Embodying Difference: Issues in Dance and Cultural Studies

Author(s): Jane C. Desmond

Source: Cultural Critique, No. 26 (Winter, 1993-1994), pp. 33-63
Published by: University of Minnesota Press
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Embodying Difference: Issues in Dance and
Cultural Studies

Jane C. Desmond

Aman and a woman embrace. Each stands poised, contained

They look past each other, eyes focused on distant points
the space. Like mirror images, their legs strike out, first forwar
then back. As one, they glide across the floor, bodies melded at t
hips, timing perfectly in unison. They stop expectantly. Th
woman jabs the balls of her feet sharply into the floor, each tim
swivelling her hips toward the leading foot. The man holds h
lightly, steering her motion with the palm of this hand at her ba
This is tango ...

Most readers of this passage probably have some image of t

tango in their minds, whether from dancing, watching othe
dance, or seeing representations of the tango in Hollywood film
Most, if pressed, could even get up in their living rooms and dem
onstrate some recognizable if hyperbolic rendition of the tango
Few of us, however, have given more than passing thought to suc
an activity or have chosen to include it in our scholarly wor

? 1994 by Cultural Critique. Winter 1993-94. 0882-4371/94/$5.00.

33

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34 Jane C. Desmond

Dance remains a greatly undervalued and undertheorize

of bodily discourse. Its practice and its scholarship are, w
exception, marginalized within the academy.
But much is to be gained by opening up cultural stu
questions of kinesthetic semiotics and by placing dance re
(and by extension, human movement studies) on the ag
cultural studies. By enlarging our studies of bodily "texts
clude dance in all of its forms-among them social dance, t
cal performance, and ritualized movement-we can furt
understandings of how social identities are signaled, form
negotiated through bodily movement. We can analyze how
identities are codified in performance styles and how th
the body in dance is related to, duplicates, contests, ampli
exceeds norms of non-dance bodily expression within spec
torical contexts. We can trace historical and geographic ch
complex kinesthetic systems, and can study comparatively
bolic systems based on language, visual representation, and
ment. We can move away from the bias for verbal texts an
object-based investigations that currently form the core of
ical analysis in British and North American cultural studi
Cultural studies remains largely text-based or object
with literary texts still predominating, followed by studie
texts and art historical objects.' Even excursions into popu
ture are concerned largely with verbal or visual cultural p
not kinesthetic actions. Much current work on rap music,
stance, focuses primarily on the spoken text or legal and e
aspects of the music industry. Even the now popular subf
critical work on "the body" is focused more on representa
the body and/or its discursive policing than with its action
ments as a "text" themselves.2 In part this omission reflec
historical contours of disciplinary development within th
emy.3 In addition, the academy's aversion to the material b
its fictive separation of mental and physical production, h
dered humanities scholarship that investigates the mute d
body nearly invisible. That dancing-in a Euro-American
at least-is regarded as a pastime (social dancing) or as en
ment (Broadway shows), or, when elevated to the status o
form," is often performed mainly by women (ballet) or b
dancers or non-whites (often dubbed "native" dances, e
surely contributes to the position of dance scholarship. Ho

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 Embodying Difference 35

these omissions signal reasons why such investigation is important.

They mark clearly the continuing rhetorical association of bodily
expressivity with nondominant groups.4
The rhetorical linkage of nondominant races, classes, gender,
and nationalities with "the body," to physicality instead of mental-
ity, has been well established in scholarship on race and gender.5
But the implications of those linkages, their continuance or re-
working within the context of daily bodily usage or within dance
systems per se, have yet to be investigated fully. Nor have the com-
plex effects of the commodification of movement styles, their mi-
gration, modification, quotation, adoption, or rejection as part of
the larger production of social identities through physical enact-
ment, been rigorously theorized.
Such analysis will be responsive to many of the tools already
developed in literary theory, film theory, Marxist analysis, and
feminist scholarship, as well as ongoing theoretical debates about
hierarchies based on racial, ethnic, and national identities. Bour-
dieu (Outline), for example, refers to the physical embodiment of
social structures in his concept of "the habitus," but this idea has
not been greatly elaborated. But it will also require the acquisition
or development of new tools as well-tools for the close analysis of
movement and movement styles (already well developed in the
dance field itself), just as such tools have been developed for de-
tailed analyses of specific books and objects in literature and art
history.
Dance scholarship, with a few notable exceptions, has until
recently remained outside the influence of the poststructuralist
shifts that have reshaped the humanities during the last twenty
or so years. And conversely, cultural analysts have evidenced little
interest in dance,6 although literary, filmic, and art historical texts
have garnered great attention. But there is evidence that this is
changing, both within the dance field itself and with isolated ex-
cursions into dance by literary critics and philosophers in the re-
cent past.7

Movement Style and Meaning

Of the many broad areas of movement investigation sketched

out above, I specifically want to discuss dance as a performance of

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36 Jane C. Desmond

cultural identity and the shifting meanings involved in the

mission of dance styles from one group to another.
Like Bourdieu's concept of "taste" (Distinction), movem
style is an important mode of distinction between social g
and is usually actively learned or passively absorbed in the h
and community. So ubiquitous, so "naturalized" as to be n
unnoticed as a symbolic system, movement is a primary not
ondary social "text"-complex, polysemous, always already
ingful, yet continuously changing. Its articulation signals gro
filiation and group differences, whether consciously perform
not. Movement serves as a marker for the production of gen
racial, ethnic, class, and national identities. It can also be rea
signal of sexual identity, age, and illness or health, as well as
ous other types of distinctions/descriptions that are applied to
viduals or groups, such as "sexy." Given the amount of inform
that public display of movement provides, its scholarly isolat
the realms of technical studies in kinesics, aesthetics, sports m
cine, and some cross-cultural communications studies is both
markable and lamentable.
"Dance," whether social, theatrical, or ritually based, form
one subset of the larger field of movement study. And although
tend to think of dances, like the tango, lambada, or waltz, as d
tinctive aggregations of steps, every dance exists in a complex n
work of relationships to other dances and other non-dance way
of using the body, and can be analyzed along these two concurr
axes.8 Its meaning is situated both in the context of other soc
prescribed and socially meaningful ways of moving and in the c
text of the history of dance forms in specific societies.
When movement is codified as "dance," it may be learned
formally in the home or community, like everyday codes of m
ment, or studied in special schools for social dance forms (like
Arthur Murray Studios) and for theatrical dance forms (like t
School of American Ballet). In either case, formal or informal
struction, and quotidian or "dance" movement, the paramet
of acceptable/intelligible movement within specific contexts a
highly controlled, produced in a Foucauldian sense by specific
cursive practices and productive limitations.
To get at what the "stakes" are in movement, to uncover t
ideological work it entails, we can ask what movements are cons

