration of the source that is rooted in all the contextual knowledge you bring to it and that focuses on how the material reaches out to you and invites you to engage with it. Imagine you are its intended user … and then consider other users who might have been drawn to it as well. In the case of this dance material, imagine you are an aspiring white, female professional dancer who is successful enough to have some disposable income—in other words, imagine yourself to be part of the target audience of this magazine. You flip through the pages of this glossy periodical—while you wait on a corner for a trolley car or in a sweaty hallway before an audition— you skim the advice columns, glide over the photographs of a musical that just opened, overlook the advertisements for dance shoes you don’t need and then … You open to this page, where you encounter a full-body image of an African American man looking straight at you. This is not a normal occurrence in your life, nor within the pages of your reading material. Noticing discomfort arise, you study the images more closely and wonder if you could even do these movements yourself. It looks too … complicated. You turn the page and then another. Take a breath. And then turn all the way back. You think: It would be useful to add some new steps to your audition repertoire. You take another look over the page; this time shifting your gaze to the neat text safely enclosed in a pair of thin double lines. The dance explanations look simple enough.

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I might be able to do them, you reason. But I would look ridiculous trying, you worry. You decide to wait to try the moves out until you are back in your apartment later in the evening, where you and your roommate can help each other decipher the images and text. Before moving on, be sure to also imagine you are an African American woman working in the theater where dance auditions were just held. You find a discarded copy of this magazine. While you eat your dinner that evening, you start turning its pages and come across this dance lesson. Do you cackle at the absurdity of white girls doing those familiar dances? Might you be angry that these dances are being represented so wrongly to the world? Or do you experience a flush of pride that dances you have known all your life are being celebrated in this way? Would you even consider changing your versions of these dances to Bradley’s, given that his version is validated by this glossy publication—in photographs no less? Or do you simply jot down his name and decide to keep an eye out for one of his shows? This reader’s bodily repertoire would be quite different from the intended reader’s, but her reactions are no less worth imagining as her potential experience of this material raises important questions relating to cultural authority. The dances represented here are offered for the purposes of appropriation: Bradley is “teaching” these dances crossculturally and Marcus is attempting to translate them for the magazine’s intended audience. Considering an African American perspective on these dances and their commercial representation in this magazine would force us to think through what Bradley might have gained and what black communities might have lost in this exchange. Many, many different people have engaged with a given dance material over time, from the perspective of their distinct positionality. It is important to move beyond an idealized, or even the most likely, user in order to gain a sense of the breadth of the potential impact of a source. In a similar vein, it is also crucial to maintain self-­reflexivity about how your own positionality impacts how you imagine someone else’s experiences throughout the entire attunement process. . The second step I propose is to attempt to reconstruct the creation 2 process for this material. Turn your attention to the people involved in its generation and how this object might have fit into their lives. Find out as much as you can about them and then imagine their interactions.

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There are two primary people whose perspectives are conveyed through this source. The first is Buddy Bradley, the dancer pictured in the article and whose dancing is adapted for this magazine’s readership within the brief dance directions offered. He is an African American professional jazz dancer who recently started teaching lessons to and creating routines for Broadway’s star performers. (He would later achieve much career success in England as a jazz choreographer [Robinson 2006].) The publication of this article would have been crucial to his career development, as it would have positioned him not only as an expert but also as one that was approved by one of the most important dance publications in North America at this time. And then there is Elise Marcus, the official author of the article, who ostensibly wrote the prose that frames the dance lesson and also perhaps the dance instructions themselves, based on Bradley’s explanations and demonstrations for her. She does not position herself as a dancer or dance fan, but as a neutral, disembodied journalist reporting on some new steps the readers might be interested in. This article was likely a risk for her, given its topic, but it also would have broadened her writing portfolio in ways that might have been advantageous in the long term within Jazz Age Manhattan. Let’s take a moment to imagine how this dance object might have been produced. Did Bradley go to her office? Or did she visit his studio in the Broadway district? Or did she simply meet him at the photography studio of Nasib, the artist who is credited with the images? Wherever it happened, Bradley would have had to demonstrate the steps for her in close proximity. In addition, they likely had to engage in a brief discussion about each dance, until Marcus felt she had a good sense of how she was going to describe the dance steps to her readers. Imaginatively exploring these possibilities, I picture Marcus sitting, watching, legs crossed, with paper and pen in hand. She keeps her coat on but maybe not her hat, as a small gesture of respect toward Bradley. She watches him dancing right in front of her, in his buttoned up collared shirt and braces—the only flesh showing, his hands and face. After walking to the corner to put a record on, he dances for her eyes alone, but is careful not to meet her intense gaze. He is close enough for her to see and hear him, but not so close that she can hear his breathing. As he dances for her, they are both keenly aware that they

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are not entirely alone, as others intermittently walk through the space on their way somewhere else, for everyone’s peace of mind. My mind begins to generate other possibilities for their relationship: did Bradley know Marcus from an integrated Harlem nightclub where they met afterhours on the dance floor? Was she an aspiring dancer herself and one of his students at his new studio in the Broadway district? Or did Bradley pitch this story to her editor at the magazine, using his professional theater contacts to get him in the door? The possibilities are seemingly endless, but what is important is to move beyond assumptions rooted in only hegemonic relationships. . The final step of an empathetic attunement process is, of course, to 3 reactivate the historical dancing. This requires us to refocus our attention on the remnants of dancing offered by the material and bodily respond to its directives, noticing what it urges you to do and what it doesn’t, as well as how it does so. When I try to take this dance lesson from Bradley, by way of Marcus’s cool words and Nasib’s harshly lit images, I find I can quickly master the basics. The dances, done poorly, are not hard at all. The actions are not complicated as described, but there is clearly key information missing. First of all, there is little discussion of timing or energy; only simple bodily actions are described. Moreover, the text and images do not necessarily align. I start to wonder if the person that chose the images actually knew which dance they were supposed to refer to. Then I remember that freeze frame photography did not exist at this time. Bradley was not captured while dancing, but had to hold a pose for several seconds for each photograph; these photos could not convey motion even if they wanted to. Ultimately, as a dancer, I am left with more questions than answers, which might be deliberate on Bradley’s part. What better way to get dancers to take lessons from experts than to spark their interest but not give them enough information to succeed on their own? An excellent advertisement for his growing business. Another explanation is a desire on Bradley’s part to leave some aspects of dance within African American communities and not share them on a mass scale, perhaps to protect himself and other black professional jazz dancers trying to make a living in a world increasingly dominated by white jazz dancers.

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Conclusions By interacting with this dance source in this way, physically, emotionally, intellectually, and imaginatively, I can tap into the movement memories embedded within it—entangled with the market forces, racial constraints, and professional aspirations that cross-cut it. I become attuned to the competing agendas at stake and thus a wider range of potential meanings of the object and movement it conveyed. In other words, how this dance materially matters comes more clearly into view. Another dance reconstructor might have just extracted the dance information here and created a performance of these dances, but I ask you: whose version of the dance would she/he/they be performing? The multiple versions of these dances that were embodied in African American social dance contexts? The version Bradley himself might do on stage as part of a show? The simplified version Bradley showed to Marcus to adapt for her readership? The version Marcus managed to record based on her interpretation of Bradley’s explanations? Or how about the version danced in apartments across Manhattan by aspiring dancers trying to figure out the relationship between Marcus’s words and Bradley’s poses? Not to mention the very interesting dance happening among the competing agendas and intentions of Marcus and Bradley and their readers? All of these versions of the dances (and more) are implicitly and explicitly embedded in this dance object, waiting to be explored and embodied by future dance reconstructors, whether they are focused on stages or pages. Different dance versions, competing personal-professional agendas, and diverse spaces would enrich a performance as much as a monograph and, most importantly, enable us to tell much more powerful stories and stories of power through dance. Empathetic attunement as a dance reconstruction methodology is about imaginatively engaging with the diverse peoples who intersected with the dances, dancing, and dance objects we are interested in—all of the people involved in generating a dance practice, from various corners of society, not just one, privileged, group—while of course noticing and being wary of how your perceived relationships with these people might impact your own imaginings. To do otherwise risks fabricating a simpler time out of a much more complicated one, reinforcing existing power structures, and effectively erasing much of the rich complexity of dance history.

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Schneider, Rebecca. 2011. Performing Remains Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment. London: Routledge. Schweitzer, Marlis, and Joanne Zerdy. 2014. Performing Objects and Theatrical Things. Houndmills. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Seddon, Frederick A. 2004. Empathetic Creativity: The Product of Empathetic Attunement. Collaborative Creativity: Contemporary Perspectives: 65–78. ———. 2005. Modes of Communication During Jazz Improvisation. British Journal of Music Education 22 (1): 47–61. Seddon, Frederick A.  Biasutti. 2009a. Modes of Communication Between Members of a String Quartet. Small Group Research 40 (2): 115–137. ———. 2009b. A Comparison of Modes of Communication Between Members of a String Quartet and a Jazz Sextet. Psychology of Music 37 (4): 395–415. Seddon, Frederick A. 2012. Empathetic Creativity in Music-Making. Musical Creativity: Insights from Music Education Research: 133–147. Seddon, Frederick A.  Fred. 2015. Empathy in Piano Duet Rehearsal and Performance: A Response to Haddon and Hutchinson. Empirical Musicology Review 10 (1–2): 157–159. Siegel, Marcia B. 1972. At the Vanishing Point; a Critic Looks at Dance. New York: Saturday Review Press. Thomas, Helen. 2003. The Body, Dance, and Cultural Theory. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Tomko, Linda J. 1998. Reconstruction: Beyond Notation. In International Encyclopedia of Dance: A Project of Dance Perspectives Foundation, Inc, ed. Selma Jeanne Cohen. New York: Oxford University Press.

Mother Tongue: Dance and Memory, an Autobiographical Excavation Leslie Satin

One of my earliest memories of social dancing is the time I was swept off my feet—literally—by a rabbi. I was twelve or thirteen years old, and a guest, with my secular Jewish family, at a bar-mitzvah: first the religious coming-of-age rite at the synagogue, and later the big party at one or another hyper-adorned catering hall. It was at the party, or ‘reception’, that this presumably non-Orthodox rabbi,1 who must have seen me rocking out solo on the dance floor, scooped me up and twirled me around the periphery of what I recall as a huge room in a spirited Merengue, a couple dance native to Haiti and the Dominican Republic but typical band fare then (the mid-1960s), popular at bar-mitzvahs and Jewish weddings in New  York City and the metropolitan area. I was not an accomplished bailarina de Merengue: I knew—and still know—none of the actual steps or ‘moves’; what I remember is the feeling of the dance, and my partner, taking me into a wild ride of spatial disorientation, speed, and abandon.2

L. Satin (*) New York University Gallatin School of Individualized Study, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Parfitt (ed.), Cultural Memory and Popular Dance, Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71083-5_14

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While partnered social dance was new to me as an experience, it was not new to me as a phenomenon. This chapter centers on a recurring event, actually many variations of an event, as it is and has been replayed in my memories of childhood and early adolescence: my parents, Jerry and Phyllis Satin, dancing—the Lindy, the Fox-Trot, and especially the Twist— as I watched, with others, at weddings, bar-mitzvahs, and other social celebrations.3 I remember how they moved, and how they looked at each other: My mother’s smile was sexy and secretive; my father’s was flirtatious and daring. It was thrilling, illicit, a spectacle hovering over boundaries of public and private, inclusion and exclusion. I remember my sister Bascha and me, when we were still quite small, literally jumping up and down with glee, with pride in our beautiful parents and their collectively acknowledged specialness, probably with some anxiety at not being in the dance with them, and presumably with tinglings of intense and inchoate excitation.4 Autobiography figures in my movement and language: as performance, fiction, history, and critical lens. Considering my parents’ stories, and my sisters’ and my own stories of my parents, I am looking at overlaps of personal, cultural, and mediated memory; individual narratives embedded in collective circumstances and beliefs; embodied and textual memories that weave the dancers’ corporeal knowledge through the shared and ever-­ changing retellings of family stories; and the charged repetition of memories into my own choreography and dancing. My writing is informed, too, explicitly and obliquely, by scholarship in cinema, media, and performance studies; affect, literary, and autobiography theory; phenomenology; and contemporary dance; by examinations of memory from numerous perspectives; by my long-time dance practice and the embodied knowledge with which it is woven. My essay, like many in this volume, was originally a conference presentation.5 Then and now, I reverse the ‘mediated memory’ equation, looking both at how media—especially photographs and film—have affected my memories and at how those memories have infiltrated my experiences of media, especially movies. The presentation included several performative sections, in which I interrupted my talk to dance: ‘channeling’ my mother, my father, and a movie actor who had entered my familial mnemonic image bank. Here, I recall, ‘translate’, and, I hope, animate these acts of embodied memory in textual form. ***

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I invite you to remember my parents dancing, to imagine them through my words. A scrim covers my memories, recent images veiling the older, more ‘perfect’ ones. I cannot help but see my father, who died in 2013, as he was in those last months, after a twelve-year struggle with the physiological, physical, and mental deteriorations, or demolitions, of Parkinson’s disease, a progressive and incurable neurodegenerative disorder. Always a big, graceful, handsome man, he was slowly deserted by even his senses, and, of course, by his muscle control. Always someone who loved to eat, he lost his ability to smell or taste; an athlete in his youth, he was eventually unable to rise or walk on his own steam, his stillness eruptively punctuated by dyskinesiac gestures and grimaces, his soft voice reduced to a whisper. My now-widowed mother is in her late eighties but acts and looks much younger, like a less-severe Angela Merkel. Having survived one serious illness, living intelligently with another, she is moderately active and fairly healthy, socially involved, politically aware, and fully compos mentis. She is deeply engaged in re-narrativizing her life—reshuffling the pages of her autobiography and writing new ones, just as she continually redecorates her first-ever Own Apartment, taking down the pictures on the walls, hanging them in different spots, buying new ones—and, newly media-­ wise, texting her daughters and cousins the daily results. But back in the floating ‘then’ of my imagination, my mother was in her twenties or thirties, her dark hair poufed or piled in some fancy ‘do’, her shoes high-heeled, her body slim and curvy under a green satin sheath dress or tight bodice and full skirt. My father was dressed up, too, as he loved to be, and his gliding entry onto the dance floor with my mother had the feel of a strut. Slipping into his tuxedo, he slipped into character, too: suave, debonair, gentlemanly. To complete this (self-)portrait: he was a wonderful dancer—‘very smooth’, as my mother says—who could touch the small of your back ever so lightly and mysteriously guide you through entirely unfamiliar steps and patterns. (I know that because, years later, he danced with me, too.) My parents held the floor with their clarity and assurance, invisibly led by my father, in the steps, turns, and dips of the ballroom numbers (‘we did the Cha-Cha’, my mother recalls, ‘and a little Samba, the Rumba …’), performed elegantly but not theatrically. And shifting into the more improvisational Twist, they held each other with their torsos and their eyes. They didn’t directly face each other, but stood a side-step apart, so their bodies were parallel but not lined up. Their movement was more suggestive than salacious: hips sliding side to side above the shifts of weight

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from foot to foot, arms softly sawing along with the hips’ rhythm. Gaze to gaze, they turned their heads toward each other, not inclining them much, though my father was much taller. My mother often let the tip of her tongue stick out to one side just a little, even brush her lips; this is (the story of) what she looked like: To show what she ‘looked like’, I have to get to the feeling of being her, and of her knowing that she was—that they were—being looked at. I do this by sensing her dancing both alone (I don’t remember this so much as I invent it, to focus on my own body) and, especially, with my father, inhabiting what I remember of her timing. I start with the head and face: slowly and deliberately turning my head and my gaze to one side, letting a slight smile emerge; I might lift my chin a bit; the tip of my tongue lightly touches my teeth, takes a little time to peek from between my lips. Finding her body, I imagine myself being a few inches taller, with a narrower waist and fuller hips, slightly larger breasts. Her silky skirt brushes against my legs.

My father often had what my mother calls ‘a slight wink’ when he danced—a little ironic, what my sister Bascha sees as ‘smirking at the world because he had [Mom]’. This is (the story of) what he looked like: Imagining myself into his physicality is much more challenging. I resemble both parents (I have his droopy-cornered mouth, which makes me [as it did him] look unhappy; I have her nose, her voice, and ready access to her gesture archive), but crossing over gender and size feels more like an act of will than a transformation. I start from the breath, needing more on the inhale to fill out this broader body, longer legs; exhaling, I reach to the tips of his elegant tapered fingers. I bend both arms at the elbow, one forearm vertical with palm forward, one horizontal at chest level: sort of a solo Samba. (The partnering gesture is mimetic, and readable—he, too, knows that he, and they, are being watched.) The face is the hardest: I try to talk myself into that twinkle, that loving look at my mother. I see it, but it doesn’t feel quite right.

