| Session 15 | Case Studies in Modern Dance |
| Emily Wright | Gender in American Protestant Dance: Local and Global Implications |
In the field of dance studies much discourse surrounds notions of gender identity and women’s rights within Western dance traditions. One group of scholars asserts that early modern dance practice successfully resisted patriarchal notions. Another contends that early modern dance perpetuated traditional assumptions. A third perspective proposes that early modern dance realized a simultaneous reiteration and subversion of traditional gender roles. In similar fashion, this presentation delineates the parameters of a growing subset in contemporary dance and religious practice, the field of contemporary professional Christian dance, and explores the ways in which these groups reify traditional gender roles through choreographed depictions of rigid gender binaries while simultaneously subverting them through the introduction of the female body and the female voice to the traditionally male-dominated Protestant worship space. In terms of its relevance to global feminisms, contemporary professional Christian dancers reify and subvert traditional gender roles on a global scale through international touring and arts-based missionary outreach programs. |
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| Victoria Thoms | “And I always got whatever I wanted from men without asking”: Martha Graham and the Spectres of Feminism |
| The paper investigates Martha Graham’s complex positioning to feminist agendas. Her relationship to feminism is not only intricate because definitions of feminism are not unified but also because Graham had an ambivalent positioning to it. On the one hand, through her work, Graham can be considered an incredibly powerful feminist consciousness. Alternatively and simultaneously, she explicitly disavowed any connection to feminism, especially in her autobiography Blood Memory (1991). This discrepancy suggests an intricacy to Graham’s affiliation with gendered power dynamics. To consider this divergence I specifically theorise the historicized effects of Graham’s embodied sense of gender identity; how it influenced her politics, stage representations and ultimately her positioning to the political agendas of feminism. | |
| Takiyah Nur Amin | Making the Case for Black Dance in the 21st Century |
| A recurring issue in dance studies has been the question, “what is ‘Black Dance?’ Famously raised by Zita Allen and others, this question has never lead to easy answers or widely agreed upon responses. The paper seeks to examine the historical use and application of the term “Black Dance” and put forth a critical argument concerning its relevance and in support of its continued use. The paper will draw on the work of Richard A. Long, Brenda Dixon-Gottschild, Thomas DeFrantz, bell hooks and other feminist critiques of post-modernism in order to provide the necessary theoretical frameworks to engage this issue. | |
| Emily Wright, MFA, is a professor in the department of dance at Belhaven College in Jackson, MS. She received her BFA in Dance from Belhaven College and her MFA in Dance with an emphasis on Performance and Choreography from Arizona State University. As a member of various Christian dance communities, her research focuses on contemporary trends in Christian dance from both insider and outsider perspectives in the context of current and historic tensions. Ms. Wright employs an autoethnographic approach to choreography as well in her collaborations with Front Porch Dance Theater, a local contemporary dance company. | |
| Victoria Thoms is Senior Lecturer in Dance Practice and Performance at the University of Wolverhampton, United Kingdom. She is both a practitioner and a philosopher whose primary research interest is the gendered history of dance and its effects on contemporary dance performance. She is presently working toward the completion of a book focusing on an intertextual feminist reading of the work and life of Martha Graham. Victoria is Newsletter Editor for the Society for Dance Research and has published in the Dance Research Journal, Dance Theatre Journal and the European Journal of Women’s Studies. | |
| Takiyah Nur Amin holds degrees from the State University of New York at Buffalo and Virginia Tech. Currently she is a third year student in the doctoral program in dance and cultural studies at Temple University. Additoinally, Takiyah is pursuing a certificate in women's studies and additional coursework in Arabic. Miss Amin is proud to be a Future Faculty Fellow and Graduate Associate of the Center for the Humanities (CHAT) at Temple. | |
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