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 Embodying Difference 37

ered "appropriate" or even "necessary" within a specific historical

and geographical context, and by whom and for whom such neces-
sities obtain. We can ask who dances, when and where, in what
ways, with whom, and to what end? And just as importantly, who
does not dance, in what ways, under what conditions and why?
Why are some dances, some ways of moving the body, considered
forbidden for members of certain social classes, "races," sexes? By
looking at dance we can see enacted on a broad scale, and in codi-
fied fashion, socially constituted and historically specific attitudes
toward the body in general, toward specific social groups' usage of
the body in particular, and about the relationships among vari-
ously marked bodies, as well as social attitudes toward the use of
space and time.
Were we to complete a really detailed analysis of social dance
and its gender implications, for example, it could provide us with
a baseline from which to pursue further questions that are much
larger in scale. We might ask, for instance, how the concept of plea-
sure is played out in this kinesthetic realm. Who moves and who
is moved? In what ways do the poses display one body more than
another? What skills are demanded of each dancer, and what do
they imply about desired attributes ascribed to men or to women?
What would a "bad" rendition of a particular dance, like the tango
for instance, consist of? An "un-Latin" or "un-American" version?
An "improper" one?
These questions are useful for historical as well as contempo-
rary analysis. For example, the waltz was regarded as too sexually
dangerous for "respectable" women in Europe and North America
when it was first introduced in the nineteenth century. The combi-
nation of intoxicating fast whirling and a "close" embrace was
thought to be enough to make women take leave of their senses.
Some advice books for women even claimed waltzing could lead to
prostitution.9
Nineteenth-century dance manuals included drawings show-
ing "proper" and "improper" ways to embrace while dancing,
specifying the position of the head, arms, and upper body, and the
required distance that should be maintained between male and
female torsos. In manuals directed toward the middle and upper
classes, bodies that pressed close, spines that relaxed, and clutch-
ing arms were all denigrated as signs of lower-class dance style.

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38 Jane C. Desmond

The postural and gestural maintenance of class distincti

necessary skill to be learned, one that could even be repre
with precision in "yes" and "no" illustrations of dancing c
Such detailed bodily analysis of the linkage of gend
class provides another discursive field through which to
stand the shifting constitution of class relations and gende
butes during the nineteenth century. Changing attitudes t
the body as evidenced in the "physical culture" moveme
changes in dress such as the introduction of "bloomers," a
new patterns of leisure activities and their genderedness p
part of the wider context through which such dance activit
their meaning. Similarly, the rapid industrialization and c
alignments that took place during the latter half of the c
giving rise to new ideas about the division between leis
work, between men and women, and toward time and phy
are played out in the dance halls. As "dance," conventions o
activity represent a highly codified and highly mediated re
tation of social distinctions. Like other forms of art or of cultural
practice, their relation to the economic "base" is not one of mere
reflection, but rather one of dialogic constitution. Social relations
are both enacted and produced through the body, and not merely
inscribed upon it.

Appropriation/Transmission/Migration of Dance Styles

Obviously, ways of holding the body, gesturing, moving in re-

lation to time, and using space (taking a lot, using a little, moving
with large sweeping motions, or small contained ones, and so
forth) all differ radically across various social and cultural groups
and through time. If dance styles and performance practices are
both symptomatic and constitutive of social relations, then tracing
the history of dance styles and their spread from one group or
area to another, along with the changes that occur in this transmis-
sion, can help uncover shifting ideologies attached to bodily dis-
course.

The history of the tango, for example, tr

of movement styles from the dockside neig

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 Embodying Difference 39

Aires to the salons of Paris before returning, newly "respectable,"

from across the Atlantic to the drawing rooms of the upper-class
portions of the Argentine population during the first decades of
the twentieth century. As Deborah Jakubs has noted, the taste of
the upper classes for "a fundamentally taboo cultural form is a re-
current phenomenon," as evidenced by the passion for Harlem
jazz exhibited by many wealthy white New Yorkers in the 1920s
and 1930s.
A whole history of dance forms could be written in terms
such appropriations and reworkings occurring in both North a
South America for at least the last two centuries and continuin
today. Such practices and the discourse that surrounds them rev
the important part bodily discourse plays in the continuing so
construction and negotiation of race, gender, class, and national
and their hierarchical arrangements. In most cases we will f
that dance forms originating in lower-class or nondominant po
lations present a trajectory of "upward mobility" in which
dances are "refined," "polished," and often desexualized. Si
larly, improvisatory forms become codified to be more easily tr
mitted across class and racial lines, especially when the fo
themselves become commodified and sold through special b
kers, or dance teachers.
In studying the transmission of a form, it is not only the path
way of that transmission, but also the form's reinscription in a
community/social context and resultant change in its significa
that it is important to analyze. An analysis of appropriation m
include not only the transmission pathway and the mediating e
fects of the media, immigration patterns, and the like, but also
analysis at the level of the body of what changes in the transmission
Often in the so-called desexualization of a form as it crosses class
or racial boundaries, we can see a clear change in body usage, es-
pecially (at least in Europe, and North and South America) as i
involves the usage of the pelvis (less percussive thrusting, undula-
tion, or rotation for instance), and in the specific configurations
of male and female partnering. For example, the closeness of the
embrace may be loosened, or the opening of the legs may be les-
sened. In analyzing some of these changes we can see specifically
what aspects of movement are tagged as too "sexy" or "Latin" or

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40 Jane C. Desmond

"low class" by the appropriating group.l Of course, th

meaning may not at all be attached to the original movem
dancers in the community that developed the style.
Looking back to the early years of this century in
America, for instance, the case of the professional dance t
Vernon and Irene Castle provides a good example (see Er
The husband and wife duo became well known among the
and upper classes through their exhibition ballroom danci
their popular movies. They were so popular that Irene Cas
the standard for fashion and hairstyle and appeared in man
azines. Performing in elegant dance clubs, and running th
dance school in New York City, they built their reputations
ularizing (among the middle and upper classes) social dance
originated in the lower classes, especially within the black
tion. They "toned down," "tamed," and "whitened" such
social dances as the Turkey Trot and the Charleston. Such r
tended to make the dances more upright, taking the bend
the legs and bringing the buttocks and chest into vertical
ment. Such "brokering" of black cultural products increas
circulation of money in the white community which paid
teachers to learn white versions of black dances.
But it would be a mistake to consider that such appropri
tions, while they seem to recuperate the potential contestato
power of cultural production by subordinate groups, do so mon
lithically. While markers of social "difference" can be to some e
tent reduced to "style" and repositioned from a contestatory mar
ginality to more mainstream fashionable practice, both the specif
practices themselves and their meanings shift in the process. In
deed, even in those instances where the recuperation seems very
"successful," there is some change in the dominant populatio
cultural production.
And, of course, appropriation does not always take the form
of the hegemonic groups' "borrowing" from subordinated group
The borrowing and consequent refashioning goes both ways.
take just one example, the "Cakewalk," a strutting couples dance
performed by African Americans during the slavery era, is thoug
to have been based on a mimicry of European social dance form
where (heterosexual) coupled dancing was prevalent, as oppos
to the separate-sex dance traditions of West Africa. The meanin

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 Embodying Difference 41

of the movement lexicons change when transported into the

adopting group. While the notion of "appropriation" may signal
the transfer of source material from one group to another, it
doesn't account for the changes in performance style and ideologi-
cal meaning that accompany the transfer. Concepts of hybridity
or syncretism more adequately describe the complex interactions
among ideology, cultural forms, and power differentials that are
manifest in such transfers.