*** To consider mediated memory in popular (or any) dance, we need to contemplate the complexity of any memory in dance: in particular, to acknowledge the element of embodiment—merging, for example, muscle memory, spatial and kinesthetic awareness, sensory perception, sensitivity to

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physical and physiological sensation—as it figures in our dancing experience of memory, of time. Covering this enormous area is not my project; I note, though, how most non-dance writing on memory focuses solely or predominantly on the mind (individual/collective/cultural) rather than stressing the significance of the agential mnemonic body. Conversely, many dancers’ beliefs or desires urge them—us—to compartmentalize the body and mind rather than integrate them or recognize what choreographer Susan Rethorst calls ‘the body’s mind’ (2012: 177): they/we wish to see the body as pure, autonomous, and unmediated, offering direct links to memory, presentness, timelessness. A recent conference—Jews and Jewishness in the Dance World6—which included movement workshops as well as talks exemplified, in two modes, through lines regarding memory: we experience our collective as well as individual history at the body level; and we experience and reproduce even those elements of history that precede our own lives. Certainly, scientific as well as sociological evidence substantiates this, from the writings of neuroscientists (e.g., Ramachandran, D’Amasio, Iacoboni) to sociologist Marcel Mauss’s 1935 analysis of ‘technique’: whether ballet or walking, these learned and remembered ways of doing things carry out cultural conventions and dictates through ongoing embodied processes of memory-­ into-present-time. Scholars grapple with the experiences and responsibilities of trauma survivors’ descendants who have taken on what Eva Hoffman calls the ‘guardianship’ of their families’ memories (Hoffman 2004 in Hirsch 2008: 103). Marianne Hirsch uses the term ‘postmemory’ for this ‘transgenerational transmission of trauma’ and creation of ‘memories’ in the ‘second generation’ that took place before they were born (2008: 103, 106). And, of course, dances, dance memoirs, and dance scholarship have long assumed our potential for ‘blood memory’. At this gathering of dance practitioners and scholars, mostly Jewish and born after the end of World War II, the primary example of collective identity and actual and ‘inherited’ memory was the Holocaust. It pervaded so many of our experiences, it was almost an answer to Primo Levi’s question, which was the title of dance historian Marion Kant’s keynote to the largely secular gathering: ‘Then in what sense are you Jewish?’ (2018). It struck me that not only have we heard, ad infinitum, about this sweeping genocide from survivors and observers, we have come to know it through the repetition of photographic and cinematic images that simultaneously remind us, threaten us, and resituate us as insiders. We ‘know’ the Holocaust from movies (Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1969 Army of Shadows,

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Alain Resnais’s 1956 Night and Fog, László Nemes’s 2015 Son of Saul, and Paweł Pawlikowski’s 2013 Ida, to name a few seared into my memory); from the thousands of photographs of cadaverous inmates in striped uniforms; from the rooms of talking-head videos at Yad Vashem7: elderly survivors recounting unbearable losses hammered into language; I am haunted by the posture of one man, his smile warm, the dreadfulness of his remembrances at odds with the shy, coy tilt of his head. Poet Joan Logghe points out in her blog—following the lethal 27 October 2018 attack on a synagogue in her native Pittsburgh—that she ‘knew’ the Holocaust primarily through Anne Frank; and we know Frank not only through her writing but through her story’s multi-channel repetition: her mediated celebrity. This Holocaust history-as-mediated memory was, I think, a significant factor in these parties my family, friends, and neighbors attended. They would have been opportunities for joy and celebration at any time. However, many of these celebrants, these Jewish dancers, were still working through—moving through—this enormous narrative frame. We know that the glut of mediated imagery, like those terrible photographs, can overwhelm us to the point of meaninglessness, distance, even boredom; we also know that the repetition of an image can recharge the initial sensation: Proust’s madeleine, for instance, or the trigger factor. Similarly, the more ‘positive’ photo archives we keep and show, especially now, have their own complex implications, not only for the possibilities of constructing a life—or at least its record—but for how we integrate our memories. New media scholar José van Dijck addresses these implications in her 2007 Mediated Memories in the Digital Age. She theorizes the ‘prisms’ of our ‘personal shoeboxes’—a cozy-sounding category now presumed to contain digital as well as analog information, maybe even only contain digital information—the images and ideas hovering in the Cloud as well as the continually accumulated tangible ephemera (xiii). ‘Mediated memories’, van Dijck writes in her preface, includes both the stuff in the box and ‘a mental concept … that encompasses aspects of mind and body as well as of technology and culture’ (xii). This suggests that how we accumulate the material and impalpable components of our self-in-the-making is integral to the sense of that self—a perspective equally significant to the continually developing technique of a dancer’s practice and the image repertoire she encounters in her self-representational evolution.

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The analog/digital ‘shoebox’ calls up a much older image: the intensely personal, profoundly pre-digital variation on the overflow of actual stuff with which many of us are familiar, tenderly described by phenomenologist Gaston Bachelard in his 1958 Poetics of Space. Bachelard’s focus isn’t even on the stuff itself, but on the box: even better, the closed box, whose perhaps forever-hidden contents suggest the intimacy and secrecy with which we might experience and re-imagine our past and continuing lives; the fluidity, or continuous process of revising, or fictionalizing, with which we recompose our life stories—and a concept of privacy regarding ‘personal matters’ painfully outmoded in our age of totalizing media saturation and surveillance. Indeed, Van Dijck notes that our masses of digital photographs raise ‘poignant concerns about the relation between material objects and autobiographical memory, between media technologies and our habits and rituals of remembrance’ (xii). While photographs ‘could never be qualified as truthful anchors of personal memory’, digital photographs, their manipulation a ‘default mode rather than an option’, are engaged in a broad reconfiguring of self-controlled and distributed identity (118). As Bachelard had suspected, lifting the cover of the box reveals as-yet-­ unimagined dangers. Sociologist Rafael Narváez’s idea of Embodied Collective Memory (ECM), ‘a social structure that results from the transubstantiation of history in people’, is significant for dance and memory in its emphasis on ‘the mnemonic importance of the body’—the ‘gestures, corporeal and phonetic rhythms, common affective idioms and emotional styles … largely learned in a social context’. That context is interwoven with biology; neuroscience demonstrates that we are hard-wired for empathy, imitation, intersubjectivity, and a sense of self (2013: 1–3). Indeed, Marco Iacoboni’s claim that we ‘have an instinct to imitate one another—to synchronize our bodies … even the way we speak to each other’ (in Narváez 2013: 2) recalls philosopher Alphonso Lingis’s sensitive cultural portraits of human communication (1994) and echoes dancer/phenomenologist Susan Kozel’s observation that moving with others, experiencing each other and ourselves, ‘We’re embodied through other bodies’ (2009). Moreover, our embodied inheritance, which is ideologically and politically as well as personally charged, is flexible, redefining itself and its social actors as it continues into the future, allowing for the embodied evolution of behaviors and beliefs: a phrase that might serve as a précis of dance history. It also addresses the evolution of autobiography, typically considered

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an excavation of one’s singular past experience, brought into the present through a retrospective voice. As contemporary autobiography increasingly acknowledges the formation of the self in social circumstances, so we recognize people as social actors reflecting and redefining collective beliefs and discourses. Anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff defined events like the weddings and bar-mitzvahs where my parents danced as ‘definitional ceremonies’, in which people performed their collective identity (1980). My parents understood their stepping out as embedded in broader customs of cultural choreography, not only the celebratory hora circle-dance performed at every group ‘affair’, but the unwritten check-list of ‘rules’ and details linking the guests and, especially, the host family to upward mobility and community stature. (My sister Sally thought that our parents’ ‘sophisticated’ dance style made them look like ‘urbane Manhattanites’, not outer-borough working people.) Memory is dynamic: layered, altered over time, complicated by collective and personal contributions. We overlap, lose, and re-position the images, affects, movements of our past, present, even imagined futures. I remember something—a plot, a sensation—with certainty, but I’m not sure whether it happened to me, or I saw it in a movie or read it in a novel, or conflated films and my own re-tellings. Choreographing C’est-à-Dire (Satin  1999, 2001)—whose title suggests the restating or clarifying of something not-quite-clear—I inserted little reinventions of movie scenes: one, it turned out, of a clearly but wrongly remembered character in François Truffaut’s 1962 film Jules and Jim. Playwright Lenora Champagne recalls discovering that a scene in Fred Zinnemann’s The Nun’s Story (1959) in which Audrey Hepburn’s character orders oysters doesn’t exist, though her character’s doctor prescribes ‘prairie oysters’—raw eggs. That her ‘false memory’ comes from a movie, she writes, points to her dreams and writing borrowing from filmic ‘logic’ and ‘structure’ (1999: 156). We often see our lives in cinematic terms. A movie that deftly illuminates the interplay of autobiography with mediated and collective memory is Hirokazu Kore-Eda’s 1998 After Life, in which a heterogeneous group of people who have recently died are gathered in a non-descript, not-­ recognizably purgatorial way-station. Each person is asked to remember his or her life, then choose a favorite scene to take to the afterlife; if necessary, the process is facilitated by giving the person a set of videotapes of that life. For some, it is simple enough to pluck from now-filmic memories a place, a moment, a feeling. For others, say those whose lives were unfulfilling or disappointing, it is no easy task. Whenever they decide, they

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inform the Counselors, who then recreate the scene in a demonstrably low-tech film. And then, the subject disappears, liberated, to eternity. We often consider our lives, and their photographic/videographic representations, in terms of such ‘greatest hits’. Photographer Jo Spence came to see her portraits as collusions with their subjects to produce ‘visual myths’, devoid of the endless intrusions into our idealized versions of ourselves (in Rosenblum 1988: 152). Documenting what our photo albums omit, from everyday life to her own diseased body, her dying, Spence challenged systems of representation entwined with assumptions of naturalism as neutral (1987). Photographic images of my parents merge with and depart from my (and their) memories. In a later shot, they’re posed before a wedding party, looking (we all agree) like actors—stars—Elizabeth Taylor and Hal Holbrook. This is no accident; as Spence, van Dijck, and many others have noted, the subject of a photograph participates in his or her ‘staging’. Philosopher and literary theorist Roland Barthes, for instance, in Camera Lucida, notes that ‘once I feel myself observed by the lens, everything changes: I constitute myself in the process of “posing.” I instantaneously make another body for myself, I transform myself in advance into an image’ (1981: 10). Moreover, simultaneously, ‘I am at the same time: the one I think I am [and] the one the photographer thinks I am …. I do not stop imitating myself’ (13). For Barthes, this is a process through which the subject ‘experience[s] a micro-version of death’ (14). But it is also, of course, a more-or-less conscious control of one’s image in the world, now and ‘forever’, through individual portraits and repetitions of images situating the subject within composed as well as literal or material environments, cultures, historical moments. For my parents and countless others, there are wedding portraits and other pictures whose arms-around-each-other postures or eyelids-­lowered serenity mark them, idealize them, as a ‘happy couple’. There are many relaxed pictures of family fun in the country, at the beach, on vacation. There are no pictures of my father working three jobs at once, or my mother managing the everyday tumult of three young children, and later a job, in New York City. Social dancing and vacations were, for them as for many others, separate from the parts of their lives defined by labor and obligation. These were more likely to be recalled, replayed, and reproduced. In so doing, they played out autobiography’s malleability as convention and contract. Literary theorist Philippe Lejeune called this contract, in which teller and

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text are marked by their ‘identicalness’, the ‘Autobiographical Pact’ (1989: 5); significantly, it is questioned and resisted in contemporary art, performance, and literature. Appropriating elements of my parents’ lives and moving bodies in the service of my own telling, my own text, I am reminded that the mental images I carry of my parents are mine, not theirs. In my first dancing memory, I’m standing on the tops of my father’s feet, being gently introduced to the ‘rules of the game’—a multi-use wordplay on film history, social dance’s ludic component, and, broadly speaking, the social construction of everyday life—from Bourdieu’s ‘habitus’ (1993)  to the far reaches of ECM. I remember frequently seeing my parents dance in the living room, doing the Lindy and the Fox-Trot and what they called ‘homemade Flamenco’—but I only know because my mother told me that their noisy stomping enraged their downstairs neighbor, a German Jewish Holocaust survivor. Only because she told me do I know about how she went out dancing with my father, ‘just the two of us’, at clubs like the famed Copacabana; how she liked being watched dancing because she knew ‘they looked good’; how she ‘liked to have at least one drink before [she] danced’; how one time, ‘he swung me and I sailed’. Only because she told me do I know how when she was still a teenager, she and a girlfriend visited my father and his pals at their beach bungalow, all dolled up and ‘very cool in the hot weather’ but chastely staying in what they didn’t realize was a Jewish hotel and scandalizing the guests by smoking on Shabbat. As I connect my memories of my parents dancing to photos, I link them, too, to films, sometimes confusing them with films, especially those included in my ever-evolving best-dance-scene list. That is, I insert my parents into the movies, merging them with the characters onscreen. I can see them, for instance, in the hilariously catastrophic Jewish wedding in Damián Szifron’s 2014 Wild Tales, an Argentinean black comedy of people behaving incredibly badly. This segment is a socio-hormonal variation on Larry Peerce’s 1969 Jewish wedding classic, Goodbye, Columbus, a somewhat more decorous story of Jewish nuptial combustion and class based on Philip Roth’s eponymous 1959 novella. In Wild Tales, social dance is the instigator and stand-in for sex: pre-marital, marital, and extra-­ marital, as the traditional first dance of the new couple is interrupted by acts of unlikely carnality and chaos, ending with sex—theirs—amid the detritus of the ruined party.

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My favorite movie dance episode is the café scene in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1964 Band of Outsiders, or Bande à part, notable for its kinesthetic verve and its four-minute-long, uncut, single-perspective cinematography. The film’s three renegades do a cool unison line dance, the Madison, standing close to each other, gazing down or ahead. The men are on either end; the woman, Odile, in pleated skirt, sweater, flats, and jaunty hat, is in the middle. She mostly smiles, sweetly, a little nervously, seeming to enjoy her own movement. Michel Le Grand’s bouncy jazz plays on the jukebox. Occasionally, the sound cuts out and we hear, instead, the stamps, claps, and finger-snaps of the dancers. Four times, Godard’s voiceover interrupts to announce what’s ‘really’ happening, breaking the naturalist framework with a cut-to-the-chase analysis of character and affect: ‘Now it’s time … to describe the emotions of the characters … Arthur keeps looking at his feet but he thinks about Odile’s mouth …. Odile is wondering whether the two boys noticed her two breasts, which move beneath her sweater with every step’.8 In 1964, my mother wasn’t really familiar with either Godard or Anna Karina, his then-wife, who played Odile; as she points out, she didn’t go to the movies much in those child-raising days. But when I see the film, I imagine my mother as she might have been, had her life circumstances offered her the choice of being an adorable French drifter. This is (the story of) what she might have looked like: When I do the dance, which I’ve learned, roughly, from watching the film, I feel as though I’m channeling both these gamines: the fictional Odile and the equally fictional young Phyllis on the café dance floor. I tap into Odile’s pleasure—like my mother’s—in moving, looking good, being looked at. The steps are fairly simple and fun to do, especially the little jump and swiveled tilt, and I enjoy letting my head, neck, and upper torso ride above them. I feel cute in her schoolgirl outfit and hair-ribbon and smile. I am quite aware of the two men, one to either side, quite close, dancing in unison with me. I am careful to stay in line. We don’t look at each other, or not too obviously.

Some choreographers have brought social dance of the more or less recent past into their post-modern concert work, channeling the characters or atmospheres or periods that draw them. Sally Silvers, who has borrowed several dances and numerous other elements of movies, collaging them into her own performances, included the Bande à part Madison scene as a segment of two noir-themed pieces (1994). Vicky Shick often

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includes what feel like the ghosts of social dances: A woman extends her foot and leg through the triangle of her partner’s bent arm; a couple executes with great precision a series of beautiful and daffy details, a glossary of etiquette long separated from its cultural moorings  (2013). Koma Otake recently performed outdoors in the cold, hulking around, making sweet subtle curling hand gestures and yelling as scratchy pieces of Argentinean music played, as though he was compelled to dance, solo, the Tango that he remembered in his imagination (2016). It is that very merging of memory and imagination that underlies this essay. I join here autobiographical and critical writing as a way to look at the broad area of dance and memory emerging from multiple spheres of learning: embodied, biological, personal, social, cultural, cognitive, and more. In the process, though, repeating the continually changing stories I ‘know’ so well, I find that there is still much to learn. I am leaning here on the writing of anthropologist Ruth Behar, which includes deeply personal material about her life as a Cuban Jewish woman who arrived in the US as a small child, and the lingering presence of personal trauma entwined with her complicated personal and professional identity. Her work embodies the singular value of the ‘vulnerable observer’ who allows for the permeability of personal reflection and reflexivity with ‘objective’ looking and analysis (1996). It also demonstrates the ongoing process of memory as one of locating, investigating, and revising the sense of one’s life. A recent conversation with my mother called into question some of my facts and perspectives. For instance, my mother can’t pinpoint which relatives could have been of bar-mitzvah age at the time I describe, and sees the Holocaust as too distant to have shadowed the 1950s/1960s parties. However supported by photographic and written ‘evidence’, each (self-) representational narrative is tied to others—here, especially, to my mother’s—and to the desires and points of view behind each telling. My growing interest in the role of Jewishness in my life has changed the position from which I view these experiences: historicizing my memories, recontextualizing them within the broad scenario (if not the literal generational structure) of Hirsch’s ‘postmemory’. My sister Bascha and I agree on so many of the details of these childhood and adolescent experiences, what our parents did and how they did it and how it felt to us to watch them, that our and their memories and re-tellings have become inseparable. At the same time, the memories of such experiences are constructed over time, the details of dance and observation absorbed into our bodies

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and personal/cultural identities, and gradually brought into contact with language, analytical skills, and the perpetual development of our autobiographies. *** I’ve borrowed Godard’s café scene numerous times in my dances, not using the actual choreography but going for its affect, the devil-may-care look layered over the self-conscious, erotic, distracted interiority and suffusing the repetitions of the movement itself. As in other choreographic experiences, I’ve ‘spiked’ pure-dance material to see what would remain for me of the secret source, what would still be resonant. Doing the Twist, or some unorthodox merging of the Twist with Godard’s Madison, I always ‘feel’ my mother, think of her, tongue and all, dancing with my father. And to complicate the dance-and-memory interplay, I dance not only with my actual partners but with the actors I long recalled as being in the dance—Alain Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo—who turned out not to be in the film at all. Acknowledgments  Thank you to the Gallatin School of New York University for supporting my participation in the 2016 Dancing with Memory Project Conference. Thank you to Julie Malnig, Victoria Hunter, Claudia Brazzale, and Dean Rainey for reading and responding thoughtfully to versions of this chapter. Thank you, of course, to my parents and sisters for many conversations beyond those named in the References list. ‘Mother Tongue’ is dedicated to my mother, Phyllis Satin, and to the memory of my father, Jerry Satin.

