January 25, 2005
thesis ideas...
Off and on for the last couple of days, I’ve been thinking about what it means to be a white middle class girl (with a tertiary education and a nice scholarship, living in a big Australian city with adequate healthcare and a democractic government, etc etc etc) doing an Afro-American vernacular dance.
Now I’m asking myself this in part because I’m doing a whole LOT of reading on the topic of race and ethnicity and dance at the moment. I’ve just read that great article by Jane C. Desmond* - yes, I know it took me a long time, but I kept getting distracted by good ideas – and I’m all interested in the whole ‘dialectics of cultural transmission’ thing. In other words, I’m interested in how Desmond presents the idea that when cultural forms – say, dance for example – are taken up by cultures other than their culture of origin, this happens not in a straight-line, one-way movement. Rather, the process of transmission is pretty complicated.
That means that when dances – or other cultural forms, but we’re talking dance here – move between cultures, they have a range of effects, are used in a range of ways, and serve a range of ideological functions.
So, when (for example) a white middle class Melbourne girl takes up lindy hop – an Afro-American vernacular dance from the 30s – she might be involved in appropriating this aspect of another culture, she might be borrowing, poaching, enacting cultural resistance, etc etc etc.
Her cultural behaviour might be interpreted in a number of ways. This interpretation is in part determined by her social and cultural positioning in relation to the culture from which she borrows. So, for example, what is the power relationship between this woman and 1930s Afro-American culture? The interpretation of her actions is also informed by her socio-cultural relationship with the culture(s) of which she is a part – so, for example, does it mean something different for a white woman, rather than a white man to enact this cultural transmission?
Further, what are her intentions – how does she see herself and her actions in cultural context – when she engages in this type of cultural transmission? What is her sense of historical context? Is she aware of issues such as race and class and cultural empowerment or disempowerment? What is she attempting to do in this process?
And as yet another issue (among many) who stands to benefit or be disadvantaged by her actions?
All these questions encourage us to think of ourselves as involved in a complex web of relationships, most of which are informed by various political, social and cultural forces. Most of which – all of which – are political in that they are relationships of power.
When I ‘do lindy hop’ I’m aware that I’m dancing a dance – or attempting to dance a dance – that comes from a community with hundreds of years of slavery and racism and disenfranchisement. I’m aware that I’m a white woman who didn’t grow up in a community (or single community at all for that matter) where dance was a part of everyday life, not only as actual ‘dancing’ but as dance-movement. I am aware that my cultural experiences are quite different to those of the culture from which I’m borrowing. I’m aware of the fact that my dancing cannot – and does not – mean what that ‘original’ dance, and dancers intended. I also know that, despite all my good intentions, I will not be able to move in the way that those original dancers did, and further, even if I could, it would not carry the same meanings – it would not be interpreted in the same way – as that dancing was then, to that community.
Is this appropriation? I think so. But I also think that because of my mixed status in my contemporary culture – a white middle class urban woman carrying the benefits and privilege of my class and race and geographic location yet the ‘disadvantages’** of being a woman in a patriarchal culture – my dancing carries mixed meanings.
Personally, I choose to dance in a way that addresses issues of gender and sexuality in contemporary Melbourne society. Dancing lindy hop is a site – an act – of resistance for me. I choose to lead, to follow on particular terms, as part of this resistance. I am committed to particular ways of being in this community that question the economic imperatives of various dominant institutions in Melbourne swing. I talk about my intentions and I try to Speak Up when I hear and see dodgy gender/class/race stuff going down. My understanding of the body is that it is not something to be mistrusted or ignored or beaten into submission. I see it as a useful medium for communication. It is not the thing with which I communicate, it also me, communicating.
Dance theory denies the possibility of a Cartesian mind/body split. We are not merely minds or souls carried around by our bodies. We are our bodies. Our selves – our identities – are shaped by physical, embodied experiences. This dovetails nicely with feminist thought on the topic (well, the feminists I follow, anyway) and lends itself to a criticism of much of the literature dealing with the internet and online culture and communities. The body is with us in cyberspace, just as it is in the face-to-face world. Our bodily experiences contribute to our sense of self. Our identities. Dance theorists like Desmond argue that we can analyse dance and movement in much the same way we do language texts, or visual images or architecture. We can read culture in a person’s movement, in their dance. We can see social and ideological relationships in the movement of people dancing together.
I’m particularly keen on this last point. I’ve read a few reliable sources which follow up this idea in depth. LeeEllen Friedland*** makes this point in her study of Afro-American children and their dance movement and play. The point is supported by writers such as Brenda Dixon Gottschild and Katrina Hazzard Gordon, who all argue that the way we move – the way we dance – is as culturally specific as how we speak and write.