Dialectics of Cultural Transmission

In their work on African American cultures in the Americas,

Sidney Mintz and Richard Price have argued persuasively for this
more dialectical conception of cultural transmission. They empha-
size the strong influence that slavery, as an institution, exerted on
both African and European derived cultural practices. They argue
against a simplistic back-writing of history, which would unprob-
lematically trace African American practices to origins in Africa.
While they acknowledge that some specific practices as well as very
large epistemological orientations toward causality and cosmology
may have survived the violence of enslavement, they emphasize
instead the particularity of African American cultures-their dis-
tinctiveness from African cultural institutions and practices.
New practices necessarily arose within the new historical con-
text of slavery, which mixed Africans from many distinctive linguis-
tic and social groups and resituated these "crowds" (their term)
within the parameters of the subjugating relationship of slavery.
New religious practices, male and female relationships, reworkings
of kinship patterns and their meanings, as well as artistic practices
arose from these new conditions of prohibitions and possibilities.
And while the balance of power remained ultimately and over-
whelmingly among the slave owners, this too was negotiated at the
micropolitical scale and varied from country to country, region to
region, and even plantation to plantation. White cultural practices,
including notions of paternity, cooking, language, and so forth,
were also reformed by the relationships of the plantation.
Mintz and Price state it succinctly: "the points of contact be-
tween persons of differing status, or different group membership,

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42 Jane C. Desmond

did not automatically determine the direction of flow of cu

materials according to the statuses of the participants .. .
Quoting C. Vann Woodward, they note that "so far as their cu
is concerned, all Americans are part Negro." And following H
skovits, they quote "whether Negroes borrowed from whi
whites from Negroes, in this or any other aspect of culture, i
always be remembered that the borrowing was never ach
without resultant change in whatever was borrowed, and, in
tion, without incorporating elements which originated in th
habitat that, as much as anything else, give the new form its dist
tive quality." Mintz and Price go on to say that "borrowing"
not best express the reality at all-"creating" or "remode
may make it clearer (43-44).
I have quoted at length on this point because the emp
in some cultural studies work on appropriation, which helpf
situates these exchanges in the unequal power economies in w
they take place, also serves to dampen the transactional, rela
aspects of the process. When tied with political assertions of
tural specificity (as in the liberal version of "multiculturalis
in versions of "identity politics" on the left), this can ultim
slide into what Paul Gilroy has termed "ethnic absolutism."12

Identity, Style, and the Politics of Aesthetics

Mintz and Price are right about the complexities of cult

transmission and exchange. But in counterpoint to that com
ity (i.e., what "really" happens) is a more two-dimensional pu
discourse that marks some cultural products as "X" and othe
"Y," as "black" dance or "white" dance, for instance. Sometim
these designations are used in the service of celebrating a pa
lar cultural heritage, and an emphasis on uniqueness is one w
do so. Within these ideologies of difference, the historical rea
of cultural production and change are muted. Dance, as
course of the body, may in fact be especially vulnerable to int
tations in terms of essentialized identities associated with bio
difference. These identities include race and gender and the
alized associations attached to bodies marked in those term
well as national or ethnic identities when these are associated with
racial notions, as they so often are.13

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 Embodying Difference 43

In the United States, the dominant structuring trope of ra-

cialized difference remains white/nonwhite. Within this horizon,
black/white and Latin/white dyads of difference reinforce essential-
ized notions of cultural production. In reality, a much more com-
plicated matrix of racial/cultural identities is played out with the
specifics of the relationships among and between various groups
shifting in response to changing events, demographics, economics,
and so on. But while these dyads may be misleading and histori-
cally inaccurate, such distinctions function powerfully in popular
discourse both within communities (serving as a positive marker of
cultural identity) and across communities.
In cases where a cultural form migrates from a subordinate
to a dominant group, the meanings attached to that adoption (and
remodelling) are generated within the parameters of the current
and historical relations between the two groups, and their constitu-
tion of each as "other" and as different in particular ways. For ex-
ample, the linkage in North American white culture of blacks with
sexuality, sensuality, and an alternately celebrated or denigrated
presumedly "natural" propensity for physical ability, expressivity,
or bodily excess tinges the adoption of black dances. On one level,
it allows middle- and upper-class whites to move in what are
deemed slightly risque ways, to perform, in a sense, a measure of
"blackness" without paying the social penalty of "being" black. An
analogue might be "slumming"-a temporary excursion across
lines dividing social classes in the search for pleasure.
The submerged class dimension in this metaphor is an im-
portant one that is often missed when we concentrate solely on
discussions of cultural transmission and modification across racial
lines. For the process is ultimately more complicated than t
The meaning of moving in a style associated with "blacks" is dif
ent for various classes of whites, and different for various classe
blacks, and for people who affiliate with other categories of r
such as Asians. And, such categories of "othering" vary sign
cantly geographically, in the Caribbean, for instance, or in Lat
America, where the strongly bipolar white/black discourse, wh
until recently at least has been a structuring trope for differe
in the United States, is too simplistic.
Furthermore, in the process of"whitening" as the dance for
migrates across social lines, it is no longer the same form in t
community of origin. Rather, the dance retains traces of that

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44 Jane C. Desmond

gin, now refashioned both through changes in movement s

through its performance by different dancers in different con
While there is in all this a containment and subduing of th
ence or particularity of the originating group, there is also
in the bodily lexicon of the dominant group. Rather than
movement styles or "white," a grey scale may give a more
metaphor. Even ballet, the most highly codified, highly f
and perhaps most elite symbol of European derived th
dance in the United States,14 has undergone changes th
scholars associate with African American aesthetic values, i
ing rhythmic syncopation and accented pelvic articul
Brenda Dixon-Gottschild makes this argument specifically
gard to Balanchine's ballets when she proposes looking at a
can American "blues aesthetic" as a Barthesian intertext for ballet.
To take a contemporary example drawn from North Ameri
can popular culture, we can consider the enormous influence th
black rap music and its accompanying dance style ("hip hop") ha
had over the last few years. "Hip hop" dance classes can now
found in predominantly white neighborhoods at the local aerob
studio. The dance style and the music are featured in the m
media in commercials and on MTV.
Such popular black groups as Public Enemy have develo
a very percussive style. Their music videos emphasize the s
repeated thrusting of the pelvis as well as complex steppin
hopping patterns that clearly mark out and punctuate the bea
the music. Pelvic grinds (slow or fast circlings) also feature pro
nently, often with the knees well bent and legs spread. B
women and men perform these movements. In addition, in so
videos the male dancers (and more rarely the female) grab
crotches and jerk them forward. In the upper body we see stro
isolated movements of the head, hands, and arms, often in com
plex counterpoint to the pumping movements of the lower bo
and legs. In the dance style we can see striking similarities to s
forms of West African dance, where pelvic articulation featu
prominently along with polyrhythmic relationships between st
ping patterns in the feet and concurrent arm gestures.
In dance traditions originating in Europe, both popular an
theatrical, such as ballet, the torso tends toward quietude and v
ticality, and the pelvis rarely functions as an expressive bodily