Notes 1. An Orthodox rabbi would be forbidden to touch, let alone dance with, a woman not related to him. 2. Describing a similar sensation, experimental choreographer/composer Meredith Monk reflects on ‘being danced’. See Satin  (1996), ‘Being Danced Again’. 3. Many of the dances I refer to were created by Africans, African-Americans, and Latins. This is significant in analyzing the social dances and dance ‘worlds’ of multiple racial and ethnic groups, and recognizing the sociocultural circumstances underlying and shaping these worlds, including in 1950s–1960s New York, as described here. For further discussion of white practitioners of African-American-derived popular dance of this time, see

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Julie Malnig’s ‘Parading the Past, Taming the New: From Ragtime to Rock and Roll’ in this volume, pp. 83–99. 4. I have two sisters, Bascha Satin and Sally Satin, the latter too young to have shared this early  experience.  Much of this essay emerges from interviews, conversations, and emails with my mother Phyllis Satin (Satin 2015b), and with Bascha Satin (Satin 2015a) and Sally Satin (Satin 2018). 5. I presented an early version of this chapter, with the same title, at the Dancing with Memory Project Conference: Muse of Modernity? Remembering, Mediating and Modernising Popular Dance, University of London, 16 April 2016. I presented another version at the Conney Conference on Jewish Arts, George L.  Mosse/Laurence A.  Weinstein Center For Jewish Studies, University of Wisconsin/Madison, in collaboration with the 92 Y, New York City, 31 March 2019. 6. The Jews and Jewishness in the Dance World conference was held at Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, 13–15 October 2018. 7. Yad Vashem, The World Holocaust Remembrance Center, is a complex of museums, archives, and other collections, located in Jerusalem and devoted to the study and exploration of the Holocaust and to the memory of its victims. See www.yadvashem.org. 8. See Brody 2013 for further discussion of this film.

References Bachelard, Gaston. 1994. The Poetics of Space. Boston: Beacon Press. Barthes, Roland. 1981. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang. Behar, Ruth. 1996. The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart. Boston: Beacon Press. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1993. The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature. Ed. Randal Johnson. New York: Columbia University Press. Brody, Richard. 4 April 2013. Behind the Scenes of an Iconic Godard Scene. www. NewYorker.com. Accessed 17 Nov 2018. Champagne, Lenora. 1999. Notes on Autobiography and Performance. Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 07407709908571299. Godard, Jean-Luc. 1964. Band of Outsiders (Bande à part). Film. Anouchka Films/Orsay Films. Hirsch, Marianne. 2008. The Generation of Postmemory. Poetics Today: International Journal for Theory and Analysis of Literature and Communication 29 (1): 103–128. Hoffman, Eva. 2004. After Such Knowledge: Memory, History, and the Legacy of the Holocaust. New York: Public Affairs.

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Kant, Marian. 14 October 2018. Then in what sense are you Jewish?: Portrait of the Artist as a Jew. Keynote, Jews and Jewishness in the Dance World, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, 13–15 October. Kore-Eda, Hirokazu. 1998. After Life (Wonderful Life). Film. Engine Film/TV Man Union. Kozel, Susan. 2009. Across Bodies and Systems, New York. Video. www.youtube. com/watch?v=y8FsjeDUcnQ. Accessed 18 Feb 2018. Lejeune, Philippe. 1989. The Autobiographical Pact. In On Autobiography, 3–30. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Lingis, Alphonso. 1994. The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Logghe, Joan. November 2018. The Poem Different. Blog. https://thepoemdifferent.blogspot.com/2018/11/falling-­in-­love-­with-­pittsburgh.html. Accessed 16 Nov 2018. Malnig, Julie. 2021. Parading the Past, Taming the New: From Ragtime to Rock and Roll. In Cultural Memory in Popular Dance: Dancing to Remember, Dancing to Forget, ed. Clare Parfitt, 83–99. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Mauss, Marcel. 1935. Techniques of the Body. In Techniques, Technology, and Civilisation, ed. Marcel Mauss. Edited and introduced by Nathan Schlanger. New York: Durkheim Press/Berghahn Books, 2006. Melville, Jean-Pierre. 1969. Army of Shadows. Film. Rialto Pictures (2006). Myerhoff, Barbara. 1980. Number Our Days: A Triumph of Continuity and Culture Among Jewish Old People in an Urban Ghetto. New  York: Simon & Schuster. Narváez, Rafael. 2013. Embodied Collective Memory: The Making and Unmaking of Human Nature. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Nemes, László. 2015. Son of Saul (Saul fia). Film. Laokoon Film. Otake, Koma. 2016. Precarious, Guest Solos #1. Dance. New York City: Danspace Project. Pawlikowski, Pawel. 2013. Ida. Film. Canal +, Polska, Danish Film Institute, Euroimages. Peerce, Larry. 1969. Goodbye, Columbus. Film. Willowtree/Paramount. Resnais, Alain. 1956. Night and Fog (Nuit et Brouillard). Film. Argos Films. Rethorst, Susan. 2012. A Choreographic Mind: Autobodygraphical Writings. Theatre Academy Helsinki, Dance Department, Kinesis 2. Rosenblum, Barbara. 1988. Putting Myself in the Picture: A Political, Personal and Photographic Autobiography. Book Review. Feminist Review 29, 151–154. Accessed 10 April 2016. Roth, Philip. 1959. Goodbye, Columbus. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Satin, Leslie. 1996. Being Danced Again: Meredith Monk, Reclaiming the Girlchild. In Moving Words: Re-Writing Dance, ed. Gay Morris, 121–140. London and New York: Routledge.

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———. 1999. C’est-à-Dire. Dance. New  York City: Dixon Place, MAD ALEX Arts Foundation, American Photography Institute/Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. ———. 2001. ‘C’est-à-Dire’. Performance Text. PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 23 (2): 28–34. Satin, Bascha. 13 December 2015a. Personal Interview. Satin, Phyllis. 13 December 2015b. Personal Interview. Satin, Sally. 21 November 2018. E-mail message. Shick, Vicky. 2013. Everything You See. Dance. New York City: Danspace Project. Silvers, Sally. 1994. Swoon Noir. Dance. New York City: P.S. 122, and, as ReSwoon Noir (1999), Movement Research/Judson Church, Hunter College. Spence, Jo. 1987. Putting Myself in the Picture: A Political, Personal and Photographic Autobiography. London: Camden Press. Szifron, Damián. 2014. Wild Tales (Relatos Salvajes). Film. Kramer & Sigman Films, El Deseo, Telefe Productions, Corner Contenidos. Truffaut, François. 1962. Jules and Jim (Jules et Jim). Film. Les Films du Carrosse/ SEDIF. Van Dijck, José. 2007. Mediated Memory in the Digital Age. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Zinnemann, Fred. 1959. The Nun’s Story. Film. Warner Brothers.

Filmed, Felt, and False Rhythms: Dance Videos and an Embodying “Home” in Post-migration Laura Steil

“I said ‘coupé-décalé is a false rhythm [faux rythme] and it has no identity’. Let me explain…”. In a 2011 YouTube video,1 Jessy “Matador” Kimbangi,2 a 30-year-old French dancer-turned-singer of Congolese origin, clarifies a statement he made on a TV show a few weeks before, regarding an Ivoirian music and dance genre. Stéphane Etienne, an Ivoirian journalist, came to meet him on the set of a music video shooting in the Paris region. He works for Abidjanshow.com, a website offering news coverage about Ivoirian, African, and Afro-diasporic music and sports celebrities. Jessy rhythmically rolls his shoulders in a forward motion, commenting that “[Congolese] n’dombolo goes tak taku/taka tak taku… but [Ivorian] coupé-décalé can go [slow] kap kapu/kaka kap kapu or [fast] kap kapu/kaka kap kapu/kaka kap kapu…”, while attempting to demonstrate n’dombolo’s sole “rhythm” compared to

L. Steil (*) Center for Contemporary and Digital History, University of Luxembourg, Saint-Denis, France © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Parfitt (ed.), Cultural Memory and Popular Dance, Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71083-5_15

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coupé-­décalé’s multiples “rhythms”. “That’s what I call a false rhythm”, he concludes. The French adjective faux is profoundly ambiguous, carrying a triple meaning: it can be understood as “illusory”, but also as “false” in the sense of “incorrect”, and, worse of all, as “fake” in the sense of “fabricated” or “counterfeited”. It is the conflation between these three meanings that makes his comments particularly offensive to Ivoirian artists and their fans, who are portrayed at best as ignorant and inexperienced wannabees, and at worst as frauds that were caught out. The accusation of falseness by an influential Afro-French artist harms the glamorous image coupé-décalé artists claimed for themselves in the early 2000s, when this new musical and dance genre emerged in the context of the Ivoirian civil war. Coupé-­ décalé, which in Abidjan’s slang means “scam and scram” (combining the French verbs “to cut” and “to shift”), embodied and celebrated tactics for overcoming the strife of Ivoirian reality such as unbridled conspicuous consumption, the deployment of make-believe, and nocturnal other-­ worlds from Abidjan to Paris (Kohlhagen 2005; Stoll 2020; Gawa 2014). Ivoirian sensitivities to Jessy’s comments on false rhythms must be set against the backdrop of the nationalist-nativist politics of Ivoirité (Ivoryness) deployed by Ivoirian president Henri Konan Bédié from the late 1990s onward. Epitomized by the 2002–2004 civil war, Ivoirité led Ivoirians, both in Ivory Coast and in the diaspora, to develop deep anxieties around authenticity, often materializing as fears around (bad) copies (Newell 2012, pp. 224, 242).3 Paradoxically, from the perspective of Afro-­ French youth, coupé-décalé artists navigating Parisian nightlife offered an appealing and undoubted authenticity, at once African and modern. The Ivoirian music and dance genre in fact opened a site for Afro-French young people to deal with accusations of “falseness” that affected them as children of migrants: a relentless doubting and questioning of the authenticity of their Frenchness (Keaton 2006). French young people of African origin suffered from heightened othering and racialization in the second half of the 2000s, amidst debates about French “national identity” and social unrest in the low-income banlieues. Nicolas Sarkozy, then Minister of Interior, often used offensive language when he talked about banlieue youth, many of whom were, or were imagined to be, of immigrant origin. In 2005, police brutality and racial profiling led to the dramatic death of two innocent teenagers, sparking one-month-long revolts in banlieues all over France. They were presented in the media as “Black uprisings” caused by “African culture”4 and met

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with more police violence, as well as threats to destitute second-­generation young people of their French citizenship if they were caught acting in “non-patriotic” ways, that is, confronting and resisting the police. As their French citizenship became conditional, Afro-French young people started to see themselves as vulnerable to the risk of being “sent back” to African countries they often had never been to. Raised in France by parents from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Jessy may be called a “post-migrant”, a term by which Kira Kosnick (2014) describes “people who were born in the country of residence in the second, third etc. generation, but for whom diasporic or transnational affiliations created through family histories of migration still play a significant role in their lives” (p.  38). In this chapter, I trace Jessy’s acquisition of embodied knowledge of “home/homely” rhythms through the consumption of dance videos and the “soaking” in African ambiances. I also map his trajectory from post-migrant kid to professional artist. Jessy is known by French popular music/dance publics for developing a type of music and dance that came to be called “afro new style” after the name of his first album Afrikan New Style (2008). It drew inspiration from African urban music and dance genres he first encountered in the family living room and which he combined with hip-hop, r&b, and zouk influences (Steil 2021). Beyond Jessy’s story, this chapter sheds light on how Afro-French young people navigate, unsettle, and complicate narratives of transmission, affect, and cultural memory, and how these are reworked through technological developments, from video recording, to digital circulations, to social media. I explore, more specifically, the sensory experience procured by filmed dance/music circulating within transnational music and dance circuits bringing together artists and fans from francophone Africa and its European diaspora. I consider these circuits “communities of sentiment” (Appadurai 1990, p. 94), groups which emerge out of the public negotiation of “emotional participation”, where members do not always meet face to face, but may instead meet through the medium of “haptic images” (Marks 2000, p. 2), such as videoclips. The embodied knowledge of rhythm and dance, gained and experienced in great part through a mimetic relationship with filmed images, is a core theme in these public negotiations. The ethnographic materials for this chapter were collected between 2004 and 2014 in the context of doctoral research on the prestige economy of the Parisian “Afro scene”, locally known as milieu afro.5 This largely post-migrant scene is organized around a shared interest in urban

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African music and dance genres, including coupé-décalé and n’dombolo (Steil 2011, 2019, 2021).6 I was a dancer in Jessy’s group for a year (2005–2006) and subsequently spent much time with dancers in rehearsals, nightclubs, battles, and everyday sociabilities. In addition to extensive participant-observation, I have had the opportunity to engage in many fruitful conversations about dance transmission, artistic authority/ship, and cultural circulations. I also conducted interviews with artists of the Parisian Afro scene, such as my former dance group leader, Jessy. While this chapter looks out on the global, mostly through technological mediation, the “I” of the ethnographer remains anchored in a Parisian field site. It is from this situated perspective that I attempt to highlight broader phenomena that concern the formation of cultural memory in diaspora.

Dance/Music Lineages “I don’t mean that coupé-décalé doesn’t exist, since it does”, Jessy attempts reassuringly, as Etienne, the Ivoirian journalist, protests. To get his point across, the Afro-French artist dissolves and amplifies his own subjectivity in a generic/collective “a/the Congolese”: Now, considering identity […] for us… we know that coupé-décalé is a movement that was invented by la Jet Set, whom I greet: Molare, Lino, Douk Saga7—may he rest in peace. But now, you know the deal, don’t go tell a Congolese, “yes, coupé-décalé is Ivoirian”, he will say “NOOOO these are OUR rhythms, this is OUR music, this belongs to US”. We know that zouglou belongs to the Ivoirians, we know that makossa, it’s Cameroon. [He puts on a generic “African” accent from here on] But coupé-décalé, hey… we know that the movement was invented by the Ivoirians, but the Congolese claim: “these are our rhythms”.