With all this in mind, I’m putting together some writing that looks what it means for a group of Melbourne middle class, urban youths to take up an Afro-American vernacular dance. How can we read race and ethnicity and class and national identity and gender and sexuality and so on in the post-revival lindy hop communities of Melbourne and of the rest of the world?
If we follow Desmond’s arguments, the Melbourne lindy hoppers cannot – despite their best efforts – simply transfer the ‘original’ dance and dance culture to this new context completely and without changing it in any way. Desmond argues that this type of cultural transmission not only changes the dance itself, but also changes the receiving and originating communities. Her work on rap and its movement into mainstream American culture provides useful evidence for this point.
My own thesis provides an in-depth discussion of this issue. What aspects of the ‘original’ dances have survived in contemporary swing dance communities? Are these actual movements and bodily stylings, ideological interpretations and uses or both? How have the original dances been changed? And because we must remember that culture never stands still, despite the dearest wish of historical re-enactors, how are they changing now?
These are all interesting questions. I’ve chosen to answer them by examining the contemporary Melbourne swing scene as a globalised local community – a community of dancers who are very much a part of an international community of lindy hoppers. I draw on the literature surrounding diaspora studies (most notably Stuart Hall) to chart a racialised/ethnicised/identity-marked geneology for lindy hop and contemporary swing dance. But most of all, I consider the role of various electronic and online media in the post-revival swing dance community.
I see the introduction of online technology as perhaps the single most important change in swing dancing, affecting community structures and discourse, as well as the face to face act of dancing. Individuals’ experiences of contemporary lindy hop are mediated by various electronic communications technology. Lindy hop is not vernacular as it was in Afro-American communities in the 1930s. It is carefully partitioned into ‘leisure’ time and specific community spaces. It is learnt not in everyday social and domestic spaces from older family and community members, but in formal classes with paid teachers. Knowledge of music and history and contemporary lindy hop culture are not gleaned from conversations and lived experience, but mediated by electronic newsletters and websites and discussion boards and compact discs and films.
For many dancers, lindy hop and swing dance are partitioned from every day life. They are rigorously defended as ‘apolitical’, as ‘just dancing’. Dancers declaim this belief in comments like “what starts on the dance floor stays on the dance floor” and “it’s just dancing”. The clearest demonstration of this depoliticisation – this disentangling of dance from everyday life and every day politics and power relationships – in the minds and culture of contemporary swing dancers lies in their approaches to sex and sexuality. The overtly sexualised nature of Africanist dance traditions and remnants in swing dance are sanitised by contemporary western dance and movement aesthetics, and what moments of more open sexuality there are – in blues dancing, for example – are carefully managed with a range of social conventions and codes.
I also examine the face to face dance act and culture of lindy hop as a feminist dancer, a member of this community who has made particular use of the dance, its history, and its contemporary culture to resist dominant patriarchal ideology. I see lindy hop and other swing dances as embodying resistance and subversion. I see the history of swing dancing as a history of tactical engagements with dominant ideology and institutions. I see the dance as a resource for my own feminism, as well as my own bodily pleasure.
In this way, my work provides a working model of how the dialectics of cultural transmission function in this time and place. The dance itself – as with any text or system of signs and codes - holds the potential for many uses and meanings. I have chosen to utilise those signs and codes which enable tactical resistance. I draw on fan studies literature for a discourse which reads culture in terms of political relationships, but also as the site for intensely creative and active self-expression, performed in community spaces, and in enthusiastically social interactions.
This is not to deny alternative uses of swing dance. In fact, my thesis engages with a range of alternative uses and readings, generally in terms of relationships of power and privilege.
* Desmond, Jane C. "Embodying Difference: Issues in Dance and Cultural Studies." Cultural Critique (Winter 1993 - 94): 33 - 63.
** I don’t think of my gender/sex as a disadvantage, but I know it affects my experiences in Australian culture. Often prompting discouragement and impediments
*** Friedland, LeeEllen. "Social Commentary in African-American Movement Performance." Human Action Signs in Cultural Context: The Visible and the Invisible in Movement and Dance. Ed. Brenda Farnell. London: Scarecrow Press, 1995. 136 - 57.
**** Gottschild, Brenda Dixon. Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance. Connecticut and London: Greenwood Press, 1996.
***** Hazzard-Gordon, Katrina. Jookin': The Rise of Social Dance Formations in African-American Culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990.