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 Embodying Difference 45

of its own. In a "white" version of hip hop, represented by the

enormously popular and financially successful group New Kids on
the Block, we can see a similar toning down of the movement. The
emphasis on vigorous, patterned stepping and hopping remains,
as do the punctuating arm gestures, but the pelvic thrusting, rotat-
ing, and crotch grabbing are much attenuated, as is the explicit
sexuality of some of the lyrics. Even the name of the group, while
asserting a sort of cocky arrival, evokes more the "boy next door"
image, kids rather than men, and a far different image than the
outlaw and outsider designation of "Public Enemy."
In this "whitewashing" of the hip hop style we can see several
factors at work. Members of the hegemonic group reap economic
success built on the exhibition of a black-derived movement and
song style. They do so by transposing the sexuality of the or
into a more acceptable form. In this case, the stereotypical im
of the aggressively sexual young black male is defused and tr
posed to an image of adolescent heartthrobs, suitable for consu
tion by white teenage girls and less threatening to white, male
uality. But at the same time, a sort of reverse sexualizing
aggressivity, deriving from the vigor of the tightly patterned mo
ment as well as from the words of the songs, accrues to these
kids" from a working-class background. Class and gender rem
the submerged elements in this analysis of transmission and
larity. The explosion of rap into the middle-class youth ma
facilitated by the mass-mediated commodification of rap music
its accompanying dance styles via radio, MTV, and national co
mercials and movies, has shifted the context of consumption
thus the meaning of participating as listener/viewers or danc
What was once a "black" music and dance style has now be
more of a marker of "youth" than only a marker of racial iden
cation.'5 In addition, most rap singers are male, although ther
a visible contingent of black female singers. Rap remains a m
dominated and to some extent male-identified form.
To talk about the circulation of rap music and associa
dance styles from the lower classes of urban black population
the predominantly white middle suburbs is to map one part of
trajectory and would result in a reading that emphasizes th
propriation theme again. But it would also ignore the chan
the forms as they travel, their shifting meanings, now stand

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46 Jane C. Desmond

more for "youth" than just for "black" culture, as well as t

plexities of class involved in the successful mass marketing
a cultural product. For rap can be found in white work
neighborhoods and in black middle-class neighborhoods to
for each of these groups the meanings attached to this type
sic and dance must be different. Detailed studies of pat
consumption and of the particularities of movement style
community would be necessary to really trace the changes
ilarities associated with the style and its usage as social
lines are crossed.
As noted above, issues of class and of locality (urban/nonur-
ban, for example) are often played out through changing lexicon
of movement. Sometimes this differential marking out comes no
in the form of transmission and remodelling, as I have discussed
above, but rather in a form of bodily bilingualism. To take on
striking example from North America, we can consider the use o
movement on the Bill Cosby Show. Cosby often inserts Afro-Amer
can movement markers into his otherwise white-identified upper-
middle-class professional demeanor. Slapping high fives or adding
a street-style knee dipping walk, Cosby signals "blackness" to his
audience. Here, interestingly, class and racial identification collide
with North American middle class body codes being derived from
Anglo and northern European styles, and "black" body languag
being associated not with the black middle class, but rather th
lower economic class. Cosby and his successful family represent
form of bodily bilingualism rather than hybrid movement forms
Each way of speaking with the body is used in specific instances
depending on whether class or racial codes are semantically over-
riding.
At an outdoor nightclub in Dakar, Senegal, I observed a dif-
ferent case of bilingualism a few years ago. To the music of a very
popular band that played electronic music mixing Euro-North
American and West African instruments, rhythms, and harmonies,
the Africans on the dance floor, dressed in shirts, slacks, and
dresses, executed a version of popular dancing similar to that seen
in the United States. With vertical postures, each member of a
couple stepped softly in place while bending the knees slightly and
gesturing close to the body with relaxed arms. However, as the
night went on and the dancers warmed up, traces of the Senega-

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 Embodying Difference 47

lese rural dance styles I had seen earlier in the week bled through.
Knees bent more and opened wider, arms swung more forcefully,
feet stepped more sharply, and hands grabbed garments to hold
them slightly out from the body as was done with more traditional
dress. Here, in the movement of social dance forms, we saw the
rural/urban tensions being acted out. The adoption of a more Eu-
ropean style verticality, for instance, formed part of a whole com-
plex of behaviors, including dress, that differentiated the urban
population from rural ones. The urbanization-modernization-
Westernization ideology was being carried on here, acted out as a
bodily trope which gradually slipped away as the night went on.

"Hot and Sexy" Latin Dances

The emphasis on pelvic motion and syncopated rhythms that

characterize hip hop is found, in a very different way, in "Latin"
dances imported from South to North America. While the specific
characterizations and stereotypes associated with "Latins" and with
"blacks" in dominant public discourse in the United States vary,
there is significant overlap.
In such cases, a discourse of racialism that ties non-whites to
the body and to sexuality expands to include Latin American pop-
ulations of European origin. Racial, cultural, and national identity
are blurred, yielding a stereotype of "Latin" along the lines of Car-
men Miranda crossed with Ricardo Montalban. The ascription of
sexuality (or dangerous, potentially overwhelming sexuality) to
subordinate classes and "races" or to groups of specific national
origin (blacks, "Latins," and other such lumped together terms to
denote non-Anglo-European ancestry) yields such descriptions as
"fiery," "hot," sultry," "passionate." All of these terms have been
used to describe the tango, for instance, or the lambada, or in mar-
keting recent movies using those dances, such as The Gypsy Kings.
In North America, it is no accident that both "blacks" and
"Latins" are said to "have rhythm."'6 This lumping together of
"race," "national origin," and supposed genetic propensity for
rhythmic movement rests on an implicit division between moving
and thinking, mind and body. Even the upper classes of Latin
America do not escape this stereotyping, since their "Latin-ness"

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48 Jane C. Desmond

can be said to override their class distanciation from the realm of

the supposedly "naturally" expressive body.
So what does it mean for an upper-middle-class Anglo subur-
ban couple in Indiana to dance the tango, or samba, or lambada?
On one level, by dancing "Latin" or "black" dance styles, the domi-
nant class and/or racial group can experience a frisson of "illicit"
sexuality in a safe, socially protected and proscribed way, one that
is clearly delimited in time and space. Once the dance is over, the
act of sexualizing oneself through a performance of a "hot" Latin
style, of temporarily becoming or playing at being a "hot Latin"
oneself, ceases. The dance then becomes a socially sanctioned way
of expressing or experiencing sexuality, especially sexuality associ-
ated with subtle, sensuous rotations of the pelvis. But in doing so
the meaning of the dance and of the act of dancing undergoes a
change. It is no longer "Latin" but now "Anglo-Latin" and its
meaning arises from and contributes to the larger dialectic be-
tween these two social and political entities and their current politi-
cal and economic relations. Within the United States, these rela-
tions vary distinctly from region to region and city to city.17
The history of social dance in the United States is strongly
marked by these periodic importations of styles from Latin
America, and more recently by the popularization of styles devel-
oped within Latin American or Caribbean communities within the
United States. But in almost every case the spread of the dance
craze to the non-Latin population is represented and promoted in
terms of the dance's sexual allure. Over time, these dances become
more and more codified and stylized and often pass into the cate-
gory of"sophisticated," marked as sensual rather than sexual. The
tango, rhumba, and samba all now fall into this category, as evi-
denced by their canonical inclusion in social dance classes and in
national ballroom dance competitions. With this passing often
comes a generational change in the avid performers as well. Older
dancers tend to perform the more "sophisticated" versions.
Sometimes the symbolism of the dance becomes detached
even from its performance and permeates different nooks of popu-
lar culture. The Carmen Miranda figure, perhaps the most endur-
ing and potent stereotype of the Latin Bombshell, recently re-
appeared on the stage of the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Arto
Lindsay, Brazilian pop musician, calls her "a foreigner reduced to