Jessy’s views on coupé-décalé are couched in a widely held belief amongst Afro-French young people that coupé-décalé in fact derives from n’dombolo, a Congolese genre of orchestra music renowned for its uniquely thick sound made of multiple sung harmonies and layered guitar parts (White 2008, p. 32). This belief is not unfounded: anthropologists have written about coupé-décalé’s Congolese influences (Kohlhagen 2005, p. 93) and described it as samples of Congolese music overlaid with lyrics in Nouchi, Abidjan’s French-based slang (Newell 2012, p.  58).8 Musique congolaise moderne, which started to be produced in the 1940s,

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has often been touted as “Africa’s most influential pop music” (Barlow et al. 1995, p. 27) and has inspired artists on the whole continent. Exactly how, from a musicological perspective, it relates to coupé-décalé remains to be studied.9 Musical lineages remain a hot topic of debate and negotiation between artists, journalists, and fans, to which Jessy contributes in the rest of the interview: [Coupé-décalé] is a musical current, not a musical style. Zouglou10 is established. Rumba is established. There is Congolese rumba and rumba that comes from the Cubans.11 But coupé-décalé, it’s a mere movement. In twenty years, we will be able to call it a musical style! It’s like… for me, coupé-décalé derives from n’dombolo. And African new style, my concept, derives from coupé-décalé. I’m the petit [son] of… my concept is the petit of coupé-décalé

Here, Jessy locates himself within a generational and professional hierarchy in a manner that is common among Congolese artists (White 2008, p. 197). He positions himself under coupé-décalé both in terms of filiation (who engendered whom) and hierarchy (who has power over whom). Yet, he insists at the same time that coupé-décalé has not yet established itself and that it is a “current” or “movement” derived from n’dombolo. Petit literally translates as “small” or “young” in French but is often used to mean “son” or “protégé”. By reading artistic hierarchies through the paradigm of kinship, Jessy ties the “legitimation” of music genres (and of their artists) to a seemingly non-negotiable temporality. Jessy’s first single, titled Décalé Gwada, was an obvious reference and homage to coupé-décalé, from the title, to the rhythmic pattern, to the dance moves performed as well as cited in the lyrics. He produced it in his bedroom, one night in 2006, as a track to accompany a choreography that the danse afro group of which he was a leader, La Selesao, would perform in nightclubs. It was soon informally circulated among DJs in the Paris region and played outside of La Selesao showcases. Newly created music-­ sharing platforms such as DailyMotion or YouTube gave Jessy the unprecedented opportunity to be an agent of his own visibility and to expand his communication through African circuits without the mediation of the music industry or his parents’ connection to le bled (the home country).12 Ivoirian artists, and other music “purists”, did not recognize Décalé Gwada as belonging to coupé-décalé. In the interview, Jessy reminds

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Ivoirians that they did not admit him in “their” scene, although he in fact performed in many of the same spaces, in front of the same publics, from Afro-Parisian nightclubs to concert stages, including some international ones. The interview with Etienne is embedded in a larger drama that involves Ivoirian artist DJ Arafat who, despite his name, is not a DJ but a singer.13 Two weeks later, DJ Arafat thus addresses a video response to Jessy, filmed in the streets of Abidjan, starting with a 30-second screening of luxury cars whose license plates bear his different nicknames.14 The video opens with two men climbing on the bonnets of Arafat’s cars. They hail Arafat and the camera turns to the artist who is seen nonchalantly crossing the road, smoking a cigarette with a cup of beverage in his hand. When Arafat’s face occupies the entire frame, he recasts Jessy-the-singer as a dancer “behind” an Ivoirian singer—which he was indeed in the early years of his career. In both the Ivoirian and Congolese music scenes, dancer-to-singer trajectories are not uncommon, and Arafat resorts to their shared understanding of artistic hierarchies that raise singers above dancers. In addition to seniority and influence (measured by how many petits or protégés one has had), one’s role in a band is thus an important criterion for determining one’s status. After resuscitating Jessy-the-dancer, Arafat then shatters this figure too. He calls up one of the two men sitting on the car bonnets and asserts with authority, looking straight at the camera, “you are not a dancer! Watch this here!” The dancer locks his body and hands in different postures, does hand-milling motions, follows with two backflips, then Michael Jackson’s left-right foot kick, and finishes by rolling his entire body forward, straightening back up in a spectacular inverted back bend. After his performance, Arafat asks Jessy, “Can your mum do that?”, a question the dancer echoes and then answers: “She cannoooot”. The point of the performance seems to revolve around proving coupé-décalé’s singularity and radical distinction from n’dombolo, whose dance is largely organized around hip-rolling and hip thrusts—which Jessy is particularly good at. Here, Arafat presents “dance” as inherently athletic and spectacular (his music videos, in contrast, show a lot of hip-rolling female dancers, n’dombolo-style). Arafat proceeds to dismantle Jessy’s narrative about, and place within, music and dance lineages. He expunges Jessy’s elders from coupé-décalé’s transmission lines:

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So, YOU, when you sang “décalé gwada, décalé gwada” … the word ‘DÉCALÉ’, what does it mean for you? Does it mean your father or your mother? Does it mean your grandparents? Choose between the three first, before bad-mouthing coupé-décalé.

Both artists seem to agree that the transmission of music and dance-related knowledge and talent happens within “the family” and follows “family” lines. Exactly when the family is a metaphor for the nation or for ethnicity remains ambiguous in both of their videos, and this is precisely the power of this rhetorical trope. In Jessy’s case, nevertheless, this transmission did occur very literally in his family, in the family living room to be more precise.

New Proximities and Shifting Identifications The way in which Jessy acquired an embodied repertoire (Taylor 2003) of home/homely rhythms sheds light on the modalities of cultural circulation between Africa and its French diaspora. A 1996 tape, by Congolese band Wenge Musica, which an older cousin brought back from a trip to the Congo when Jessy was in his mid-teens, particularly impressed him. At the time, n’dombolo was rising in popularity beyond Congolese circuits in France. According to French rapper of Congolese origin Ben-J, in the second half of the 1990s, “everybody in the neighborhoods” started to get interested in n’dombolo, meaning that it was increasingly played in community and family celebrations of other Black populations in France, such as Antilleans. The success of several concerts in the late 1990s by such megastars as Koffi Olomide represented a turning point: venues were packed, and tickets sold out although the concerts had barely been advertised—a few posters pasted on the walls of neighborhoods, where African immigrants resided or did their shopping. This is when Jessy decided to start practicing n’dombolo dance, instead of somewhat passively consuming it because his parents exposed him to it. Dany Engobo, a lesser-known Congolese artist based in the Paris region, of the generation of Jessy’s parents, started recruiting post-­ migrants to dance in his band, Les Cœurs Brisés (The Broken hearts). He first took girls in, including many (light-skinned) Antilleans, and later boys, mostly of Congolese origin. Jessy was one of them. He recalls how the bandleader would provide the dancers with the latest VHS tapes of Congolese videoclips and live acts so they could practice the

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choreographies at home. Around 2004, after having held the role of “chief of the dancers” in Les Cœurs Brisés, Jessy created his own dance group, Jam&Co, together with some of the male Cœurs Brisés members. Groups like his, led by post-migrants, and which practiced only dance and did not sing or produce music, came to be called danse afro groups. They featured a disproportionate number of France-born young people of Congolese origin. In the early 2000s, DVDs of coupé-décalé videos started to circulate, showing artists clad in designer clothes, consuming expensive cigars or liquors, and driving luxury cars and powerful motorbikes. Despite all their flaunting, the lives of coupé-décalé artists were actually relatively ordinary. Like post-migrant youth, they patronized well-established Afro-Parisian nightclubs such as l’Atlantis or l’Alizé on a weekly basis. It is said that coupé-décalé, while defined as “Ivoirian”, emerged in the back-and-forth movement between Côte d’Ivoire’s capital Abidjan and Paris, where Ivoirians fleeing the civil war sought refuge. Coupé-décalé artists quickly caught the attention of Afro-French young people. They sang in French or in a French-based slang, were generally younger than n’dombolo artists, and deployed aesthetics that seemed less “exotic” to young people socialized in Europe. They seemed more like peers, while Congolese artists indexed le bled and the generation of their parents. As Afro-French young people gained experience and (embodied) knowledge about African urban dances, and as they interacted more extensively with African age-peers, in Parisian nightclubs or over just-emerging social media platforms, new proximities emerged and identifications shifted. It is around this time that coupé-décalé artist DJ Kitoko15 recruited Jessy and two other members of his group as dancers. The three young men took the opportunity to break off from Jam&Co and set up La Selesao (The Selection), which also included girls. La Selesao practiced Congolese n’dombolo and Ivoirian coupé-décalé in a banlieue youth club, every Saturday afternoon (Steil 2011). Following the example of his mentor Dany Engobo, Matador circulated music and concert videos among the dancers, and even visited his dancers at home for extra practice sessions—I benefited from those as I had not “soaked” (baigné) in n’dombolo from an early age. It is thus through a feedback loop between video mediation and in-­ flesh interactions with African dance practitioners (their own elders at home and in family celebrations, Congolese artists such as Dany Engobo in rehearsals, coupé-décalé artists in clubs, etc.) that post-migrant young

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people such as Jessy invested in their own bodies as sites for the cultivation and performance of cultural memory. While conscientiously watching dance videos and diligently learning the latest dances were required to be respected as danseur afro, this acquisition of embodied knowledge was preconditioned by a more all-encompassing “soaking” in n’dombolo from an early age. For videos to be effective in terms of dance transmission and cultural archive, the encounter with n’dombolo (or coupé-décalé) could not exclusively rely on screens. This more holistic kinesthetic and affective experience of African urban dances had therefore a lot to do with family environments and events.

The Sensory Experience of Dance on Film Jessy, like many other children of postcolonial Congolese immigrants in France, first encountered African popular music and dance through videos. They were bought as VHS tapes, and later DVDs, in the specialized shops of Paris’ “minority centralities” (Raulin 2009), such as Chateau Rouge and Chateau d’Eau, or brought back from “home” by family members (such as Jessy’s 1996 Wenge Musica VHS tape). These videos have played an important role in connecting immigrants to their country of origin and maintaining a culturally familiar ambience in their domestic sphere. Jessy remembers his parents instructing him “Petit! Play that tape!” when they would receive guests. Others recall that parents liked to make them dance and sometimes filmed them. Dancers regularly retrieve those videos and proudly post them on social media as proofs of their practice of Congolese dance as kids. This early consumption of videoclips and films of live acts equipped France-born children with Congolese choreographic sensibilities and repertoires. Following Laura U. Marks (2000), I suggest that dance videos may act as haptic images, “grasped not only by an intellectual act but by the complex perception of the body as a whole”, through a combination of tactile, kinesthetic, and proprioceptive functions (p. 145). These videos are characterized by alternations of large frame images and close-ups of dancers, singers, and musicians, or parts of their bodies—rolling hips or footwork for instance. The lyrics of songs are in a familiar language, lingala, which post-migrants all instantly recognize yet do not always fully understand, or grasp only in a “flickering” way, and are sung to multi-instrumental orchestra music, including improvised parts in the case of concert footage. Additionally, when VHS and DVDs were the main formats for their

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circulation, these films were often of poor quality, with enlarged grain and/or blurriness, as a result of bootlegging practices of the shops that sold them as much as of the original quality of the recording itself. All these characteristics enhance the haptic visuality of the films, forcing viewers to feel the images’ “texture”, instead of being pulled into narrative (p. 163). Filmed images are also experienced haptically because of the learned, cultivated predisposition of the viewers (p. 170). By enjoining their post-­ migrant children to dance in front of these films, migrant parents cultivated a mimetic memory, “culture within the body” (p. 145) which could “flare up in their sensory memory” (Benthaus 2019, p. 391). Videos and films can trigger sense experiences that go beyond the interaction with the filmic medium. Alison Landsberg (2004) explored how “modern technologies of mass culture, such as film, with their ability to transport individuals through time and space, function as technologies of memory”, and how “these technologies introduce the ‘experiential’ as an important mode of knowledge acquisition” (p. 1). Her research focuses on a kind of collective memory she calls prosthetic memory, which emerges at experiential sites such as movie theaters or museums, at the interface between a person and a historical narrative about the past. I suggest that films of Congolese music/dance do indeed function as experience-inducing technologies of memory, although they do not transport individuals through time exactly as Landsberg describes it. These films are generally contemporary productions, acquired by diasporic families with the slightest time lag, sometimes even produced in the diasporic capitals of Paris or Brussels. However, a longing for times lost can accompany post-migrant experiences of these films because their immigrant parents’ “back home” is often their “back then” as well—many have not had a chance to return to the Congo after their initial immigration to France, and even fewer to take their kids. Instead of simulating a trajectory through time, then, these films produce “a temporal immediacy, a co-presence between viewer and object” (Marks 2000, p.  140), while simultaneously functioning as technologies of recall and feeding a (sometimes untold/unspeakable) melancholia of loss and exile (Kabir 2004, p. 178). Interestingly, Landsberg studies cases of migration in which “ties between children and parents, persons and community—kinship ties— were broken, and alternative methods for the transmission and dissemination of memories were required” (p.  1). While African immigrants and

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their children generally live together in France, the transmission of memories of home isn’t straightforward, sometimes due to traumatic emigration and family secrets, often due to gaps in experience and expectations. Dance/music videos and cultural capital relating to “their parents’” dance/music help post-migrants in their understanding and “connection” to their parents, “their country”, and “their continent”. In a paper on “musical recall” in the Punjabi diaspora, Ananya Kabir (2004) demonstrated how music, because its affect does not stem from narrative or descriptive logic, allows Punjabi migrants to “acknowledge ‘home’ without necessarily participating in the displays of nationalism that ‘home’ now generates” (p. 183). In this chapter, I tried to show that the metaphors and realities of generational relationships become one of the languages through which music and dance are understood in diasporic “communities of sentiment”. Yet, simultaneously, the haptic visuality of music/dance videos procure sensations of coevalness and temporal immediacy with “home” that cannot easily be articulated in words. This explains Jessy’s complex positioning as both “son” (petit) and rival of Ivoirian artists. In the YouTube interview discussed in this chapter, Jessy reclaims and performs the “‘structures of feeling’ that transmit the somatic of memory and belonging across generations” (Kabir 2004, p. 183 citing Raymond Williams). These “structures of feeling” serve to excuse his “affective” understanding of the musical/haptic/tactile experience he calls “rhythm”. “It’s like in football”, he says, as he gives the example of systemic rivalries between Ivoirians and Cameroonians. He trivializes and dismisses the “folly” of national attachments while embedding his own Congolese chauvinism in the realm of affect.

Conclusion: Holding Post-migrants Accountable For post-migrants, the affective/haptic immediacy of “home” as experienced through music/dance is inevitably intertwined with considerations of technological mediation. While technological mediation seems to abolish time/space distances between “home” and “diaspora”, and generates bodily identifications that bypass narrative identification, it also creates possibilities for Africans to hold their diasporic “sons” accountable. Digital platforms created unprecedented communications between age-peers, as exemplified by the YouTube-mediated conflict between Jessy and Arafat, which did not depend anymore on the intervention of migrants in their

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parents’ generation (Braun 2015, p. 110). By performing what he presents as Congolese “structures of feeling” to an Ivoirian journalist for an imagined Ivoirian audience, Jessy reduces the distance (even attempts to abolish the distinction) between Africans (born and raised on the continent, whether or not they later migrated to Europe) and post-­migrants of African origin (born and/or raised in diaspora). While this might be understood in the context of a commercial strategy, it is also a sincere attempt to convey his sensory experience of “culture within the body”. Kabir and Marks demonstrate how music and film can procure sensory experiences of “home” that resist and bypass narrative, such as when post-­ migrant children dance in front of Congolese videoclips in their living rooms. Interestingly, Jessy gets caught up in requests to construct such a narrative precisely when his artistic output becomes a commodity, and is thus likely to earn him a living. In his response video to Jessy, Arafat warns the post-migrant artist that he should recognize his “place” if he wants to be perceived as truly respectful by African artists. French artists continue to draw and feed on the music produced by Ivoirian artists, he asserts: It’s blood brothers (frèsangs) in coupé-décalé who create the concepts and SEND the concepts that YOU dance to. Our animations that we do here, in Abidjan, are those that YOU pick up, there [in France]. So, don’t insult us. When you insult coupé-décalé, you insult… [and he goes on to lists a number of internationally famous coupé-décalé artists] … I cannot cite all of them but you ought to recognize your PLACE! You are nothing (rienneux)!

While Arafat seems to dismiss Jessy, he also grants him a place in an undoubtedly African artistic lineage, on the condition, however, that he accept his subaltern status. The Ivoirian artist reminds him that his visibility, money, and opportunities essentially derive from his geographical location in the privileged North, and “being African” thus remains to be won. He is expected to demonstrate the success of his diasporic adventure in the same way as his parents’ generation: by owning and displaying material property in his African “home” country. It is because Jessy hasn’t proven himself in this way that Arafat concludes: “you have nothing, you are nothing, you are worth nothing”. Paradoxically, it is precisely this virulent rejection which seems to indicate Jessy’s legitimate entry within the category of rivals, and, by virtue of being included into this African prestige economy, that of authentic Africans too.

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Notes 1. The video “Jessy s’explique”, which may be translated as “Jessy clears the air”, was published on Ivoirian journalist Stéphane Etienne’s YouTube account on September 15, 2011. Before the filmed interview starts, a scrolling white text appears against a black background, while Jessy’s track “Mini Kawoulé” is playing: “Jessy Matador speaks up about his comments on coupé-décalé and presents his apologies”. 2. I will refer to him as “Jessy” throughout this chapter, a name by which fans, as well as friends and kin recognize him. While this is both his stage name and legal first name, the Afro scene typically draws strict boundaries between artistic personas and personal identities. Legal surnames belong to the second realm, and artists expect third parties to refer to them by their stage names. 3. These manifested, for example, as anxieties around the authenticity of brand name products. 4. Machismo and polygamy (outlawed on French soil) and the supposed inability/unwillingness of polygamous families to control their many unruly sons were among the fantasized causes of the uprisings. 5. In French, nationalities and ethnicities, whether used as adjectives, are never capitalized. In this text, I will therefore not capitalize afro when used in French. 6. In 2020, young French post-migrants of Congolese origin remain important figures in the scene, but its choreographic influences have tremendously broadened. Congolese n’dombolo, which continues to inspire, competes with Anglophone African dances from Nigeria, Ghana, and South Africa. Interestingly, some French post-migrant dancers have now become so visible and are followed on social media that they are recruited to choreograph videoclips of Nigerian or Congolese singers and are accused by Congolese dancers based in the Congo or in the diaspora (but who are migrants, not post-migrants) of “killing our culture” through their lack of cultural and choreographic knowledge (personal field notes, 2020). 7. Douk Saga (1974–2006), a coupé-décalé pioneer nicknamed “The President”, founder of the group La Jet Set, died prematurely aged 32, as the genre was still in its golden years. 8. Jessy states, more precisely, that it is an acceleration of seben, the “dancing” part in lengthy n’dombolo tracks (Interview of Jessy Matador 2012). 9. Despite their popular and growing success to this day, coupé-décalé has proportionally attracted little interest from scholars. 10. Urban Ivoirian musical genre that predates coupé-décalé and is known for its satirical and often politicized lyrics (Newell 2012, p. 35).

