Paper short abstract:

In the Caribbean clubs of Paris, dance competence is experienced as naturalized heritage of the diaspora. Nevertheless, clubbers develop alternative spaces where learning processes can be articulated and become the site for bodily experiment vis-à-vis the uncertainties of belonging.

Paper long abstract:

In the Caribbean nightlife of Paris, bodily uncertainty is unspeakable. Occupying the dance floor is a sign of self-confidence and shared belonging, whereby dance is conceived as the naturalized heritage of the Caribbean diaspora. Making moves sound familiar, affirming and performing bodily knowledge are promises non-professional dancers have to commit to. Caribbean youth engage with dance and music as if to demonstrate the legitimacy of their belonging to the homeland. In the smoky warehouses of the urban periphery, the Caribbean subcultural industry thrives around nationalist claims, practices of exoticism, cosmopolitanism and desires for upward social mobility. Yet the apparently coherent statements about identity are spaces for anxiety and hesitancy, namely with regard to the body. As much as the non-proficient body is rejected within the public space of the performance, the body is involved in a permanent learning process that cannot be publicly articulated. This paper aims to contend notions of familiarity and bodily knowledge in the construction of an imagined community, in order to highlight the challenges and the doubts dancers experience with regard to a very demanding culture of public display. Clubbers of the Caribbean diaspora engage with constant practices of learning and testing old and new steps by virtue of new media technologies; watching professional dancers performing on Youtube allows for the learning to remain private, the anxieties to remain unspeakable, while publicness maintains its secure essentialist façade. This paper aims to address the body and its ambivalences within zouk and dancehall club cultures in Paris.