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 Embodying Difference 49

the foreign" (Dibbell 43-45). His tribute to Miranda featured Bra-

zilian performers such as Bebel Gilberto, Miranda's sister Aurora,
and Laurie Anderson, pop icon of the U.S. avant-garde, in an at-
tempt to rescue Miranda from her "every-Latina" stereotype.
Miranda's own story reveals the complexities of translation
and transportation. A singer and a dancer, her bodily display was
significant in her rise to stardom in North America, where her flir-
tatious charm ("Look at me and tell me if I don't have Brazil in
every curve of my body") and style of florid excess made her the
premier symbol of Latin-ness during her heyday. Showcased by
Hollywood in films like That Night in Rio (1941), Weekend in Havana
(1941), Springtime in the Rockies (1942), and Busby Berkeley's ex-
travaganza, The Gang's All Here (1943), Miranda was by 1945 the
ninth-highest-paid person in the United States (Dibbell 44). Her
Brazilian-ness was soon turned into a generic "Latin" stereotype.
What remained unnoticed in this United States translation
was the source of her character and trademark costume
dress with bare shoulders, oversized jewelry, and fruit-topped
ban.) To the Brazilian audience that first saw this costume w
debuted in the film musical Banana da Terra in 1938, the styl
of the black baiana woman, often seen selling food on the str
the northern city of Bahia and associated with the practice
candomble religion, would have been immediately apparent.
lian Dibbell has noted, Miranda's "racial cross-dressing" oc
in a Brazilian climate of increasing racial fluidity (44), but t
gins and meanings attached to such recreations were lost
middle-class United States populations who flocked to her m
and samba-ed the night away. For most North Americans, M
came to symbolize "Latin" music and dance. Within Brazil, a d
ent type of genericization took place. The samba, which deve
in the African-Brazilian community and which Miranda
popularize in the United States, soon spread to all sectors of th
zilian population and came to be a marker of"Brazilian" cultu
Back home in Brazil, Miranda's increasing genericization
little to endear her to her Brazilian audiences. Eventually,
after her death in 1955, her image resurfaced in Brazil, recl
within the "tropicalismo" movement within the arts. In the U
States, her image recirculates in the male "drag queen" panth
of characters, her manufactured sexual excess providing a re

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50 Jane C. Desmond

made performance persona. And it greets us in the superm

in those little Chiquita banana stickers, each marked with
Miranda figure.
The Miranda case points out several aspects of the trans
tion of music and dance styles. The importance of the ma
in facilitating such spread during the last 50 years has been
tional. Such mediated images flatten the complexities of t
style (as a social practice) into a "dance" (transported as a s
steps to music) removed from its context of origin and its
nity of performance. Such representations are a key facto
reworking of the meanings of these movements as they tra
ther, the identities once attached to certain styles of movin
ated with "black" or "white" or "mestizo" populations in Br
instance) become genericized in the transportation, standi
for an undifferentiated "Latin-ness," with original markers
racial identity, and national specificity all but erased.18
The effect of such generalization is often to reinforce U
reotypes of Latin Americans as overly emotional, inefficien
ganized, and pleasure-seeking. The very same qualities t
be valued in the movement-characterized in the United States as
sensuous, romantic, expressive, emotional, heteroerotic, and p
sionate-reinforce these stereotypes even while they contribut
the perception of the dance in those same terms. (The uns
equation is that Latins are how they dance, and they dance
they are.) The fact that dancing is a bodily discourse only enh
the perception of these characteristics as "true" or truly expre
The pleasure aspect of social dancing often obscures our awar
of it as a symbolic system, so that dances are often seen as "au
tic" unmediated expressions of psychic or emotional inferiori
They are often taken as evidence of a "character," sometimes
"national character," and often of "racial character." This is wh
the nonverbal aspect of dance and our general ignoring of mo
ment as a meaningful system of communication reinforce po
beliefs about the supposed transparency of expressivity.

Theatrical Dance

The preceding discussion has focused on aspects of identit

transmission, and perception relating to the performance of s

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 Embodying Difference 51

dance forms. Similar issues arise when considering the more

highly codified dance forms of the professional theatrical world.
These forms are less likely to be disseminated through the mass
media and rely more on the physical transportation or migration
of performers, students, teachers, and choreographers from one
locale to another, especially when national boundaries are in-
volved. There are differences, too, in this category between profes-
sional performance forms that are more or less popular. For in-
stance, the dynamics are slightly different in the categories of show
dancing, like jazz or Broadway-style dance, than they are in the
modern dance world. I want to close by giving two brief examples
of the migration of dance styles across national boundaries, the
first looking at ballet in China, the latter at selected aspects of Latin
American modern dance.
Even though we might be tempted to dismiss the importat
of ballet to China as just one more example of Western cul
imperialism, the complexities of the transmission belie su
simple explanation. Ballet in China represents a striking case o
creolized form still very much emerging. It exhibits a combina
of movements from the Soviet ballet tradition and the theatrical
dance, folk dance, and operatic traditions of China.19 In s
cases, this mixture results in arresting moments where half t
body looks "Chinese" in its lexicon of moment, and the other
looks "European."20 In these cases, we might see the legs poised
pointe in arabesque, while the upper torso, arms, and head
molded into a dramatic pose drawn from the Chinese tradit
especially the Chinese opera, where dramatic pantomime playe
large role.
The Chinese example is particularly interesting because it
represents a case in which the change in a form of cultural produc-
tion occurred largely from the top down, i.e., as a state-level gov-
ernment decision. All the complexities of the migration of various
forms from one community to the next at the local level, or even
among regions or countries when facilitated by the mass media,
are somewhat streamlined here, yet the particularities of the Chi-
nese experience remain distinct. Chinese ballet is different from
its counterparts in Europe and America not only at the level of
movement vocabulary and syntax (i.e., what movements are done
and the ways movement sequences are put together), but also in
terms of choreographic method (where collective projects of cho-

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52 Jane C. Desmond

reography are not uncommon) and in terms of audience (balle

China is conceived of as a popular entertainment). In addition
narrative or story-telling aspect of ballet, which has dropped
prominence in European and American ballet forms since the m
nineteenth century as more abstract styles have emerged,
strong component of the Chinese repertory. Thus, far from r
senting merely the appropriation of a "Western" form, the Ch
ballet produces a whole complex of meanings as well as forma
innovations specific to its function in China.
Gloria Strauss has written about the history of dance in C
and has speculated on the reasons why ballet might have been
tively imported by the state during the Cultural Revolution
54). The arts were considered integral to the ideological funct
ing of the new China, and dance received much attention a
state level. The choice to import Soviet ballet forms revealed m
than the Soviet economic and political influence of the time
riod. Strauss speculates that the government was actively see
the creation of art forms that would make visible the need for ra
and radical change that the revolution called forth.
Theatrical dance in China had, with the exception of the
matic forms in the Chinese Opera, fallen into a decline amon
Han (the Chinese majority population) after the Sung per
(959-1278 A.D.). A contributing factor in this decline, arg
Strauss, may have been the widespread practice of foot-bindi
which severely reduced female movement especially, but not e
sively, among the upper classes.21 Acrobatic and folk dance f
survived, but they did not bring with them narrative tradition
addition, the folk forms were heavily marked with ethnic asso
tions, and the government wanted to play down ethnic enmi
while celebrating the nation as a whole.) The narrative possib
of ballet may have been one factor in its adoption, as the lead
sought the creation of art that would reinforce the tenets of
revolution and appeal to the masses. Furthermore, it offered
sions of action and strength, through a combination of Ch
acrobatic traditions (also found in the opera) with the leap
turns of the ballet vocabulary. Strauss notes that "highly exte
postures such as attitudes and arabesques and a variety of fly
leaps such as grand jete en avant are given great prominence"
Chinese choreography (43). Similarly, the female dance vocab