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11. The label “n’dombolo” started to be used in the 1990s; names given to earlier version of musique congolaise moderne are “soukouss” and “rumba”. The term “rumba” points to the afro-cuban influences of musique congolaise moderne. However, instead of rumba recordings, it was actually a set of reissues of Cuban son titles, recorded in Havana and New York from the 1920s on, and then marketed in Central Africa in the 1930s by the HMV record company, which had a lasting impact in the Congo (White 2002, p. 665, 2008, p. 39). 12. Both this local and mediated/translocal circulation transformed Jessy from dancer to singer and subsequently landed him a record deal with Wagram Records in 2008. 13. Many coupé-décalé artists call themselves DJs. This is in part because they do animations over an instrumental track, rather than actually sing. Animations are made of encouragements to dance, names of dance steps, proverbs (often comical and invented by the artists themselves), and praises to figures of prestige and authority (businessmen, elected officials, other artists, etc.). The practice of animation is likely to have been inspired by n’dombolo: each live band has a designated animateur (called atalaku) (White 2008, pp. 54, 59). 14. Titled “Le Commandant Baracuda clash Jessy Matador” (Commandant Baracuda being one of his pseudonyms), it was released October 1, 2011, on DJ Arafat’s YouTube page, which is registered under one of his pseudonyms: Arafat Yorobo Zaba. 15. His name means “beautiful” in Lingala, Congo’s lingua franca. As for a number of coupé-décalé artists, it remains unclear to some of my interlocutors if he was, in fact, Congolese or Ivoirian. He may have been a Congolese who migrated to Ivory Coast before settling in France.

References Appadurai, Arjun. 1990. Topographies of the Self: Praise and Emotion in Hindu India. In Affecting Discourse: Anthropological Essays on Emotions and Social Life, ed. C.  Lutz and L.  Abu-Lughod, 92–112. New  York and London: Cambridge University Press. Barlow, Sean, Banning Eyre, and Jack Vartoogian. 1995. Afropop: An Illustrated Guide to Contemporary African Music. Chartwell Books. Benthaus, Elena. 2019. Dismantling the Genre: Reality Dance Competition and Layers of Affective Intensification. In The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Competition, ed. Sherill Dodds. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Braun, Lesley Nicole. 2015. Performances réelles et espaces virtuels: Les jeunes, créateurs des cultures populaires africaines. Afrique Contemporaine 254(2): 110–112.

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Gawa, Franck. 2014. Le coupé décalé en Côte d’Ivoire: Sens et enjeux d’un succès musical. African Sociological Review 18 (1): 112–126. Kabir, Ananya. 2004. Musical Recall: Postmemory and the Punjabi diaspora. Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics 24: 172–189. Keaton, Trica Danielle. 2006. Muslim Girls and the Other France: Race, Identity Politics and Social Exclusion. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Kohlhagen, Dominik. 2005. Frime, escroquerie et cosmopolitisme. Le succès du « coupé-décalé » en Afrique et ailleurs. Politique africaine 100 (4): 92–105. Kosnick, Kira. 2014. Postmigrant Club Cultures in Urban Europe. Frankfurt Am Main: Peter Lang Publishers. Landsberg, Alison. 2004. Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. New York: Colombia University Press. Marks, Laura U. 2000. The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Newell, Sasha. 2012. The Modernity Bluff: Crime, Consumption, and Citizenship in Côte d’Ivoire. Chicago & London: Chicago University Press. Raulin, Anne. 2009. Minorités urbaines: Des mutations conceptuelles en anthropologie. Revue européenne des migrations internationales 25 (5): 33–51. Steil, Laura. 2011. ‘Realness’: Authenticity, Innovation and Prestige Among Young Afro Dancers in Paris. In Migrating Music, ed. J. Toynbee and B. Dueck. London: Routledge. ———. 2019. Boucan! Loud Moves Against Invisibility in Postcolonial France. Critical African Studies, special issue: “Dance in Africa and beyond: Creativity and Identity in a Globalised World”, 11(1): 121–135. ———. 2021. Boucan! Devenir quelqu’un dans le milieu afro. Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Midi. Stoll, Marie. 2020. Au croisement du nouchi et du coupé-décalé: un défi à l’appartenance nationale. Akofena 2 (2): 129–138. Taylor, Diana. 2003. The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. Durham and London: Duke University Press. White, Bob. 2002. Congolese Rumba and Other Cosmopolitanisms. Cahiers d'Études Africaines 42 (168): 663–686. ———. 2008. Rumba Rules: The Politics of Dance Music in Mobutu’s Zaire. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

The Transmission of Nostalgia and (Be)Longing in Popular Screendance, or Recollecting Damien Chazelle’s La La Land Elena Benthaus

Prelude: Recalling La La Land I am sitting in the movie theatre excited about what is to come. The house lights dim, the curtain opens to accommodate the cinemascope dimensions of the movie La La Land and it smells like popcorn. The movie begins self-referentially in black and white with a small square screen depicting the Summit Entertainment logo that is faded out to give way to the small square screen depicting the words “presented in NEMASCO” in black and white before the screen square extends to full cinematic glory, encompassing all of the word “CINEMASCOPE,” while the black and white merges into colour—yellow words on a dark blue backdrop with

E. Benthaus (*) PoP Moves Australasia, Melbourne, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Parfitt (ed.), Cultural Memory and Popular Dance, Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71083-5_16

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CINEMASCOPE in three-dimensional yellow block letters that blend into the pinks and oranges of a sunrise. The image fades into the blue sky over one of LA’s freeways, packed with cars through the open windows of which I catch snippets of classical music, rap, EDM, giving way to the opening showtunes of the big first ensemble song-and-dance number “Another Day of Sun.” I am hooked from the start, caught in the familiarity of the intertextual traces that remind me of the Hollywood musical films of the Golden Era, woven into the burgeoning love story between aspiring actress Mia (Emma Stone), dreaming of old school Hollywood success, and jazz musician Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), dreaming of opening his own jazz club and saving jazz from extinction in present-day Los Angeles. I am delighted and ‘in it’ till the very end, drunk on the images, the song-and-dance numbers, the nostalgia of it all, that makes me want to dance along, but also quickly fades into nothingness after the movie ends and I am left alone to ponder what I saw. My viewing experience is not unique as Damien Chazelle’s 2016 film musical La La Land has been both celebrated for its revitalization of the Hollywood Musical style and critiqued for its whitewashing of jazz music history and amateur song-and-dance performances. One of the common denominators of most of these reviews, celebratory and critical alike, is the discussion of the film’s intertextual traces under the umbrella of “nostalgia” in relation to questions of longing, belonging, and memory. Peter Bradshaw at The Guardian wrote, “It’s a primary-coloured homage to classic movie musicals, an act of ancestor worship, splashing its poster-­ paint energy and dream-chasing optimism all over the screen” (Bradshaw 2016). Similarly taken with the film, Manohla Dargis from The New York Times said, I thought about how Mr. Chazelle and his stars, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, fit into the history of the film musical. When I went to see “La La Land” again, I was in a terrible state, and this time I just fell into it, gratefully. I surrendered. Afterward, I realized that this must have been what it was like to watch Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers during the Great Depression. (Dargis 2016)

On the other side, there is Allison Willmore from BuzzFeed, who wrote that “nostalgia is more than an emotion for the pair of lovers in La La Land. It’s a belief system, the scaffolding supporting their fragile

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yearnings for showbiz success” (Willmore 2016). And Geoff Nelson from Paste wrote, “The racial politics of nostalgia, not unlike America’s racial history, are rarely anything but gnarled. For the Hollywood musicals of the 1930s, escapism could be found in a European setting or a ‘cheek-tocheek’ dance routine. Chazelle, in returning to the visual aesthetics of Rogers and Astaire, suggests that escapism is instead found in the past” (Nelson 2017). Referring to the intrinsic link between cinema and memory in the formation of film history and film theory, Giuliana Bruno has described film as a “medium that can not only reflect but produce the layout of our mnemonic landscape” (Bruno 2007, p. 4), in which the screen as a surface is seen as a moving archive, mapping memories. As she argues, mnemonic traces slide toward and collide with marks on celluloid. Film repeatedly shows that pictures—moving pictures—are the current documents of our histories. Indeed, filmic memories—fragile yet enduring—are fragments of an archival process…. (Bruno 2007, pp. 4–5)

The landscape of cinematic memory as an archival process in Bruno’s account then is an interconnection of different surfaces that intersect, or fold, through a film’s unfolding narrative, making visible the texture and construction of the fold that is visualized and remembered. Through this interconnection, spectators are enfolded in, to borrow from Bruno, the “enveloping fabric” of film (Bruno 2014, p.  13). Spectators access this enveloping fabric through what she refers to as the “haptic sense” (19), which through the act of viewing, reaches into the cinematic fabric and is touched by its “folds of experience” (20) and the memories it ignites. Film is thus an example of what popular dance scholar Clare Parfitt has described as “tactile media,” which are “conduits that transmit embodied experiences between bodies and repertoires separated by time and/or space” (Parfitt 2016). My haptic, tactile viewing sense was touched by the film’s explicit intertextuality (its mnemonic traces) and the recognition of the popular screendance archive referenced throughout the film, mirroring the experience of the reviewers, who saw it as a “homage to classic movie musicals” (Bradshaw 2016) that is “aimed at cinephiles who recognize the overt references to Singin’ in the Rain, West Side Story, and The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg. It’s meant for viewers who feel a little internal flutter when characters stroll across a studio backlot, surrounded by the accoutrements

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of moviemaking, then burst into song and dance” (Robinson 2016). I felt the “flutter,” and similar to Dargis I “surrendered” and got entangled in the nostalgic enveloping fabric of the movie (its mnemonic landscape) for a moment in time. I had become a nostalgic. But what does that mean? How is it possible to theorize this feeling of longing and belonging that seems so pertinent to the movie and, as I would argue, many other popular screendance texts as well? With regard to these responses, including my own, this chapter seeks to explore the notion of “nostalgia” as a spectatorial modality and affect tied to the experience of the intertextuality of La La Land and also, as a modality inherent in the intertextuality of popular screendance works more broadly. Indeed, the basis for the argumentation in the rest of this chapter is that nostalgia is a central ingredient in the affective apparatus of popular screendance, where the archive of popular screendances of times gone by tend to ‘loom’ in the background of every new work that is produced.1 I intend to argue that nostalgia as a mode of production and reception tied to memory, which Elspeth Probyn describes as not being a “guarantee of memory but precisely as an errant logic that always goes astray” (Probyn 1995, p. 448), links the body of the spectator to the body of the (screen) performer through the transmission of feelings of (be)longing. I use affect in this chapter to indicate the impressions that mediated screen sensations leave behind in the moment of transmission, drawing on Sara Ahmed’s argument that “sensations are mediated, however immediately they seem to impress upon us” (Ahmed 2004a, p. 30). The transmission and circulation of feelings or emotions such as nostalgia and (be)longing result in what Ahmed calls the “sociality of emotion” (Ahmed 2004b, p. 8), making emotions neither completely personal nor completely collective, but flowing between the personal inside and the collective outside. Similar to Svetlana Boym’s observation that nostalgia is about the relationship “between personal and collective memory” (Boym 2001, p. xvi), the considerations that arise from an exploration of nostalgia as an affect of popular screendance are not only related to the kinds of references that are used (indicating memories and what is remembered), but also to questions of who is asked to (be)long and how. This speaks back to one of the uses of tactile media that Parfitt identifies, where “in each translation of a memory into a new form it is altered; the dancer, writer or artist repositions it according to their perspective leading to erasures, additions and mutations” (Parfitt 2016).

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Remembering Nostalgia In the first instance of recognition, nostalgia is what Svetlana Boym calls a “fake Greek” (Boym 2001, p. 4) word in her book The Future of Nostalgia. It is fake in the sense that the word did not originate in ancient Greece and only has Greek roots in an etymological sense as it was coined by Swiss doctor Johannes Hofer in his medical dissertation in 1688. Indeed, as a medical condition, nostalgia is a condition of displaced people, people who have strayed from home, so to speak. It is a disease of an afflicted imagination, a “mania of longing” (Boym 2001, p. 4), that seeks to undo going astray by invoking the lost home in the imagination through processes of remembering that are tied to sensory perception, a haptic sense in other words. As Boym points out, “the nostalgic had an amazing capacity for remembering sensations, tastes, sounds, smells” (Boym 2001, p. 4). Music plays a specific role in this act of remembering, since certain tunes, what might be described as the music of home (music heard at home or genres, melodies, and styles of the particular location and era of that home), affects the individual, alters the person’s mood, and makes critical reflection on the subject impossible. As Boym notes, “Nostalgia (from nostos—return home, and algia—longing) is a longing for a home that no longer exists or has never existed. Nostalgia is a sentiment of loss and displacement, but it is also a romance with one’s own fantasy” (Boym 2001, pp. xiii–xiv). The feeling of nostalgia, as well as its paradox, can be located in the two words it is made of, algia, which is about longing and the act of longing as a shared activity, and nostos, which is about home, about belonging, and is something that is not necessarily sharable. As such, nostalgia is about the relationship between personal and collective memory and the way these differ. Furthermore, nostalgia is seductive and manipulative in the way that it produces instances of longing and belonging as mood-fantasies that attach themselves to places, times, objects, ideas, dances, or films, which is visible in the variety of different responses to La La Land, the most common ground of which is that the nostalgia of the film does something to the viewer. According to Richard Brody from The New Yorker, it seeks to “impress, to wow, to dazzle” (Brody 2016); it absorbs its viewer as Bradshaw notes (Bradshaw 2016); and its song-and-dance numbers create “a little internal flutter” (Robinson 2016). All of these reviews hint at personal memories of remembering the movie musicals of Hollywood’s Golden Age upon watching La La Land. But the film is also embedded

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within a collective cultural memory, where the nostalgia of the film as a romantic fantasy becomes, in Willmore’s words, “a bittersweet answer to a year in which nostalgia turned on us” (Willmore 2016). Or, as Dan Golding writes for Senses of Cinema, “La La Land constructs an imaginary of both Los Angeles and of musicals, one that certainly has never existed…” (Golding 2017), in the course of which it whitewashes jazz music history (Madison III 2016), forgets to remember that LA used to be a Spanish and Mexican city (Stevenson 2017), and imagines itself back to early film and film musical history (Nelson 2017). As Golding notes, “through its vivid remembering and forgetting, La La Land tells us much” (Golding 2017) and it uses the mesmerizing quality of nostalgia and the way it appeals to personal and collective memories in the process. In relation to this, Boym proposes two types of nostalgia that shed light on the mesmerizing and seductive mechanisms at play—restorative and reflective nostalgia.

(Re)Collecting Memory: La La Land’s Restorative Nostalgia Boym notes that the nostalgic is always a displaced person, “who mediates between the local and the universal” (Boym 2001, p.  12), the personal and the collective. When it comes to this mediation, restorative nostalgia is about “home” (the local/personal) and thinks of itself as truth and tradition (the universal/collective). As a tendency or mood, it is deeply invested in the nostos/home, in recreating it, in patching up any memory gaps in relation to it and is thus invested in moments of belonging that go with the idea of home. Restorative nostalgia aims at reconstructing the monuments of the past and is deeply invested in a version of cultural intimacy that is linked to supposedly common frameworks of memory and history to create the perfect fantasy of the past. It is a cure for the temporal displacement and distance the restoratively inclined nostalgic feels. As such, it can be seen as a form of institutionalized nostalgia tied to the institution of archival memory, where the past becomes heritage/tradition and by extension universal. In relation to the whiteness of La La Land as noted by critics, restorative nostalgia equals white nostalgia (Nelson 2017; Willmore 2016), which can be seen when the supposedly local (specific time, place, genre, history) and the universal (cis, white, male) are collapsed in on each other and become stuck on themselves in a feedback

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loop, a constant return to “roots” that were collected from different locales and co-opted as universal. As Willmore states in her article, it is, after all, a privilege of whiteness to see yourself so easily in the stars of the studio golden age, as Mia does, and … to feel such an unabashed sense of ownership over a genre of music as fundamentally grounded in the black experience as jazz the way Sebastian does. (Willmore 2016)

The feedback loop of whiteness reiterates a fantastical past of home that was never there in the first place, a place “where time has happily stopped” (Boym 2001, p. 13), which rubs against any critical reflection of the subject matter of nostalgia. All of Sebastian’s endeavours in La La Land speak to restorative nostalgia. Indeed, restorative nostalgia is his only mode of existence. It is in his obsessive collection of jazz music mementos of the past—records, pictures of jazz legends, old instruments, and featured most infamously in the film, a wooden stool on which (white) American pianist and Tin Pan Alley songwriter Hoagy Carmichael apparently sat. When Sebastian opens his jazz club Seb’s towards the end of the movie, this stool is mounted on the wall as an iconic collectible, among other collectibles spectators got a glimpse of in his apartment at the start of the movie. As such, Seb’s can be seen as an archive of “enduring materials” (Taylor 2003, p. 19) that are memorialized and institutionalized according to Sebastian’s specifications. Sebastian, as a restorative jazz nostalgic, mediates memory (and history) in an attempt to “obliterate history and turn it into a private or collective mythology…” (Boym 2001, p. xv). This mythology of restorative nostalgia also comes to bear on the body and its movements and is very clearly visible in Mia and Sebastian’s song-­ and-­dance numbers, in their joint movement towards nostalgia in moments of crisis. After a humiliating party in the Hollywood Hills, at which Sebastian has to perform as part of a 1980s pop cover band and is initially mocked by Mia, they end up taking a stroll through the hills in search of Mia’s car. The colour of the night sky over LA, lush blues with hints of purple and pink, mirrors the colour of the studio setting Gene Kelly creates for Debbie Reynolds in the “You Were Meant for Me” number in Singin’ in the Rain (MGM 1952)—a film that is also deeply invested in intertextuality and nostalgia for the early days of cinema. Sebastian starts walking into the song-and-dance of the “A Lovely Night” number by taking a turn around a streetlamp and imitating Gene Kelly’s iconic streetlamp

