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Session 20	Choreographing [Popular Dance] History I
MiRi Park	Dancing Like a Girl: The Oral History of B-Girls in NYC in the 1990s
	Many people believe that “breakdancing” was a fad of the past, however breaking/b-boy culture has evolved and flourished all over the US and around the world. It now has so many participants that a critical mass of interest demands that the history and other cultural aspects of this dance be discussed and explored. “Dance Like a Girl: An oral history of b-girls in NYC in the 1990s,” attempts to complicate the current hip hop historical narrative by listening to the experience of women participants. As a practicing b-girl herself, Park discusses how academic oral history methodology allowed her to maintain her relationships with her subjects, while also allowing them to be active participants in shaping their personal histories. She also presents how OH methodology serves as a post-colonial, post-modern way to research social history and cultural practices.
Lorenzo Perillo	“Smooth Criminals”: Mimicry, Choreography, and Discipline of Cebuano dancing inmates
	On July 17, 2007, Byron Garcia, Cebu provincial security consultant uploaded the CPDRC: Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center inmates’ performance of Michael Jackson’s iconic, record-breaking music video “Thriller”. Gaining enough widespread popularity to be ranked YouTube #4 Top Favorites (All Time) video, I ask how 1,500 Cebuano prisoners performing “Thriller” hold the global gaze so captive? Also, how do issues of sexual, racial, and cultural desire and anxiety inform “Thriller” in both content and reception? I analyze the filmed “Thriller” dance in Cebu in order to open up its ambivalent success as explicated through issues of mimicry, choreography, and reception. I argue that “Thriller” takes part in a century-long conversation on Philippine representation, discipline, and imperial meanings. What subjects are formed through this experiment designed to literally choreograph discipline onto “deviant” bodies? Finally, when situating this user-generated spectacle in the contexts of Filipino diaspora, post-colonialism, and bakla performance, what epistemological shifts do we make from the gaze-spectacle binary?
Naomi Wood	Dancing to Make Space: Cuban Hip-Hop Trio Las Krudas and Performances of Social Change
	My investigation into the performances of Cuban hip-hop trio Las Krudas looks at the ways in which this group has entered into the public sphere and how they conceive of their music and performance as a mode for making space for themselves in a culture where their intersecting identities have been written out. I discuss the ways Las Krudas use the choreography of their bodies in their concert performances and in their music videos to create an aesthetic of intersecting identities: black, queer, fat, Cuban, female. My investigation assumes the body is a producer of media and interrogates the ways in which their particular choreographies dialogue with their lyrics. Finally, I address the increasing presence of women in the Hip Hop scene in Cuba and the ways in which this collective of bodies performs social change and use their performances to demand and command space.
	MiRi Park (aka Seoulsonyk) teaches in the dance education program at NYU. She holds an MA in American Studies from Columbia University, a BFA in Dance and a BA in Journalism from UMass, Amherst. She has presented her work on hip-hop dance at the Conference on NY State History and the Oral History & Performance Conference, and SDHS. Her writing has appeared in The Village Voice, KoreAm Journal and Dance Spirit Magazine. MiRi dances professionally as a b-girl and modern dancer, repping with crews Fox Force Five, TEC, BIS, and with choreographers Doug Elkins, Rennie Harris, Marlies Yearby and Nia Love. She is the 2004 World & US Air Guitar Champion.
	Lorenzo Perillo was born into a Navy family in Honolulu and raised in San Diego. After graduating from UC Berkeley (B.A. Integrative Biology), he took two years off to work in the medical field. Lorenzo completed an M.A. in American Studies and International Cultural Studies at University of Hawaii-Manoa in 2007. Informed by his Pilipino community work and hip-hop dance training for the last decade, Lorenzo’s research interests include Filipino, Filipino American, and hip-hop cultures. At UCLA, Lorenzo pursues a doctorate in Culture and Performance with a concentration in both Dance Studies and Asian American Studies at UCLA.
	Naomi Wood is a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, in the Spanish and Portuguese Department. She will complete her preliminary exams this November. While located within a language and literature department her current research encompasses dance and gender studies. Her dissertation addresses constructions of national identity as articulated through dancing bodies located in the politically transitioning nations of Cuba and Brazil in the mid-to-late twentieth century. She is interested in hip-hop as a corporeal translator and avenue for invisiblized bodies to create space.
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