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 Embodying Difference 53

could be extended to showcase women who were as strong and

active as men, literalizing the emphasis on equal legal rights for
women that the government supported. In the well-known Red
Detachment of Women, gun-toting ballerinas fight for the revolution
while leaping across the stage in grand jetes.
This in itself represents a shift from the earlier history of Eu-
ropean ballet, through a particular emphasis on some of its charac-
teristics along with a downplaying of others (the soft, light move-
ment style of female roles in the traditional nineteenth-century
ballets that continued to be performed in the Soviet Union, for
example, such as Swan Lake). But it would be misleading to posit a
simple correspondence between the new status for women in cul-
tural revolution and the martial movements of ballerinas in these
works. There is also a strong tradition of female warrior characters
in Chinese opera, and historically popular entertainments often
featured women dancing with swords. The gun-toting ballerina,
while unusual in European or American ballets, becomes meaning-
ful in The Red Detachment of Women through a complex nexus of old
and new forms of both Chinese and non-Chinese origin.
In the more recent past, the ballet repertories have ex-
panded. The dramatic, narrative ballet remains a staple, but it now
exists side by side with nonnarrative ballets as well as modern
dance works. Little of the U.S. modern dance repertory has been
seen in China yet, although a few companies have toured and
some teachers have done guest residencies. But some of the
younger dancers copy poses found in dance magazines, making
up their own versions of "modern dance."
In China, a state policy that would seem at first to foster imita-
tion of industrialized nations' art forms instead results in new, hy-
brid forms. The wider geopolitical relations between China and
the industrialized nations, from whence certain cultural forms are
originally borrowed, may ultimately form a horizon circumscrib-
ing the meanings that can possibly circulate with those forms. But
it does not determine either the use, ultimate shape, or socially
constructed aesthetic valuation of the resultant hybrid.
Owing to a greater flow of professional dancers between
countries in North and South America and to different govern-
mental policies about the arts, the situation in Latin America is
different. But here too we can see the process of hybridization and

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54 Jane C. Desmond

recontextualization, influenced but not determined by the d

institutions in the various countries, as well as internationa
exchange and funding policies.22 Without trying to gen
about the wide range of Latin American theatrical dance, le
close with brief examples that demonstrate something of the
ety of forms and situations encompassed.23
When discussing contemporary dance in Latin America,
range is very wide, and while the United States tendency m
to think of Latin American dance in terms of the popular and
known social dances, in fact a full range of traditional and c
porary styles coexist on the stage. The case of DanceBrazil is
esting. Although based in New York, this contemporary com
is composed mainly of dancers born and trained in Brazil
repertory consists of what appear to be stagings of ritual cer
ies based on the Afro-Brazilian candomble religion, tradition
poeira (a martial arts-dance form), the samba, and, to some e
dance vocabulary derived from American modern dance sty
DanceBrazil foregrounds its "Brazilness." That in fact m
what it is selling to both its Euro-American and Latin Amer
audiences in New York. In live and televised appearances, th
company that "stages" tradition. A televised performanc
sented on United States public television in 1989 was particu
interesting. Shown as part of the Alive from Off Center se
DanceBrazil was contextualized as part of a contemporary av
garde showcase. Each week the series presents dance and per
mance works featuring (mainly United States) artists outside
mainstream. Susan Stamberg, the announcer, introduce
night's offerings with brief comments about artists who are rei
preting traditional dances through "modern sensibilities," t
dence of cultural contact. In fact, the words "culture contact
by on the screen. On the show with DanceBrazil, interestingl
a solo by Raul Trujillo, who reinterprets his American Indian
tage in "The Shaman," and a duet by the Japanese-born,
States-based duo of Eiko and Koma, whose excruciatingly
movement underlines the sculptural qualities of their nearl
bodies in what Stamberg terms a melding of Japanese Butoh
American avant-garde techniques.
It is interesting that of these three examples of "culture
tact," only the Japanese piece is not based on religious ritua

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 Embodying Difference 55

"traditional" costuming. Japanese Butoh is a relatively recent sty-

listic development, and it may be that essentializing the Japanese
through a discourse of traditionalism is more difficult in the
United States due to Japan's new position as our primary economic
competitor on the world financial scene. On the other hand, Amer-
ican Indians and Latin Americans may more easily be situated
within such a traditionalizing/primitivizing discourse of preindus-
trialism.
Trujillo's piece, which is first, sets the stage for the Dance-
Brazil piece that follows. In fact, both feature large circles drawn in
the earth (literally, truckloads full of dirt dumped in the television
studio). Trujillo dons traditional American Indian dress, complete
with feathers, and enacts a ceremonial type of dance that concludes
with his vanishing in a hazy light. By the time DanceBrazil ap-
pears, their stage set of dark earth, white chalk circle, and flowing
white curtains around the perimeter comes as no surprise. We are
already placed firmly in the "primitive" aesthetic, with people en-
acting magical ceremonies in village clearings on rich, dark earth.
The set effectively shuts the dancers and the "ceremony" off
from any historical time or place. These rituals are presented as
"timeless," but this "outside of time" quality refers to the past and
somehow fails to index the present. If the dances cannot be con-
temporary, then neither, we are to assume, are the people who
perform them. In an odd category of"avant-garde folklore," P.B.S.
has produced another hybrid form, one reflecting the dominance
of the United States, with economic and political power played out
in the staging decisions of a television series, the framing of its
discourse, and the composition of its audience, self-selected con-
noisseurs of the "avant-garde."
This is not at all to imply that theatrical dance companies in
or from Brazil always work in traditionally based styles. The Grupo
Corpo of Brazil, which appeared in New York City during the fall
of 1991, presented an evening of works nearly indistinguishable in
movement vocabulary from that of many U.S. companies based in
New York. Also during the same season in New York, Hercilia Lo-
pez, director of the Venezuelan troupe Contradanza, and Luis Vi-
ana, founding member of the Venezuelan Accion Colectiva Dance
Company, presented solo works. In both cases the movement vo-
cabularies and presentation of these works showed strong affilia-