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pose from the “Singin’ in the Rain” number. The sentiments Mia and Sebastian express in the song are far from the romance of their predecessors yet, as both are expressing annoyance and it being a “waste of a lovely night.” They end up doing a Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers-style partner tap number as part of the song and as part of easing into the romance that is to come later, where, in Hollywood musical style fashion, the differences the couple-to-be have are negotiated through learning to dance with each other (Benthaus 2013, pp. 57/58). This is initiated by a reference to the beginning of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers’ fake engagement number, “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off,” from Shall We Dance (RKO 1937), where Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers sit on a bench to change into roller skates. In “A Lovely Night,” Mia sits down to exchange her high heels for tap shoes to start this nostalgic dance negotiation throwback. A bit later, another moment of crisis, a boring date with her boyfriend, finds Mia rushing off to meet Sebastian to watch a screening of Rebel Without a Cause (Warner Bros 1955). Their romantic moment in the movie theatre is disrupted when the film stock melts during the scene at the Griffith Observatory, a central location in Rebel Without a Cause, and they decide to drive up to the Observatory. It is no coincidence that the melodic arrangement, the tune that ties Mia and Sebastian together and links their romance to nostalgia from the start of the movie—their theme— finds its grand fulfilment in a big dreamy dance number at Griffith Observatory. It is the place that the tune reveals itself as a waltz and the arrangement in this number is reminiscent of the big and romantic Hollywood musical scores of the romantic, sweeping and gliding partner dance numbers, whose memory is inscribed into this scene through the celluloid of the filmscape, resonating with Nelson’s comment, that in the Hollywood musical film “escapism could be found in a European setting or a ‘cheek-to-cheek’ dance routine” (Nelson 2017). While La La Land is not set in Europe, the use of the waltz, a German/Austrian country dance turned European ballroom dance, functions as a stand in for the escapism of a European setting to which the “cheek-to-cheek” dance routine Mia and Sebastian perform is added. The dance number starts when Mia, dressed in a flowy green knee-­ length dress, hair upswept, and Sebastian, dressed in a beige 1950s-style suit and dark tie, sneak into the dark Observatory through a side door on the East Terrace, from which they make their way through the Wilder Hall of the Eye into the W.M. Keck Foundation Central Rotunda,2 captured in a long shot and accompanied by a playful piano, flute, piccolo, and

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marimba arrangement in ¾ time.3 Once at the threshold to the Rotunda, the camera tilts up to the vaulted ceiling showing the Hugo Ballin Murals depicting ancient celestial mythology through a clockwise full rotation of the camera that comes to land back on Mia and Sebastian in a medium long shot in front of the Foucault Pendulum, where the playful melody gives way to a simple ping from the piano before the waltz is launched. To the opening tunes of the waltz, Mia and Sebastian split so each of them walks around to the other side of the pendulum, the camera tracking Mia in a clockwise motion. When they meet on the other side, the couple hesitantly come together to waltz around the pendulum, again tracked by the camera, this time counter-clockwise, indicating the move into the past of the film musical, further emphasized once they enter the Samuel Oschin Planetarium and activate the Star Projector to dance among the stars. At first, their movements as a couple are hesitant and choppy, but once they are among the stars, their movements are made to look sweeping, elegant, and gliding through framing Sebastian and Mia as tiny shadowy stick dancers (performed by dance doubles) that get lost among the stars amidst the rising crescendo of the waltz. The film musicals referenced in this scene are the crescendo of “Your Song” from Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge! (20th Century Fox 2001), itself a nostalgic throwback to Astaire/ Rogers and Kelly’s film dance oeuvres as Parfitt has noted (Parfitt 2014, pp. 27/28), and Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell’s “Begin the Beguine” tap dance number set on a starry light stage from Norman Taurog’s Broadway Melody of 1940 (MGM 1940). The amateurish, clumsy, not-­ quite-­ there-yet movement quality and mood of Mia and Sebastian’s dances, both “A Lovely Night” and “Planetarium,” is an embodied expression of the impossibility of rebuilding the lost home of the glorious movie musical past through movement. Instead they are stuck in a shuffle of awkward angles, and hesitant, choppy dancing that fails to invoke the elegance of Fred, Ginger, Gene, and Debbie. Mia and Sebastian are neither here nor there, because the spectre of the accomplished Golden Era musical stars looms large in the landscape of cinematic memory. Despite the not-quite-there-yet movement quality and the lack of star quality, the spotlight is always firmly on Sebastian and Mia, exemplified in a little moment from the relationship vignette montage, which follows the “Planetarium” number. Sebastian is playing piano in the jazz club in which he first introduced jazz history and his big dream of resurrecting jazz to Mia, while Mia is dancing to the music. With the increasing speed of the song, the camera is, also with increasing speed, panning back and forth

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between the two, capturing Sebastian’s flirty exertions at the piano and Mia’s awkward, but joyous danced interpretation of the music. On stage the spotlight is on Sebastian, while the black jazz musicians blend into the background. At the same time, Mia is spotlighted through finding herself in the middle of a cypher, surrounded by African American dancers, who simultaneously dance and watch Mia dance. Similar to the spotlight drowning out the rest of the black jazz band, the cypher and camera movement reduce the black dancers to the background of the main attraction, where Mia and Sebastian “own” the stage, dancefloor, and filmscape. This is another hat-tip to the (white) Golden Age of the Hollywood musical film, resonating with Willmore’s comment that “whiteness is part of the point of La La Land as well…” (Willmore 2016). It is also part of a larger legacy of the film musical genre, in which, as Susie Trenka has argued, “white spinoffs by far outperform their black sources of inspiration in what has frequently been called the ‘whitening’ of black culture” (Trenka 2014, p. 100). In that, La La Land is what Boym calls “technonostalgia” (Boym 2001, p. 33), a type of pop nostalgia that aims to move beyond the ideological through the emphasis on a universal institutional archive of memory.

Postlude: La La Land’s Reflective Nostalgic Aftermath This brings me to the other type of nostalgia present not necessarily in but around the film: reflective nostalgia. As a tendency or mood that is deeply invested in algia, in moments of longing, reflective nostalgia dwells on these moments of longing and loss and indeed, imperfect processes of memory and remembering. This type of nostalgia lingers on the ruins of time and history, the dreams of another time and place, while simultaneously moving towards the future via a fragmented meditation and intervention of time/history/time passing/history passing. As such, it is steeped in shared social frameworks of individual memories and the particularly fragmented experience of them through time, space, and place. As Boym notes, shared everyday frameworks of collective or cultural memory offer us mere signposts for individual reminiscences that could suggest multiple narratives. These narratives have a certain syntax…, but no single plot. (Boym 2001, p. 53)

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This fragmentation of the “no single plot” is important as it differentiates the restorative from the reflective, because, to return to Probyn, nostalgia acts “not as a guarantee of memory” (Probyn, 448) that is always the same for everybody at all times, but more as “an errant logic that always goes astray” (448), suggesting multiple plots and movements. In its very conceptual upbringing, Probyn noted that nostalgia moved from being an affliction of the mind-body of the displaced to an interior, neurotic, and pathologized object of psychology and psychoanalysis until these disciplines lost interest in it, to now being “free to wander” (457). As a methodology that is free to wander, reflective nostalgia has the potential to turn things around, to queer nostalgic directionality from a memory that (re)collects the past, to one that reworks memory through acts of multiple longings, or multiple plot points. As Nelson remarks in his review in Paste, “people do not long for the past equally. Many do not long for it at all” (Nelson 2017), referring to the past that white restorative nostalgia intends to (re)build by remembering certain things and forgetting others in the age of Trump and Brexit. In La La Land, the things that are forgotten are related to the history of film (who is allowed to see themselves in the stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood musicals as Willmore has noted for BuzzFeed), the history of Los Angeles, and the history of jazz. As Dan Golding states in his review for Senses of Cinema, the film “forgets that jazz has historically been pioneered by black Americans and colonised by white men” and is “keen to forget about Los Angeles’ origins as a Spanish, and then Mexican city. With a population that is 48% Hispanic or Latino— and 11% Asian, and 9% Black or African American” (Golding 2017). It is here, in the reviews, another form of tactile media, where Bruno’s “haptic sense” (Bruno 2014, p.  19) becomes visible and embodied. As Bruno argues, “motion creates emotion and, reciprocally, emotion contains a movement that becomes communicated” (19). The critical reviews function as a form of reflective nostalgia which are not stuck on rebuilding the past and on dwelling and securing the home. Instead they are playing through the fragments of collective memory present in the intertextual references of the film and through different types of cultural positionality when it comes to spectatorship. To return to Boym, who specifically notes that “one becomes aware of the collective frameworks of memories… when the community itself enters the moment of twilight” (Boym 2001, p. 54). The communities, in the form of reviewers and spectators, point to the tension and problems inherent in the archive of restorative nostalgia.

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Instead of “patching up the memories,” reviews of La La Land are used to present different moves, different histories, and different memories, which function as interventions that rub against the technonostalgia of the movie. Rather than becoming a static restorative archive, reflective nostalgia and the memories and histories it generates can be seen as a repertoire, which Diana Taylor refers to as an enactment of “embodied memory” (Taylor 2003, p. 20) in her book The Archive and the Repertoire, since as she argues, “the repertoire requires presence: people participate in the production and reproduction of knowledge by ‘being there’, being part of the transmission” (Taylor 2003, p. 20). Reviews signal the “being there” of the reviewer on behalf of the spectator (a digital form of orality, if you will). By writing, creating, and thinking through the implications and impressions that a film leaves behind, reviewer-spectators participate in the production and reproduction of mnemonic movement knowledge. The interventions transmitted through the digital orality of the reviews, which sit outside of the actual filmscape of La La Land, break the frame, and burn its glossy and contagious surface in the same way that the film stock starts melting Rebel Without a Cause.

Notes 1. As I have argued elsewhere, Hollywood Musical narrative tropes and star performers such as Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, and Gingers Rogers can be traced through newer popular screendance works, including later dance films, reality dance competition shows, and music videos, which is due to how genre is expressed and used to generate feelings of attachment with screen performers (cf. Benthaus 2013, 2019). Similarly, Clare Parfitt has noted the role of memory and remembering, not just Paris, but other pop culture and pop music moments, in creating what she calls “techno-­ choreographic bohemianism” (p. 26) in Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge!” (cf. Parfitt 2014) 2. Information on the layout and the exhibits of the Griffith Observatory can be found on their webpage: http://www.griffithobservatory.org/ 3. Information on the arrangement of the “Planetarium” score (https:// musescore.com/samlin1231/scores/3881666) and “Mia and Sebastian’s Theme” (https://musescore.com/colebryan/scores/4874363) courtesy of MuseScore.

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References Ahmed, Sara. 2004a. Collective Feelings. Or, The Impressions left by Others. Theory, Culture & Society 21 (2): 25–42. ———. 2004b. The Cultural Politics of Emotions. New York: Routledge. Benthaus, Elena. 2013. ‘We are not here to make avant-garde choreography!’—So You Think You Can Dance and Popular Screen Dance Aesthetics. Conference Proceedings of NOFOD and SDHS Joint Conference, published by SDHS. ———. 2019. Dismantling the Genre—Reality Dance Competitions and Layers of Affective Intensification. In The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Competition, ed. Sherril Dodds. New York: Oxford University Press. Boym, Svetlana. 2001. The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books. Bradshaw, Peter. 2016. La La Land Review: Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone Shine in a Sun-Drenched Musical Masterpiece. The Guardian (International Edition), August 31. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/aug/31/ la-­la-­land-­review-­r yan-­gosling-­emma-­stone. Broadway Melody of 1940. 1940. Directed by Norman Taurog. MetroGoldwyn-Mayer. Brody, Richard. 2016. The Empty Exertions of ‘La La Land’. The New  Yorker, December 8. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-­brody/the-­ empty-­exertions-­of-­la-­la-­land. Bruno, Giuliana. 2007. Public Intimacy: Architecture and the Visual Arts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ———. 2014. Surface: Matters of Aesthetics, Materiality, and Media. Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press. Dargis, Manohla. 2016. ‘La La Land’ Makes Musicals Matter Again. The New York Times, November 23. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/23/movies/la-­ la-­land-­makes-­musicals-­matter-­again.html. Golding, Dan. 2017. The Dreamers of La La Land. Senses of Cinema, Issue 82. http://sensesofcinema.com/2017/feature-­articles/dreaming-­of-­la-­la-­land/. La La Land. 2016. Directed by Damien Chazelle. Summit Entertainment. Madison III, Ira. 2016. La La Land’s White Jazz Narrative. MTV News. http:// www.mtv.com/news/2965622/la-­la-­lands-­white-­jazz-­narrative/. Moulin Rouge!. 2001. Directed by Baz Luhrmann. 20th Century Fox. MuseScore. Mia and Sebastian’s Theme. Accessed November 30, 2018. https:// musescore.com/colebryan/scores/4874363. ———. Planetarium—La La Land. Accessed November 30, 2018. https://musescore.com/samlin1231/scores/3881666. Nelson, Geoff. 2017. The Unbearable Whiteness of La La Land: What does Damien Chazelle Hope We See When We Look Back? Paste. https://www. pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/01/the-­u nbearable-­w hiteness-­o f-­l a-­ la-­land.html.

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Official Site: Griffith Observatory Los Angeles, CA.  Accessed November 30, 2018. http://www.griffithobservatory.org/. Parfitt, Clare. 2014. An Australian in Paris: Techno-Choreographic Bohemianism in Moulin Rouge! In The Oxford Handbook of Dance and the Popular Screen, ed. Melissa Blanco Borelli, 21–40. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2016. ‘I breathed on their dust’: Protean Memory and Tactile Media. Paper presented at SDHS and CORD Joint Conference, Pomona College, CA. Probyn, Elspeth. 1995. Suspended Beginning: Of Childhood and Nostalgia. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian & Gay Studies 2: 439–465. Robinson, Tasha. 2016. La La Land Review: A Gloriously Earnest Singin’ in the Rain for the 21st century. The Verge. https://www.theverge. com/2016/9/14/12912260/la-­la-­land-­movie-­r eview-­emma-­stone-­r yan­gosling-­tiff-­16. Shall We Dance. 1937. Directed by Mark Sandrich. RKO Radio Pictures. Singin’ in the Rain. 1952. Directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Stevenson, Billy. 2017. From Los Angeles to La La Land: Mapping Whiteness in the Wake of Cinema. Senses of Cinema, Issue 82. http://sensesofcinema. com/2017/feature-­articles/from-­los-­angeles-­to-­la-­la-­land/. Taylor, Diana. 2003. The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. Durham; London: Duke University Press. Trenka, Susie. 2014. Appreciation, Appropriation, Assimilation: And the Hollywood History of Black Dance. In The Oxford Handbook of Dance and the Popular Screen, ed. Melissa Blanco Borelli, 98–112. New  York: Oxford University Press. Willmore, Alison. 2016. The Privilege of Hollywood Nostalgia. BuzzFeed. h t t p s : / / w w w. b u z z f e e d . c o m / a l i s o n w i l l m o r e / l a -­l a -­l a n d -­a n d -­t h e ­privilege-­of-­nostalgia.

