The politics and poetics of dance by Susan A. Reed

Susan Reed analyzes and critiques the different aspects of dance in culture. Her focus on colonialism, nationalism, women and sexuality, and feminism intrigued me to the subject of dance anthropology. Reed discusses the “recontextualization” and the domestication of moves and styles of a particular dance, and its effects on the culture’s view of themselves. She relates this to Marta Savigliano’s complex research on the tango in Argentina and the process of its “auto-exoticization” in France. Savigliano defines auto-exoticization as the process by which the colonized come to represent themselves to themselves through the lenses of the colonizers – or in this case, the neo-colonizers. Dance masters in Paris standardized the tango, simplifying and making it suitable to “cosmopolitan aesthetic sensibilities.”
Reed goes on to discuss gender and dance, and how culturally accepted gender roles can either be emphasized or reinterpreted through movement and costume. She uses the Cuban rumba as an example where men exhibit their strength, courage and bravado. She also cites examples of dances in Africa where gender roles are crossed and mixed in order to portray feelings of homoeroticism, competitiveness, or temporary release from their assigned roles in society. Her extensive study on women and sexuality in dance discusses how dances performances can exhibit and generate gender and class conflicts regarding the appropriateness of sexually provocative dance movements for women. She cites Senegalese dancing as having conflicted perceptions of women’s sexuality. “While traditional dancing is considered to be ‘women’s business,’ dancing is also considered risky for a woman’s reputations, particularly after marriage.”
The last category Reed discusses is movement and body in dance. She discusses the “agentive” nature of dance, and how it is often linked to ideas of resistance and control. She also refers to Novak’s research on dance as an “art-sport” and her attention to historicizing the body in culture, and to Barbara Browning’s exploration of “bodily writing.”
This multitude of perspectives on dance showed me how inclusive and exclusive dance can be in different cultures. It also brought forth the idea that dance can be used to convey messages not only through costumes, movements, and themes, but also through history and interpretations.