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56 Jane C. Desmond

tion with contemporary U.S. modern dance product

course, we could say that this merely reflects the domi
U.S. modern dance on the worldwide dance scene, and indeed
many of these performers have trained in the United States. But
this would be to overlook the specific meanings that arise in the
performance of such works in their home cities in Latin America,
and in the United States where they are framed and marketed spe-
cifically as "Latin American" artists.
On the same program with Lopez and Viana, marketed as
Latin night at Movement Research in downtown New York, was a
piece by Arthur Aviles, a spectacular dancer with the New
York-based Bill T. Jones company, here presenting his own work.
Titled Maeva (A New York-Ricans Ensalada), the piece featured as
the main character an irrepressible woman, squeezed into a too-
small frilly gown, regaling the audience with a nonstop monologue
in Spanish and English. Creating a whirlwind of energy with her
breathless talking and exuberant posing, she recalled the larger-
than-life Carmen Miranda, here both reasserted and caricatured
at the same time. She introduces herself with a skein of 50 names,
marking the maternity and paternity of past generations, and talks
about her 15 "childrens" as four other dancers crawl around and
through her legs to the pulse of Tito Puente music. Periodical
someone offstage yells out "Spic!," but she continues, unflapp
picking up the monologue where she left off, addressing the a
ence directly, with "so, as I was telling you...." Dancers sa
around her like back-up singers as she jokes about lazy "cab
ros." At times, the dancers climb on top of her, holding her d
but she always emerges, still talking and gesturing, claiming,
heavily accented English, "What do you mean you won't hire
I don't have an accent!"
Although obvious and somewhat heavy-handed in its atte
at political critique, this piece was effective in its mix of Spa
and English, of abstract modern dance movements with the et
cally coded gestural language of the Latin caricature. It simul
ously genericized and particularized, placing the 1940s' "ev
Latina" stereotype in the contemporary struggle to find work
to create community within the heavily accented hybrid spac
New York. Its placement on a program of"Latin dances" in a s
loft downtown, part of the "avant-garde" circuit, also signaled

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 Embodying Difference 57

complex mix of identities being played out on that stage. Some-

where between Carmen Miranda and the successful avant-gardism
of the Bill T. Jones company, Aviles staged his own bilingual mod-
ern dance, articulating through its bodily enunciation the com-
plexities of his own position and the permeability of movement
lexicons always in transition.

Concluding Thoughts

I have argued throughout this piece for an emphasis on the

continually changing relational constitution of cultural forms.
Concepts of cultural resistance, appropriation, and cultural impe-
rialism are important for the light they shed on the unequal distri-
bution of power and goods that shape social relations. And indeed
these inequities may form a kind of limit or substrata that ulti-
mately determines the topography of cultural production. But an
overemphasis on such concepts can obscure the more complex dia-
lectics of cultural transmission. Such concepts can overemphasize
formal properties that circulate or are "lost" in the process of mov-
ing from one group to another, thus resulting in an inattention to
the contextual specificity of meanings attached to or arising from
the usage of formal properties, and obscuring as well the hybrid-
ization of such forms.
I have also argued for increased attention to movement as a
primary not a secondary social text, one of immense importance
and tremendous challenge. If we are to expand the humanities
now to include "the body" as text, surely we should include in that
new sense of textuality bodies in motion, of which dance repre-
sents one of the most highly codified, widespread, and intensely
affective dimensions. And because so many of our most explosive
and most tenacious categories of identity are mapped onto bodily
difference, including race and gender, but expanding through a
continual slippage of categories to include ethnicity and nationality
and even sexuality as well, we should not ignore the ways in which
dance signals and enacts social identities in all their continually
changing configurations.
But to do so will require special tools. Although I have been
emphasizing the larger theoretical level of analysis of the transmis-

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58 Jane C. Desmond

sion and hybridization of cultural production in this essa

tended treatment of specific cases, both historic and contemp
is clearly necessary. Such research will allow us to test the va
of these frameworks and to provide the data necessary for d
accounts of exchange, change, and circulation and the wa
which those are attached to the social production of identit
if we are to talk about dancing in anything other than the br
terms, we must be able to do close analysis of dance forms, j
we might of literary texts. While most scholars have spent
developing analytic skills for reading and understanding
forms of communication, rarely have we worked equally ha
develop an ability to analyze visual, rhythmic, or gestural f
As cultural critics, we must become movement literate. Here is
where skills drawn from the dance field become indispensable.
Systems of movement analysis developed in dance, such as
Laban's Effort/Shape system, provide a good starting point. Effort/
Shape methodologies employ abstract concepts of continuums in
the use of the weight of the body (ranging from "strong" to
"light"), in the body's attitude toward space (ranging from "direct"
to "indirect"), and in the use of time (ranging from "quick" to "sus-
tained"). In so doing, they can provide an analytical system as well
as a language with which to speak about the body moving in time
and space.
Consider, for example, the pioneering work of Irmgard
Bartenieff. In the 1960s and 1970s, she explored the efficacy of
Effort/Shape for describing and comparing movement patterns in
particular communities. Such work provides one model for cross-
cultural comparisons of movement lexicons. I think it can also pro-
vide a model of the changes that take place in movement style
among populations undergoing cultural contact of either a volun-
tary (immigration, for example) or involuntary (colonial occupa-
tion or slavery) sort. We could, for example, relate this to Homi
Bhabha's work on mimicry, although he does not develop this line
of argument directly himself. Bhabha discusses the slippage that
occurs when colonial behaviors, such as military ritual, are per-
formed (always he says "imperfectly" or overly "perfectly") by the
colonized. His concept of mimicry could, when combined with a
detailed system of movement analysis, provide us with a useful way
to chart some of the changes that occur in the semantics of move-

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 Embodying Difference 59

ment as a result of cultural contact and/or domination. The key in

cases such as he refers to would be to look closely at what consti-
tutes "imperfection" or "over"-perfection in movement perfor-
mance.

Although the Effort/Shape system does

in terms of gender or cultural affinities, al
flect the contours of their historical etiolog
analysis. The Effort/Shape system, for exa
Rudolph von Laban's analysis of twentie
movement patterns. Given the demands
intracultural research, no one system will
our broader levels of analysis anchored in t
esthesia of the dancing body, we need to g
close readings, and more sophisticated meth
back and forth between the micro (physica
ideological) levels of movement investigation
research will repay us well, expanding unde
in which the body serves both as a ground
meaning, a tool for its enactment, and a m
creation and recreation.

Notes

An early version of this paper was presented at the conference "Politics in

Motion: Dance and Culture in Latin America" held at Duke University in the
winter of 1991. I thank the organizers Celeste Frazier and Jose Munoz for inviting
me to speak. My thanks also to Jennifer Wicke, Cathy Davidson, Bryan Wolf, and
Jane Gaines for their helpful critiques on this material, and especially to Virginia
Dominguez for bringing the Mintz and Price material to my attention.
1. The debates about what "cultural studies" is, should, and should not be
have intensified during the last 10 years as the term has gained greater circulation
and as its practitioners have gained increasing institutional power in the academy.
I use this term in the sense of a group of self-nominated scholars who affiliate
themselves and their work with such a term. Implicit in its usage is usually a
concept of critique, antidisciplinarity, and of the importance of investigating the
linkages between social/economic/political power and cultural production. See
Johnson and the new massive collection Cultural Studies, edited by Lawrence
Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula Treichler, for discussions about the scope of
cultural studies. The American version of cultural studies is greatly influenced by
the pioneering work of Stuart Hall and the Birmingham Centre for Contempo-
rary Cultural Studies in Britain. See Stuart Hall in Cultural Studies for a discussion
of this relationship. Some important work investigating British subcultural