PART V

Conclusions

Some Dance to Remember, Some Dance to Forget Clare Parfitt

On 9 April 2003, American writer Deanne Stillman was watching televised coverage of the fall of Baghdad to Coalition forces. Amongst many acts of vandalism against portraits and statues of Saddam Hussein, the media seized on the dramatic toppling of a 20-foot statue in Firdus Square: As I watched, I heard a soundtrack coming right from the streets of Baghdad, as if someone had flipped the switch on a CD player after a lifetime of waiting and hoping for the thing that was unfolding. “Welcome to the Hotel California,” came the song, “such a lovely place…” and then the camera panned to five or six Iraqi men in a line, singing along to the song, dancing in ecstasy, on their way to freedom—and, it almost seemed, to the Golden State. (Stillman 2014)

But later, as Stillman recounted the incident to her friends, it seemed that no one else had seen it. She searched the internet, but there was no

C. Parfitt (*) University of Chichester, Chichester, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Parfitt (ed.), Cultural Memory and Popular Dance, Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71083-5_17

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evidence of the dancing Iraqis. Starting to wonder if she had imagined the scene, she continued to search for several weeks, but eventually gave up and forgot about it. In 2014, the outbreak of the Iraqi Civil War brought her memory of the real or imagined vision to the surface. She resumed her internet search and struck upon a book called Operation Hotel California: The Clandestine War Inside Iraq (Tucker and Faddis 2010), which detailed the secret CIA mission that preceded the Iraq War. The book revealed the American counterterrorist officers’ nostalgia for the American popular music of their youth in the 1960s and 1970s, “like a talisman rocking from across the far dark waters of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, helping them stay alive in the clandestine war in Iraq” (2010). The Americans had interspersed their favourite tracks within a regular series of pre-recorded messages encouraging Iraqi soldiers to surrender, broadcast by an Iraqi radio station. An email from Charles Faddis, the leader of the CIA mission, confirmed that one of the tracks was ‘Hotel California’ by the Eagles, though he did not know whether the song had been played after Hussein’s statue fell, nor did Stillman ever find the footage she remembered. Stillman’s narrative of elusive memory leaves us with many questions. Assuming that Stillman really did witness Iraqis dancing to the 1977 track, how did they move? Did they channel movement from Iraqi, perhaps pre-­ Saddam, repertoires of movement, or did the 1970s rock soundtrack inspire them to embody movements from the Western films and music videos available on Qanaat Al-Shabaab (the Youth Channel) (Jones n.d.)? Following the song’s famous lyrics, what were the Iraqi men dancing to remember, or to forget? Stillman suggests that the musical radio broadcasts were intended, “to make them understand that freedom rocks and America has a good beat that you can dance to, if only you lived there” (2014). But is this how the Iraqis understood the propaganda, and how did this utopian vision sit in relation to their own memories of life before and during Hussein’s rule and their past experiences as consumers of Western media? To what extent is Stillman’s account a story of the use of popular cultural memory’s affective power to promote American imperialism in Iraq? Or of creative Iraqi reworking of American popular culture to stage their political and embodied liberation from the monumental legacies built by a totalitarian regime? Or of Stillman’s own nostalgic relationship to California, routed through the unexpected echoes of the Eagles’ parodic American dream, resurfacing in the post-9/11 era? Many of the themes raised in this collection are thrown into relief by Stillman’s tale. Just as the liberated Iraqis danced at the complex

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intersection between American, Iraqi and perhaps other nostalgias, politics and utopias, the essays gathered here demonstrate how power-laden claims and counterclaims about the past animate and circulate popular dance. Multiple memories and alternative genealogies are embedded in each of the popular dance contexts evoked by the contributors. These disparate pasts may reflect the interests of those dancing and/or of capitalist forces, normative identity politics and the power of nationalist, colonial or neo-­ colonial regimes. The relationships between these memories may be characterised by competition and contestation, or by “ongoing negotiation, cross-referencing, and borrowing” (Rothberg 2009). The chapters demonstrate how popular dances have been co-opted to embody powerful visions of the past generated by, for example, the (presumed) racialised nostalgias of mass cultural audiences (Malnig, Benthaus), heteronormative genealogies (Sadlier, Batchelor and Mulholland, Patrick), colonial and touristic gazes (López-Yánez), post-war nationalisms (Thomas) and postcolonial nationalisms (Ofosu, Patrick, Djebbari). They also, simultaneously, reveal popular dance as a practice of resistance to these dominant historiographic forces, by uncreolising (Sadlier), queering (Batchelor and Mulholland), decolonising (López-Yánez), forgetting (Thomas) and fragmenting (Benthaus) received repertoires, while excavating alternative genealogies by citing (Schroeder), invoking (Anaya, Sadlier), reclaiming (Batchelor and Mulholland), performing (López-Yánez, Kay), articulating (Ofosu) and attuning to (Robinson) subjugated embodied memories. If popular dance is propelled by a “contesting of power relations between the commercial industries that seek to produce and disseminate popular dance and the participants in popular dance who create locally articulated practices” (Dodds 2011), then the power to determine which pasts become embodied in the present and the future carries high stakes in this cultural struggle. In Stillman’s account, the uncanny transmissibility of popular music and dance from Los Angeles to Baghdad is juxtaposed with the inexplicable failure of the global network of digital memory to retain a memory that she remembered so clearly. The apparent ease with which popular dance can be transmitted from body to body has generated both pleasure and anxiety, from the “performative commons” (Dillon 2014) that connected theatrical publics around the seventeenth- to nineteenth-century Atlantic world, through the friction between gift and capitalist economies that made dance an object of copyright claims from the late nineteenth century onwards (Kraut 2016), to the claims and counterclaims against a

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universal digital commons in the age of the internet (Kraut 2016; Bench 2020). The contributors to this collection argue that popular dance has developed specific memory practices to navigate processes of transmission, such as the pedagogic citational process that Schroeder terms ‘dancestry’, the choreographic experimentation and community debate that Anaya observes in the Cuban salsa community and the nostalgic referencing that Benthaus enjoys and critiques in popular screendance. They also identify the manipulations of memory that have taken place to transmit popular dance in the face of racism and White privilege (Malnig, Benthaus), the frictions and synergies between intergenerational and technological models of transmission (Satin, Steil), and the consequences of failures of transmission (Thomas). Forgetting or mistaken memory can be as creative a process as remembering (Satin), but can also be perceived as politically dangerous when the nation-state relies on the accurate reproduction of nationalised bodies to maintain order in the body politic (Thomas). Failure to transmit marginalised memories opens up risks of appropriation (Schroeder), the reassertion of heteronormativity (Batchelor and Mulholland) and coloniality (López-Yánez), or erasure of the rich complexity of dance histories (Robinson). Stillman’s memory of the televised coverage of the fall of Baghdad encapsulates in a single image the struggle between alternative memory practices: a monumental, mnemonic icon of Hussein’s totalitarian regime is torn down, and a liberatory performance of American nostalgia learnt from television and radio media is staged in its dust. The contributors to this volume also consider the relationships between alternative memory practices, particularly drawing on Diana Taylor’s (2003) distinction between the archive and the repertoire (see Introduction to this volume). While Taylor distinguishes between the “supposedly enduring materials” of the archive and the “performance, gestures, orality, movement, dancing, singing” of the repertoire (2003), many of the chapters in this collection complicate that binary. Djebbari argues that the distinct temporalities of the archive and the repertoire are superimposed by the Cuban Conjunto Folklórico Nacional (National Folkloric Ensemble) both in the post-­ archival (Franco 2015) audiovisual recordings of the company’s repertoire and in the dancer’s body itself as “archive in the making”. Ofosu makes a parallel point by using archival language to describe Ghanaian popular dances as “mnemonic artefacts” for traditional dances. Other contributors illustrate that the archive is not a ‘dead-end’ for memory, but can be re-­ embodied as repertoire. Patrick shows that in the case of Philippine folk

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dance, the archival process has determined the trajectory of the repertoire, and Robinson demonstrates that items from the archive can be considered choreographic objects that move bodies. The chapters which address mediated memories offer further entanglements of archive and repertoire. In Satin and Steil’s chapters, mediated memories and personal, familial memories inflect each other in the ongoing, embodied processes of recollection, identity construction and life story telling. Benthaus conceives popular screendance as both an archive of past screendance moments (in line with Milovanović 2020) and a repertoire that allows reviewer-­ spectators to make embodied, pluralising interventions into the film’s restorative nostalgia. A parallel process can be observed in Satin’s choreographic embodiment of fragmented, fallible screen memories. As the thoughts, feelings, desires and dances of the contributors become archived in this book, I wonder what use will be made of this archive, which bodies it might propel into movement, which memories it might awaken, which emotions it may rouse. The politics of embodied popular memory swirl around contemporary culture, in populist nationalism, in Black Lives Matter and in Brexit, to name a few. Future scholars working at the intersection of popular dance and cultural memory might use and expand the ideas developed in this collection to provide insights into these cultural phenomena, perhaps even to shape their unfolding. As I write this conclusion a few days after the lifting of the second COVID lockdown in the UK, I wonder whether and how the global pandemic will shift relationships between popular dance and cultural memory. How have communities of practice, particularly those based around social dances requiring contact such as salsa and tango, negotiated the ethical and political imperative to socially distance, and what marks will this negotiation leave in their movement? How will the boom in online popular dance practices during the pandemic, such as TikTok, Zoom dance classes and online dance parties, impact on popular screendance as an archive and repertoire, on pedagogies as formalised modes of transmission and on the methodologies we use to research popular dance? And what role will popular dance play in the post-pandemic world, as we rethink our relationships to pandemic/pre-pandemic pasts, public space, screens and the social? The ways of thinking that have emerged at the interface between popular dance and cultural memory are perfectly positioned to address these new challenges and to help us mobilise memory to envisage alternative futures.

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Bibliography Bench, Harmony. 2020. Perpetual Motion: Dance, Digital Cultures, and the Common. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. Dillon, Elizabeth Maddock. 2014. New World Drama: The Performative Commons in the Atlantic World, 1649–1849. Durham: Duke University Press. Dodds, Sherril. 2011. Dancing on the Canon: Embodiments of Value in Popular Dance. Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Franco, Susanne. 2015. Reenacting Heritage at Bomas of Kenya: Dancing the Postcolony. Dance Research Journal 47 (2): 3–22. Jones, Philip. n.d. Invasion by media: Propaganda as a weapon of war. MA Thesis, University College Cork. Academia. Accessed December 8, 2020. http:// www.academia.edu/download/35023070/Thesis_Propaganda.docx. Kraut, Anthea. 2016. Choreographing Copyright: Race, Gender, and Intellectual Property Rights in American Dance. New York: Oxford University Press. Milovanović, Dara. 2020. Popular Dance as Archive: Re-imagining Keeps the Fosse Aesthetic Preserved. Dance Research 38 (2): 255–270. Rothberg, Michael. 2009. Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Stillman, Deanne. 2014. Some Dance to Remember, Some Dance to Forget: A Few Thoughts on Iraq, “Hotel California,” and Coming Home. Los Angeles Review of Books. Accessed December 8, 2020. https://lareviewofbooks.org/ article/thoughts-­on-­iraq-­hotel-­california/. Taylor, Diana. 2003. The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Tucker, Mike, and Charles Faddis. 2010. Operation Hotel California: The Clandestine War Inside Iraq. Guilford, Connecticut: The Lyons Press.

Index1

A Aaka, 144, 147–150 Acosta, Carlos, 193, 194, 205, 206 Acosta, Pedro, 193 Affect, 27, 34, 65, 71, 205, 244, 250, 253, 255, 261, 269, 278 Affective, 249, 267, 269, 278, 292 Affective memories, 16, 17 Africanist aesthetic, 28, 31–33, 54 Afro-Caribbean, 7, 8 Afro-Cuban music and dance, 40–43, 50, 53–58 Afro-diasporic dance, 12 Afro new style, 261 Aghion, Alberto, 61 Agordoh, Alexander Akorlie, 142 Ahmed, Sara, 278 Alterity, 64–67, 74 Anaya, Elizabeth, 13, 293, 294 Andrews, Julie, 212, 216 Antall, József, 161

Appropriation, 4, 8, 10, 67, 69, 74, 237, 294 Aquino, Francesca Reyes, 178–181, 186–188 Arbeau, Thoinot, 214, 215, 224 Archive, 4, 8–11, 15–17, 70–72, 76n10, 194–196, 198–205, 277, 278, 281, 284, 285, 294, 295 body as, 194 embodied archives, 9 memory, 280 post-archive, 195, 199, 204, 205 reconstruction, 216 research, 216 Archive in the making, 204, 205, 294 Arendt, Hannah, 6 Assmann, J., 139, 146, 147 Astaire, Fred, 276, 277, 283, 286n1 Authentic/authenticity, 50, 53, 57, 85, 113, 125, 158, 159, 163–170, 179 Azonto, 143–147, 150

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

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INDEX

B Bachelard, Gaston, 249 Bailarina de Merengue, 243 Balbuena, Barbara, 47, 50 Ballroom dances, 84–87, 89–94, 96n5, 114, 282 Balzac, Honorée de, 222–224 Barber, K., 143, 149 Barthes, Roland, 251 Bartók, Béla, 166 Batchelor, Ray, 12, 14, 111, 293, 294 Bates, Héctor, 103 Bates, Luis, 103 Behar, Ruth, 254 Benagr, S., 143 Benjamin, Walter, 13 Bennett, Jane, 232 Benthaus, Elena, 17, 293–295 Bergson, Henri, 4, 5 Bernstein, Robin, 234 Bhabha, Homi, 186 Blackness, 7, 96n4 Black dance forms, 7, 9 Black performance culture, 7 Blanco Borelli, Melissa, 11, 54 Blaya, Ricardo García, 103, 104, 113 Body as archive, 195, 202, 203 Body politic, 212–216, 222, 224, 294 Bomba, 14, 123–127, 129–131 Bomba cimarrona, 14, 126–132, 133n10 Bomba del Chota, 123 Bourdieu, P., 7, 110, 140–142, 149, 202, 252 Boym, Svetlana, 17, 278–280, 284, 285 Bradley, Buddy, 236–240 Bradshaw, Peter, 276 Breaux, Marc, 216, 224 Brewer, Carolyn, 184, 185 Brody, Richard, 279

Brown, Bill, 232 Brown, Gavin, 109 Brown, Kath, 109 Bruno, Giuliana, 277, 285 Bubbles, John Sublett, 29, 30 Buckland, Theresa Jill, 10, 11, 75n4, 178 Bull, C. J. C., 143 Butler, Judith, 184 C Cancan, 18n6 Capitalism, 3, 5, 55, 56, 62–64, 66–72, 74, 76n9, 87 Capitalist, 5, 71, 293 Caribbean, 2, 6, 7 Cariñosa, 15, 177–190 Carnival, 68, 69, 75n3 Carnivalesque, 64, 68, 69, 74 Casino, 39–44, 46, 48–56, 205 Castle, Irene, 83, 84, 86–93, 95 Castle, Vernon, 83, 84, 86–93, 95 Ceaușescu, Nicolae, 161 Ceremonies, 5 Chachachá, 40, 41, 54, 141, 142, 195–197, 245 Chalá, Wilson, 131 Champagne, Lenora, 250 Chao Carbonero, Graciela, 48, 49, 51, 53 Chapman, Dasha, 12 Chazelle, Damien, 276, 277 Choreonecrology, 215, 216 Cimarronaje, 124, 126 Cinematic memory, 277, 283 Clark, J., 142, 149 Clark, VéVé, 7, 8, 17 Cohen, Ronald L., 139, 149 Cole, Anna, 75n4 Coles, Charles “Honi”, 31, 34

 INDEX 

Coles Stroll, 26, 31–34, 36n11 Collective cultural memory, 280 Collective ecstasy, 62, 63, 66, 68, 69, 71, 72, 74 See also Collective joy Collective joy, 13, 66, 67, 70, 71, 73, 74, 132 Collective memories, 278–280, 284, 285 Collins, J., 142, 143, 149 Colonialism, 3, 65–67, 70, 72, 123, 125, 178, 180, 182, 183, 186, 189, 190, 200 Coloniality, 294 Colonisation, 63, 68, 116, 184–186 See also Colonialism Commemorative ceremonies, 5, 6, 17, 27, 64, 70–74 Congo, Belermina, 126, 129, 130 Congo, Paulo Ayala, 133n10 Conjunto Folklórico Nacional de Cuba (National Folkloric Ensemble), 41, 195–201, 203–205, 294 Connerton, Paul, 5, 6, 8–10, 17, 26, 27, 53, 56, 65, 71, 72, 75n4, 85, 86, 89, 94 Conway, Brian, 6 Coser, Lewis, 85 Coupé-décalé, 259, 260, 262–267, 270, 271n1, 271n7, 271n9, 271n10, 272n13, 272n15 COVID-19, 2, 295 Creolisation, 63–65, 73, 74, 187 uncreolised African body, 64, 65, 68, 70, 73, 74, 293 Csángó, 15, 159–166, 168, 170, 171 Csángó táncház, 160, 170 Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, 77n17 Cuban popular dances, 39, 40, 50, 51 Cultural memory, 117n2, 284, 295 memory, 42, 56, 57 (see Memory/ memories)

299

D Dance reconstruction, 11, 230–232, 234, 235, 240 Dancestry, 13, 26–34, 294 Dance studies, 4, 7–9, 12 Daniel, Yvonne, 28, 45, 47, 53 Danse afro, 263, 266 Dargis, Manohla, 276, 278 Decoloniality, 14, 127 Decolonising, 18n5, 293 DeFrantz, Thomas, 28–30 Deh, Tabitha, 143, 144 Delgado, Celeste Fraser, 8 Delsarte, 89 Denniston, Christine, 102 Diaspora, 3, 8, 16, 28, 31, 159, 160, 205, 261, 262, 268–270, 271n6 African diaspora, 9, 28, 62, 66, 193, 202 French diaspora, 265 Hungarian diaspora, 159 Punjabi diaspora, 269 Diasporic re-membering, 12 Dixon Gottschild, Brenda, 54 DJ Arafat, 264, 269, 270, 272n14 Djebbari, Elina, 15, 16, 18n5, 293, 294 DJ Kitoko, 266 Dodds, Sherril, 2, 10, 17n1, 26 Domene, Pablo A., 63 Doolittle, Lisa, 10 Dorr, Rheta Childe, 87 Dunham, Katherine, 7, 69 Durkheim, Émile, 62 E Early film, 280 Ehrenreich, Barbara, 62, 68, 75n4 Elusive memory, 292 Embodied memories, 54, 286, 293, 295

300 

INDEX

Empathetic attunement, 16, 230, 235, 239, 240 Engobo, Dany, 265, 266 Ethnographic/ethnography, 10, 11, 15, 16, 195, 201 (auto)ethnographic, 63, 64, 70 visual ethnography, 14 Etienne, Stéphane, 259, 271n1 F Faddis, Charles, 292 Familial memories, 295 Fensham, Rachel, 18n3 Film, 3, 4, 9, 16, 17, 244, 247, 250, 252, 253, 255, 267–269, 277, 279, 280, 282, 285, 286, 292 Filmic memories, 277 Film musical, 276, 280, 283, 284 Fisher, Ronald, 50, 56 Fitch, Melissa A., 110 Folk dance, 14, 15, 125, 158, 159, 161, 163, 168, 178–183, 187, 190, 196, 197, 212, 216, 218, 219 Austrian folk dance, 212, 214, 216 Hungarian folk dance, 158, 161 Philippine folk dance, 177–190 Ford-Smith, Honor, 181 Forgetting, 4, 8, 14, 17, 55, 66, 75n7, 86, 94, 95, 212, 213, 215, 216, 218–220, 222–224, 280, 285, 292–294 forced forgetting, 66 Foucault, Michel, 102 Fox trot/Fox-Trot, 90, 91, 94, 244, 252 Franko, Mark, 231 Freud, Sigmund, 7, 65

