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Paper short abstract:

Dance research has charted various routes by which discursive formations channel unequal power relations of gender, race, and class into aesthetic performance. Through a phenomenological “desire-centered” paradigm, this research traces ways subjects “dance” into being complex personhoods.

Paper long abstract:

Critical Dance research has charted various routes by which discursive formations channel unequal power relations of gender, race, and class into aesthetic performance. In many ethnographic studies, researchers investigate how dancers navigate through coercive scripts, such as those imposed by a state agency or under economic pressures of the touristic gaze. In other ethnographies, the focus is on the performed practice of inequality and the ways in which dancers “play the game” of enacting social scripts of identity. Yet, both approaches often use a “damage-centered” paradigm that situates the underlying ideologies of subject formation through dance as problems to be solved. By refocusing on dance through a phenomenological “desire-centered” (Tuck 2009) paradigm, dance research can trace how subjects negotiate complex social scripts of personhood, as brought into being through dance performance.

Whether staged or social, the discourse of desire shapes dance enactment. This discourse is fluid, and it flows between all the participants: the choreographing subject, the dancing subject, and the perceiving subject. Thus, an identity construct, such as “latinidad,” crosses through various streams of desire, mixing together a “complex personhood” (Gordon 1997) infused with social sediments of diverse densities. A phenomenological “desire-centered” approach comprehends dance in this experience of (in)soluble or (im)miscible components that embody the eddies and flows of social and personal desire.