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60 Jane C. Desmond

groups has focused on bodily practice associated with music and fashi
rarely has movement figured centrally in these analyses. See, for exam
Hebdige's Subculture: The Meaning of Style.
2. For example, see Thomas Laqueur's Making Sex: Body and Gender f
Greeks to Freud and Emily Martin's The Woman in the Body: A Cultural A
Reproduction. Foucault's work remains a standard.
3. The humanities disciplines' emphasis on words is exemplified in th
ies of the disciplines. The prestige of literature is followed by that of ar
which discussed art historical objects. Usually the making of those object
gated into a separate "art" department. Funding asymmetries reflect the
valuations placed on the act of making "art" versus the act of writing
Music history and theory have attained a higher status in the academy t
history due in part to their more extensive written history, both in term
cism and in terms of the musical scores that stand in for live perform
permit extensive, reflective study. Dramatic literature holds an analo
tion, thanks to its written texts and extensive critical history. Until recen
has remained the most ephemeral of the arts, its "texts" existing prima
moment of viewing and leaving little in the way of material residue. T
reason why its historical and theoretical analysis represents a relatively
of work. (I am always reminded of the attitude toward dance scholarsh
go to the library and search for books that are invariably filed in th
bounded by "games and cards" and "magic tricks and the circus.") Altho
movement analysis systems do and have existed, they are often schemat
or, if very complex like Labanotation, very difficult to read except by
cifically trained as professional notators and reconstructors. In any even
minute portion of dance practice is notated in any way. The field rem
dominantly an "oral" tradition, passed on from person to person in bot
and informal settings. Video has mitigated this problem to some exten
video records are partial, showing usually one visual angle and record
one specific performance of a dance.
4. Here I am referring specifically to the post-Enlightenment scholar
tion developing from European sources.
5. See, for example, articles in Gates.
6. Interestingly, as Janet Wolff has noted, metaphors of dance figu
nently in the work of several critics such as Derrida and Annette Kolo
ever, this metaphoric invocation contrasts sharply and provocatively w
tinct absence of interest in the material and social practice of dance.
communication with Wolff.)
7. Within the dance field, an excellent work by Foster marks the fir
length study situated within a structuralist/poststructuralist position, and
ingly articles and new books evidence a familiarity and willingness to en
logical issues. See, for example, Mark Franko. The recent important c
"Choreographing History" at University of California, Riverside, in F
1992 brought together dance scholars and non-dance scholars who wr
bodily discourse. Among those participating were Randy Martin, Susan
Thomas Laqueur, Elaine Scarry, Norman Bryson, Peggy Phelan, and L
mergren. And critical journals like Discourse have recently published a
dance. This still remains the exception rather than the rule, but does
growing conversation between dance scholarship and cultural studies.
8. This is not to imply that the division between "dance" and "non-
always clear, nor that it is always of primary importance in formulating
Such a designation is subject to change historically and geographically. W

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 Embodying Difference 61

be particularly useful to note is what movements and what spatial sites are associ-
ated with "dancing" when that concept is used, and what are not. By asking what
constitutes "dance" within a particular context, we can find out more about what
values are associated with dance, whether as entertainment, social activity, ritual,
or "art". For example, debates over "pornography" include arguments over what
constitutes "lewd" movement, with no "redeeming" artistic value. By recontextu-
alizing such movements as dance, or by relocating them to a so-called legitimate
theatrical venue, an argument could be made that such movements are artistic,
and therefore not subject to censure. The shifting dividing line between dance
and non-dance activities and the moments of such an invocation are part of a
political history of bodies and movement.
9. I thank Cathy Davidson for bringing the information about advice books
to my attention.
10. On women and dance halls in the nineteenth century, see Peiss, especially
"Dance Madness" 88-114.
11. In asking what an "un-Latin" rendition of a particular dance would
instance, we can begin to identify the movement parameters deemed n
to identify it as such both within and outside of "Latin" communities.
12. See Paul Gilroy, whose argument focuses on the need to reconceiv
culture in terms of an Atlantic diaspora. He argues that "much of the p
political, cultural, and intellectual legacy claimed by Afro-American inte
is in fact only partly their 'ethnic' property. There are other claims to i
can be based on the structure of the Atlantic diaspora itself" (192). My ar
similarly calls for a historical examination of the movement of people an
cultural products; although drawing on Mintz and Price, I have acce
difficulty in applying concepts of absolutism to Euro-American and Af
American populations which have developed an intense relationship
other.
13. In the United States, for example, see the rise of a new category "H
as a racial identity in federal census forms during the last two decades. C
of origin and language are ignored in this categorization.
14. With rare exceptions, African American dancers were not welcome
ballet companies until recently. Even today, their numbers remain small,
sons related to class as well as race. Early arguments against their parti
were based on racialist assumptions that their bodily configurations were
patible with the aesthetics of line for the European form. The Dance Th
Harlem, pioneered by Balanchine dancer Arthur Mitchell, has not only p
a forum for African American dancers to perform the traditional "white
but has also developed a number of ballets based on African American th
African-style movement resources.
15. This is not to imply that patterns of consumption are the same with
dominantly black urban communities, for example, as they are in predom
white suburban communities.
16. Remember that the character Ricky Ricardo, Lucy's husband on the I Lo
Lucy show, was a band leader. Even all these years after the show, his character s
represents the longest running and best-known Cuban character on Americ
television. While most film scholars have concentrated on the Lucy character,
Lopez, in a paper delivered at the 1992 Society for Cinema Studies Conferen
in Pittsburgh, PA, points out the importance of the Lucy-Ricky marriage an
his Cuban descent.
17. Due to mass media, dance styles, like music styles, can migrate separa
from the groups of people who develop them. In New York, with large Lat

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62 Jane C. Desmond

American and Caribbean populations, dancing the lambada in Scarsdale i

to mean something different than in suburban Indiana, where the ratio
Americans to Anglo-Americans is much smaller than in the New York me
tan area.

18. Jazz dance, like jazz music, represents an analogous creolize

tural production in the United States, with body usage and rh
drawn from African American and Euro-American sources. Now
tifiable as "black" or "white," jazz has, like the case of the Brazili
"nationalized" or genericized into an American product, often re
essentially so in other countries. Its history, both in the United
is, however, deeply imbricated with issues of racial identificat
decades of this century, for example, during the rise of moderni
ance on "the primitive," the Parisian passion for jazz coincided w
for African American performers like Josephine Baker, known
dance" in a skimpy bikini of those fruits. The national versus ra
of jazz is a tension that still exists today.
19. These comments are based primarily on personal observat
of state training schools in China during 1990.
20. The European reference is schematic at best, meant to im
tradition as it developed in Europe and the former Soviet Unio
transplanted to the United States where it has since taken on its ow
21. Strauss notes that this explanation is certainly not fully a
feet would not prevent women from performing kneeling danc
nor would it have any influence on male dancing. However, sh
binding practice was very widespread, especially in areas where
tion predominated. Some estimates argue that in areas like Ting
99 percent of all females born before 1890 had bound feet. Th
practices were reserved for upper-class women. Although both t
reformers after 1911 revolution tried to outlaw the tradition, foot
fully extinguished until after 1940. See Strauss, 28-30.
22. Whereas the transmission and transportation of social dan
fected by mass media marketing and population migrations, in
art world (although population demographics have some influe
portant are the internal politics of each country (multiculturali
funding paradigm in the United States, for example), and the cir
set up among departments of state in various countries, as wel
tional avant-garde circuit. A study of state department funding
and companies would reveal an interesting profile of what is p
art," for example.
23. Live performances cited: DanceBrazil at the Alliance Franc
New York City, December, 1991; Grupo Corpo at the Joyce Th
City, November, 1991; Hercilia Lopez, Luis Viana, and Arthur A
Arts Theater, December, 1991.

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