G Garcés, Mariano, 111 Garcia, J. Neil C., 185 George Graves, Nadine, 28, 88, 96n4 Ghana Dance Ensemble, 139, 149 Ghanaian highlife, 140, 142, 149 Ghanaian popular dance, 137–141, 149, 150, 294 aaka, 138 azonto, 138 toh nɔ, 138 Gilroy, Paul, 8 Glover, Savion, 30 Godard, Jean-Luc, 253, 255 Golding, Dan, 280, 285 Gone with the Wind, 213 Gonzalez, Anita, 28 Gonzalez, N.V.M., 180, 189 Gottschild, Brenda Dixon, 30, 32 Graml, Gundolf, 218, 221, 222 Grau, Andrée, 57, 62 Guaguancó, rumba, 45 H Habitual, 5 Habitus, 140–142, 144, 147, 149, 202, 252 Hagedorn, Katherine J., 47, 50 Halberstam, Judith, 115 Halbwachs, Maurice, 85, 95, 127 Hall, Stuart, 124, 149 Haptic, 267–269, 277, 279, 285 Hargoe, N. A., 148 Harris, Wilson, 6 Havmøller, Birthe, 114 Heteronormative/heteronormativity, 3, 14, 104, 109, 116, 213, 222, 293, 294

 INDEX 

Heterosexual/heterosexuality, 62, 69, 183, 184, 190 Hewitt, Andrew, 223 Highlife, 141, 142 Hill, Constance Valis, 28, 29, 33, 34 Hip-hop dance, 30 Hiplife, 143 Hip movements, 1, 45, 51, 53, 87, 124–126, 128–132 Hips, 245, 246 hip-rolling, 264, 267 thrusts, 264 Hirsch, Marianne, 10, 247, 254 Hobsbawm, Eric, 181 Hodorog, Lőrincz Györgyné, see Luca-néni Hofer, Johannes, 279 Hoffman, Eva, 247 Hollywood, 17, 212, 213, 216, 218, 221, 222, 224 musical, 276, 277, 282, 284, 285, 286n1 Holt, Elizabeth, 185 Hotel California, 291, 292 How Modernity Forgets, 5 Hungarian folk dance, 163 I Iacoboni, Marco, 249 Improvisation, 3, 6 Improvisatory, 9 Incorporating practices, 5, 6, 8, 10, 64, 70, 71, 74 Individual memories, 284 Inscribing practices, 5, 8, 10 Inscription, 5, 10 Interdisciplinary, 4–12 Internet, 14, 17 Intertextual/intertextuality, 276–278, 281, 285 Isnardi, Esteban, 46, 49, 52, 54

301

J Jefferson, T., 149 Jonar, González, 44, 49 K Kabir, Ananya Jahanara, 12, 18n5, 127, 269, 270 Kádár, János, 158, 161 Karavanta, Mina, 133n10 Kay, Kirsty, 15, 16, 293 Kelly, Gene, 281, 283, 286n1 Kepka, Anneta, 201 Kimbangi, Jessy “Matador,” 259–267, 269, 270, 271n1, 271n2, 271n8, 272n12, 272n14 Kinaesthetic transnationalism, 64, 67, 73, 74 Kjølsrød, L., 110 Knapp, Raymond, 220, 221 Kodály, Zoltán, 167 Kore-Eda, Hirokazu, 250 Kosnick, Kira, 261 Kozel, Susan, 249 L Labrada, Yordanis Ortiz, 44 Lake, Taylor S., 89 La La Land, 17, 275, 276, 278–282, 284–286 Lamb-Faffelberger, Margarete, 221 Ländler, 16, 211–214, 216–224 Landsberg, Alison, 268 Lapeña, Cynthia, 183 Latin social dance, 75n1 Latour, Bruno, 232 Lejeune, Philippe, 251 Lepecki, André, 202, 215, 220 Lim, Jason, 109 Limbo dance, 6 Linares Díaz, Daybert, 43, 49

302 

INDEX

Lingis, Alphonso, 249 López-Yánez, María Gabriela, 12, 14, 293, 294 Luca-néni, 161, 162 Luhrmann, Baz, 283, 286n1 M Macintosh, Fiona, 88, 89 Madison, 253, 255 Malnig, Julie, 9, 293, 294 Manuel, Peter, 197 Marcus, Elise, 236–240 The Maria Clara Suite, 178, 182–187 Marks, Laura U., 267, 270 Mauss, Marcel, 96n2, 247 McMains, Juliet, 44, 95, 110 Mediated memories, 248, 295 Memory/memories, 2–13, 65, 71, 75n8, 83, 85, 89, 95, 104, 116, 138, 139, 146, 160, 179, 181, 194, 195, 201, 203–205, 220, 235, 240, 244, 245, 247, 248, 250, 251, 254, 276–278, 280–282, 284–286, 286n1, 292–295 abuse of memory, 13 affective memory, 2, 16 Afro-diasporic memories, 7, 12, 13 autobiographical memory, 249 bodily social memory, 5, 71 body-memory, 202, 203 childhood memory, 2 collective memories, 28, 104, 126–132, 150, 166, 167, 202, 250, 268 contested memories, 4 cultural memory, 4, 8–12, 26–28, 34, 63–66, 74, 85, 96, 102–104, 116, 146, 149, 206, 219, 244, 261, 262, 267 (see Cultural memory)

dancing memory, 252 diasporic memory, 2 embodied collective memories, 7, 128, 131, 132, 159, 249 embodied cultural memory (ECM), 252 embodied memories, 2, 4–12, 14, 17, 27, 198, 244 epic memory, 34 false memory, 250 filmic memories, 250 gaps, 280 habit memory, 4, 5, 27, 72, 86 habitual memory, 4 image-memory, 4, 5 Les Lieux de mémoire, 7 lieux de mémoire, 4, 7, 8, 17 manipulated memories, 14 marginalised memories, 7 mediated memory, 244, 246, 250 memories of Bloody Sunday, 6 memories of dancing, 11 memories of difference, 8 memories of popular dance, 2, 3 (see Memory/memories) memory for actions, 139, 144, 149 memory lapse, 212, 214, 215, 222 memory objects, 4 memory of collective joy, 66 memory of difference, 7, 8 memory practices, 4, 5, 9, 13, 294 memory sense, 34 memory studies, 4–5, 9–13 memory transmission, 4 milieux de mémoire, 4, 7 mimetic memory, 268 multidirectional memory, 203 performative cultural memory, 178 popular memory, 7, 8 post-conflict memory, 11 procedural memory, 139, 144, 149 prosthetic memory, 268

 INDEX 

queer memory, 115 remembered/remembering, 4 sacred memories, 13 selective memory, 219 sensory memory, 268 social memory, 94 technologies of memory, 268 textual memories, 244 traumatic memories, 6, 10, 65 Merengue, 91, 243 Michael Jackson, 264 Migration, 7, 8 Milovanović, Dara, 11, 295 Mimesis/mimetic, 64, 66, 67, 69, 70, 74, 75n3 Minuet, 216, 217 Mnemonic artifacts, 14, 138–140, 144, 146–150, 294 Modernity, 3, 5, 56, 66, 70, 102 Moiseyev, Igor, 167 Monuments, 4, 9 Moore, Robin, 197 Movie musical, 283 Mulholland, Jon, 12, 14, 110, 293, 294 Multidirectional memory, 65 Muñoz, José Esteban, 8 Murphy, Jacqueline Shea, 200 Murray, Arthur, 83, 84, 90–96, 97n8 Murray, Kathryn, 83, 84, 90–96 Music videos, 286n1, 292 Myerhoff, Barbara, 250 N Narváez, Rafael F., 7, 127, 128, 249 National dance, 15, 16, 166–168, 178, 181–183, 187, 190, 196 National identity, 260 Nationalism, 3, 14, 15, 116, 125, 177–179, 182, 218, 221, 293, 295

303

Nation-building, 159, 160, 162, 166, 167 N’dombolo, 259, 262–267, 271n6, 271n8, 272n11, 272n13 Nelson, Geoff, 277, 282, 285 Ness, Sally Ann, 189, 234 New materialism/new materialist, 16, 230, 232–234 Nketia, J. H., 139, 141 Nora, Pierre, 4, 5, 7, 17 Nostalgia/nostalgic, 2, 17, 94, 164, 165, 177, 178, 180, 189, 190, 221, 276, 278–285, 292–294 technonostalgia, 17 O Ofosu, Terry Bright Kweku, 14, 143–145, 293, 294 O’ Neill, Maggie, 75n4 Opoku, Mawere, 139 Oral histories, 10, 11 Orishas, 43, 44, 46–54, 56 Osumare, H., 143, 150 Owen, Norman, 185 P Parfitt(-Brown), Clare, 64, 277, 278, 283, 286n1 Parodic/parody, 64, 68–70, 74, 75n3 Patrick, Declan, 15, 16, 293, 294 Patton, Cindy, 7, 8, 17 Peerce, Larry, 252 Pérez, Alberto ‘Beto, 61, 67, 69 Perlman, Alberto, 61, 69 Perón, Juan, 113 Personal memories, 278–280 Philippine folk dance, 189, 294–295 Philippine Folk Dance Society (PFDS), 181, 182

304 

INDEX

Photographs/photographic/ photography/photos, 4, 5, 9, 10, 16, 105, 244, 248, 249, 251, 252, 254 Plummer, Christopher, 212, 216 Popular cultural memory, 292 Popular dance, 2–15, 17, 17n1, 26, 39, 41, 54, 55, 63–66, 74, 83, 93, 95, 96, 138–140, 143, 144, 149, 150, 166, 186, 194, 195, 197, 200, 206, 293–295 Cuban popular dances, 196 definition of popular dance, 2, 3 Ghanaian popular dances, 14 online, 295 popular dance studies, 4, 9–11 Popular screendance, 11, 277, 278, 286n1, 294, 295 Post-archival, 16, 294 Postcolonial, 7 Postcolonialism, 189 Postcolonial remembering, 15 Postmemory, 247, 254 Post-migrants, 261, 265–270, 271n6 Powell, Eleanor, 283 Probyn, Elspeth, 278, 285 Proust, Marcel, 4, 248 Q Queer, 7, 14, 285 academics, 115 archives, 115 culture, 115 geography, 109 historiography, 116 images, 116 memory, 115 politics, 110, 115 reclamation, 115 spaces, 109, 110 subcultures, 115 tango archaeology, 116

tango historiography, 116 theory, 14, 109 virtual geographies, 109 Queering, 293 R Racism, 7, 9 Ragtime dance(s), 13, 16, 83–96, 96n4 Ramnarine, Tina K., 18n5 Reddish, Paul, 62 Re-enactment, 5, 6, 8, 13, 140, 167, 232 Reflective nostalgia, 280, 284–286 Reisman, David, 92 Religious memory, 54 Remember/remembered/ remembering, 8, 66, 75n7, 86, 96, 181, 200, 202, 205, 215, 219–221, 245, 247, 249, 277–280, 284, 285, 286n1, 292–294 Renan, Ernest, 15 Repertoire, 4, 8, 10, 11, 17, 70, 72, 76n10, 195, 198–203, 219, 230, 237, 248, 286, 292–295 Resistance, 3, 4, 7, 8, 63, 181, 200, 204, 293 somatic resistance, 7 Restorative nostalgia, 280, 281, 285, 295 Rethorst, Susan, 247 Reviewers, 277, 285, 286, 295 Reviews, 276, 279, 285, 286 Revilla, Yanek, 48, 50 Reynolds, Debbie, 281, 283 Ricoeur, Paul, 93–95 Ritual re-enactments, 64, 66, 71 Rituals, 4–7, 13, 71, 85, 243, 249 Rivera, Guillermo, 187 Roach, Joseph, 8, 26, 27 Roberts, B., 149

 INDEX 

Robinson, Danielle, 12, 16, 96n4, 293–295 Rock ‘n’ roll, 13, 83–96, 97n6 Rogers, Gingers, 276, 277, 283, 286n1 Rojo, Antonio Benítez, 55 Roque, Jorge Luna, 44, 49, 53 Roth, Philip, 252 Rothberg, Michael, 65, 75n8, 203 Rova, Marina, 62 Rueda de casino, 51, 52 Rumba, 44–49, 51, 54–56, 58, 91, 94, 194, 195, 200, 203, 205, 245, 263, 272n11 Congolese rumba, 263 Guaguancó rumba, 45 The Rural Suite, 187–190 S Sadlier, Aoife, 13, 293 Saikin, Magali, 102, 104 Salazar, Reynaldo, 52 Salessi, Jorge, 102, 104 Salsa, 1, 2, 12, 13, 39–44, 46–50, 53–58, 63, 67, 75n6, 76n12, 141, 197, 205, 294, 295 salsa con afro, 39–58 salsa music, 41, 43, 49, 55, 56 Salvador, Teresita, 179 Samba, 245, 246 Santos, Ramon P., 179, 180, 188 Sarkozy, Nicolas, 260 Satin, Leslie, 12, 16, 294, 295 Savigliano, Marta, 52 Schneider, Rebecca, 232 Schroeder, Janet, 13, 293, 294 Schweitzer, Marlis, 234 Screendance, 295 Screen memories, 295 Secular(ised) memory, 54 Seddon, Fred, 235 Shay, Anthony, 177

305

Shick, Vicky, 253 Shim Sham, 25, 26, 31, 35n1 Siegel, Marcia, 235 Silvers, Sally, 253 Sklar, D., 149 Slavery, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 14, 65, 122–126, 129, 132, 132n6 Slave trade, 73, 194, 201, 202, 204 Social dance, 2, 10, 39–41, 45, 46, 49, 83, 86, 93, 94, 96, 230, 243, 244, 251–254, 255n3, 295 African American social dance, 240 Afro-diasporic social dances, 71 jazz social dancing, 16, 229, 236 Latin social dances, 61, 64 Social media, 2, 3, 16, 261, 266, 267 Son, 40–43, 48, 53, 54, 58n1, 195, 197, 205, 272n11 The Sound of Music, 16, 211–213, 216, 217, 219–224 Spence, Jo, 251 Spillman, Lyn, 6 Stebbins, Genevieve, 89 Steil, Laura, 16, 294, 295 Stéphane Etienne, 262 Stillman, Deanne, 291–294 Stone, Nick, 111 Storey, John, 14, 15, 179 Suárez, Lucía M., 12 Sumbry-Edwards, Dormeshia, 30, 31 Szifron, Damián, 252 T Táncház, 158–163, 166, 168–170 Tango, 14, 83, 87, 91, 94, 96n1, 96n3, 101–108, 110, 111, 113, 114, 116, 295 queer tango, 14, 101, 104, 109–112, 114, 115 queer tango archaeology, 116 queer tango historiography, 116 tango criollo, 105

306 

INDEX

Tap dance, 12, 13, 25–32, 282, 283 rhythm, 26, 29, 31, 33 training, 30 Tarr, Bronwyn, 62, 75n4 Taurog, Norman, 283 Taussig, Michael, 66–70, 75n4 Taylor, Diana, 8, 26, 27, 33, 70, 76n10, 198, 199, 202, 286, 294 Technonostalgia, 284, 286 Tejeda, Osbanis, 201, 203–205 Television (TV), 3, 85, 93, 94, 294 Thacker, Eugene, 215 Thomas, Priya, 16, 293, 294 Thompson, Robert Farris, 32, 102 Timba, 42, 43, 47, 49, 52, 197, 205 Tinikling, 15, 177–190 Tobin, Jeffrey, 102 Toh nɔ, 138, 144–147, 150 Tomko, Linda, 231 Traiger, Lisa, 34 Transmissibility, 293 Transmission, 2, 3, 8–10, 12, 26, 27, 195, 199, 201–203, 206, 219, 261, 262, 264, 265, 267–269, 278, 286, 293–295 affective memory transmission, 16 Tratner, Michael, 213 Traumatic memories, 75n7 Trenka, Susie, 284 Truc, G., 104 Truffaut, François, 250 Twist, 145–147, 244, 245, 255 U UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), 158, 159 Urcecino, Don José, 129, 130 V Vacunao, 45, 46 van Dijck, José, 248, 249, 251

Varona, Berenice, 189 Vaughan, David, 203 Verdery, Katherine, 170, 171 Video, 3, 7, 9, 16, 17, 195, 231, 248, 259, 264–270, 271n1 videoclips, 261, 265, 267, 270 videographic, 251 videotapes, 250 YouTube, 259 Villaruz, Basilio Esteban S., 178 Vogue, 7, 8 Voguing, 7 W Walker, Dianne, 27, 33, 34 Walsh, Catherine, 127 Waltz, 75n9, 87, 91, 94, 141, 217–219, 282, 283 Welsh-Asante, Kariamu, 33, 34 Welsh, Rosemary, 213 White/whiteness, 3, 14, 17, 280, 281, 284, 294 white men, 285 whitening, 284 white nostalgia, 280 White, Hayden, 223 Willmore, Allison, 276, 280, 281, 284, 285 Wood, Dee Dee, 216, 224 Y Yanek, Revilla, 50 Young P. Y., 145 Z Zinnemann, Fred, 250 Zorbitality, 62, 63 Zumba Fitness, 12, 61–74, 75n1, 75n2, 75n5