Abstract
In academia dance programs, dance forms, training models, curricula, aesthetic criteria, pedagogic approaches, faculty hires, and student enrollments all function to ascribe the White body with power over Other bodies, Other dance forms, and Other perspectives. As white property, the white dancing body becomes a means to build and maintain another hierarchical structure in academia. In dance history pedagogy, the persistent privileging of the White concert dance canon maintains this norm. Critical analysis of how the Black dancing body was diminished or omitted throughout American concert dance history forms a counter-narrative. Such analysis of dance history leads to its restoration and functions to mediate the asymmetrical power relationship of whiteness over blackness in in concert dance.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Anderson, J. (2018). Ballet and modern dance: A concise history (3rd ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton Book.
Asante, K. W. (Ed.). (1998). African dance: An artistic, historical, and philosophical inquiry. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.
Asante, M. K. (2015). The history of Africa: A quest for eternal harmony (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.
Au, S. (2012). Ballet and modern dance (3rd ed.). New York: Thames & Hudson.
Baldwin, J. (1985). The price of the ticket. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Charbeneau, J. M. (2009). Enactments of whiteness in pedagogical practice: Reproducing and transforming white hegemony in the university classroom (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Database. (AAT 304929724).
Chesler, M., Lewis, A., & Crowfoot, J. (2005). Challenging racism in higher education: Promoting justice. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Collins, C. A. (2002). The middle passage. In Smithsonian Institution (Ed.), Captive passage: The transatlantic slave trade and the making of the Americas (pp. 52–75). Washington, DC/London: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Copeland, M. (2014). Life in motion: An unlikely ballerina. New York: Touchstone.
Daniel, Y. (2005). Dancing wisdom: Embodied knowledge in Haitian Vodou, Cuban Yoruba, and Bahian Candomblé. Urbana, IL/Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Delgado, R., & Stefancic, J. (2012). Critical race theory: An introduction (2nd ed.). New York: New York University Press.
DeFrantz, T. F. (Ed.). (2002). Dancing many drums: Excavations in African American dance. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
DeFrantz, T. F. (2004). Dancing revelations: Alvin Ailey’s embodiment of African American culture. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Desmond, J., & Kindem, G. (Producers), & Kindem, G. (Director). (1987). Chuck Davis, dancing through West Africa [Motion picture]. USA: Filmmakers Library.
Desmond, J. C. (Ed.). (1997). Meaning in motion: New cultural studies of dance. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Fine, M. (1997). Witnessing whiteness. In M. Fine, L. Weis, L. C. Powell, & L. M. Wong (Eds.), Off white: Readings on race, power, and society. New York: Routledge.
Foulkes, J. (2002). Modern bodies: Dance and American modernism from Martha Graham to Alvin Ailey. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina.
Gates, H. L. (2015). Life upon these shores: Looking at African American history. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
George, N. (Director), & Norville, L. (2016). A ballerina’s tale [DVD]. USA: Urban Romances, Inc.
Gottschild, B. D. (1996). Digging the Africanist presence in American performance: Dance and other contexts. Westport, CT: Greenwood.
Gottschild, B. D. (2003). The Black dancing body: A geography from coon to cool. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Glass, B. S. (2007). African American dance: An illustrated history. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co.
Harris, C. I. (1993). Whiteness as property. Harvard Law Review, 106(8), 1707–1791.
Hazzard-Gordon, K. (1990). Jookin’: The rise of social dance formations in African-American culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Herskovits, M. J. (1990). The myth of Negro past. Boston: Beacon Press.
Higher Education Arts Data Services. (2009). Dance annual summary 2008–2009. Reston, VA: National Association of Schools of Dance.
Hughes, L. (1974 [1959]). Note on commerical theatre. Selected poems of Langston Hughes. New York: Vintage Books.
Johnson, R. (1975). Primitivism in the early sculpture of Picasso. Arts Magazine, 49, 64–68.
Kealiinohomoku, J. (1969–1970). An anthropologist looks at ballet as an ethnic form of dance. Impulse Magazine, 24–33. http://digital.library.temple.edu/cdm/ref/collection/p15037coll4/id/2578
Kirstein, L. (1969). Dance: A short history of classic theatrical dancing. Brooklyn, NY: Dance Horizons.
Ladson-Billings, G. (2009). Just what is critical race theory and what’s it doing in a nice field like education? In E. Taylor, D. Gillborn, & G. Ladson-Billings (Eds.), Foundations of critical race theory in education (pp. 17–36). New York: Routledge.
Lyon, C. (1989, Autumn). A shared vision: An introduction to Picasso and Braque: Pioneering cubism. Museum of Modern Art, 2(2), 7–13.
Manning, S. (2004). Modern dance, Negro dance: Race in motion. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota.
McCarthy-Brown, N. (2011). Dancing in the margins: Experiences of African American ballerinas. Journal of African American Studies, 15(3), 385–408.
Molloy, M. (2010). Experiencing the world’s religions: Tradition, challenge, and change (5th ed.). New York: McGraw Hill.
Omi, M., & Winant, H. (1994). Racial formation in the United States. New York: Routledge.
Perpener, J. (2001). African-American concert dance: The Harlem renaissance and beyond. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois.
Reynolds, N., & McCormick, M. (2003). No fixed points: Dance in the twentieth century. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Sachs, C., & Schönberg, B. (1963). World history of the dance. New York: W.W. Norton.
Schwartz, P., & Schwartz, M. (2011). The dance claimed me: A biography of Pearl Primus. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Singleton, G. E., & Linton, C. (2006). Courageous conversations about race: A field guide for achieving equity in the schools. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Smedley, A., & Smedley, B. D. (2005). Race as biology is fiction, racism as a social problem is real: Anthropological and historical perspectives on the social construction of race. American Psychologist, 60(1), 16–26.
Smithsonian Institution. (2002). Captive passage: The transatlantic slave trade and the making of the Americas. Washington, DC/London: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Stanley, C. (2006). Coloring the landscape: Faculty of color breaking the silence in predominately white colleges and universities. American Educational Journal, 43(4), 701–736.
Stearns, M. W., & Stearns, J. (1968). Jazz dance: The story of American vernacular dance. New York: Macmillan.
Stearns, M. W., & Sterns, J. (1994). Jazz dance: The story of American vernacular dance. New York: Da Capo Press.
Tatum, B. D. (2009). Teaching White students about racism: The search for White allies and the restoration of hope. In E. Taylor, E. Gillborn, & G. Ladson-Billings (Eds.), Foundations of critical race theory in education (pp. 277–288). New York: Routledge.
Thompson, R. F. (1974). African art in motion: Icon and act. Los Angeles: University of California.
Thompson, R. F. (1983). Flash of the spirit: African & Afro-American art & philosophy. New York: Vintage Books.
Welsh, K. A. (Ed.). (1998). African dance: An artistic, historical and philosophical inquiry. Trenton, NJ: African World Press, Inc.
Wood, P. (n.d.). Gimme de knee bone bent: African body language and the evolution of American dance forms. Retrieved from http://www.thirteen.org/freetodance/behind/behind_gimme.html
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kerr-Berry, J. (2018). Counterstorytelling in Concert Dance History Pedagogy: Challenging the White Dancing Body. In: Kraehe, A., Gaztambide-Fernández, R., Carpenter II, B. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Race and the Arts in Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65256-6_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65256-6_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-65255-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-65256-6
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)