Drid Williams

The Body, Dance and Cultural Theory

Helen Thomas depends uncritically and heavily on Bryan Turner’s sociological theory of human sociocultural life [12–17, 20–24, 28–30, 53, 62, 94, 166, 217] and on Bourdieu’s theory of habitus [20, 51, 56–58, 87, 117–118, 150, 165, 171, 206, 226]. She not only shoulders the ontological burdens not only of Turner’s and Bourdieu’s work, but Sheets-Johnstone’s phenomenological approach to dancing as well. I believe that many students of sociology, cultural studies, or the dance do not know that Bryan Turner’s attempt to recover human agency through embodiment rests on the notion that ‘‘the effectiveness of persons in socio-cultural life resides in the discourse-independent agency of the bodies of persons,’’ or that the search Turner undertook (important though it was in itself), led him to Merleau-Pontian phenomenology and the concept of the ‘‘lived-body’’ [Varela 1999: 385]. I think many students do not know that Bourdieu’s concept of habitus ‘‘is theoretically problematic from the perspective of a realist philosophy of science,’’ and ‘‘Habitus turns out to be a hypothetical cognitive and transcendent causal nexus that has no ontological grounding because it exists somewhere between neurophysiology and the person’’ [Farnell 2000: 412, italics added]. I wonder if Thomas realizes that, when talking about dancers in a lecture setting (‘‘they were indeed listening with and through their bodies’’ [2003: 92]), she appears to endorse Sheets-Johnstone’s concept of ‘‘bodily logos.’’ The problems are addressed in that order.

In the Shadow of Hollywood Orientalism: Authentic East Indian Dancing

What is the difference between “hoofing for a buck” and performing authentic dances from other cultures? Is it true that “authentic reconstructions” are “too arty” for cabaret, film, and nightclub entertainment? And what happens when moves from authentic dance forms are appropriated, distorted, and so changed that they are unrecognizable to originators and practitioners of the form? These and other questions regarding commercialism, Orientalism, and authenticity are addressed in this essay, which finally contextualizes them in current postmodern discourse. Drawing upon Adrienne McLeans admirable essay, “The Thousand Ways there are to Move: Camp and Oriental Dance in the Hollywood Musicals of Jack Cole” from Bernstein and Studlars Visions of the East: Orientalism in Film [1997], I examine several provocative subjects: “Paying the Piper;” “Language Analogies and Wannabees;” and “Knowers and the Known.” I reach a provisional conclusion that, to anyone whose conception of East Indian dancing is based upon Hollywoods Orientalism, authentic work goes unrecognized and is often viewed as strange because it does not confirm to the images of “Hindu routines,” “Oriental (or Exotic) dance,” or “American Show Dancing.”

The credibility of movement‐writing

The author first defended the credibility of movement‐writing in Chapter 2, Section 3, of a B.Litt.1 thesis entitled Social Anthropology and [the] Dance, [Oxford, U.K., 1972]. Seven theoretical criteria from Nelson Goodmans Languages of Art [1969] were used to illustrate to examiners who knew nothing about movement‐writing in any form that Labans system was not merely a mnemonic device. The guts of the chapter are revived in the following essay because of long‐standing, still‐existing confusion about the relations between movement‐writing and research and between “notation” and “writing” with regard to human movement studies.

Modes of Continuity and Change in Action Sign Systems

ABSTRACT This paper opens with stories of continuity and change from ethnographic accounts. It proceeds to a brief examination of the use of film as a recording device for action sign systems, then to the work of two archaeologists in the field of dance and human movement. Next, the recording of sign languages is examined, and finally a case of recent transformation of a ritual (the Dominican rite of the Catholic Mass) is explored, followed by an exposure of some of the reasons why “transformations” occur in rituals, dances, and sign languages throughout the world. Despite the growing interest among the human sciences in bodies, the notion of moving persons and their signifying acts/actions tends to remain absent from ethnographic accounts and sociocultural theory. Once it is realized that (1) people enact their selves to each other in words, movement, and other modes of action, and that (2) all human selves are culturally defined, as time/space itself is culturally defined, it then becomes possible to develop strategies for a systematic investigation of human actions. It is argued that the adoption of movement literacy not only as a methodological resource, but as a further development in the evolution of social scientific disciplines, seems necessary. When literacy enters the picture, the understanding of continuity and change in patterned human movement across time will finally come into its own.

Style in the Dance and Human Movement Studies

This article ultimately identifies style in the dance and human movement studies by contrasting it with technique in various dance forms. The essay concludes that “style” in dance forms (and other physical activities) is centered in the human capacity for language use, which permits the construction of personal identities and self-awareness.

Bollywood: Postmodernism's Legacy to the International Dance World

Postmodernism in the American dance world began in the 1960s, largely through the influence of Sally Banes (affected by Susan Sontags ideas about “a transparent art”), and had adverse effects, worldwide, on traditional forms of dancing in the sphere of commercial dancing. The results are especially apparent in movies produced by an Indian conglomerate of film companies known as “Bollywood” and its namesakes. The author argues that “Bollywood dance” is a debased version of traditional Indian culture that is both nihilistic and meaningless. At the same time, it provides valuable insights into a “pseudo-modern world” [Kirby 2006] and globalized marketing economics. Several postcolonialist writers enter the discussion because they object to formerly colonized peoples represented as “hollow mimics” of the Western world; however, the author suggests that they are simply praising other cultures at the expense of their own. She concludes with a quotation from Henrik Ibsens play, An Enemy of the People [1928 (1882)].

The Sorrow of the Dance Analysts

This discussion criticizes an outdated style of writing about dances and rituals in New Guinea, a difficult task because this area of the world has produced excellent writers on the same subject, notably “Buck” Schieffelins The Sorrow of the Lonely and the Burning of the Dancers (1976). The reasons for failure are given as the review proceeds in the hope that others may gain insights into writing about a difficult and often intractable subject.

A Review of: “McLean, Adrienne L. Being Rita Hayworth: Labor, Identity, and Hollywood Stardom.”

Adrienne McLean says, ‘‘To write about a historical movie star’s subjectivity, then, will mean always, if not only, to seek and to consider the discursive signs that at once indicate and produce struggles between being and doing, between working at making films and working at having a private life, between defining oneself and being defined by others’’ [3]. McLean stimulates her readers’ interest in how Rita Hayworth’s subjectivity ‘‘as worker and woman and the commercial discourses in which [her subjectivity] was produced and located interact with Hollywood’s own labor power differences and with the social tensions and concerns of the culture at large’’ [3]. She also discusses the ways Hayworth ‘‘has been positioned and made use of within academic film studies, particularly feminist film studies’’ [4]. The problem (beyond those working in film studies) consists of the many people (such as critics, gossip columnists, writers of fan magazine articles, fans themselves, newspaper reporters, and others) who ‘‘hesitate to grant anything resembling subjectivity and agency to a female star image’’—much less to a star so well-known ‘‘for her commodification, objectification, passivity and one dimensionality as a performer and pin-up’’ [4]. Having said that, it is hard to know where to begin. This book is praiseworthy in all aspects of the subject. I recommend that cultural and social anthropologists read it because of its emphasis on the construction of meaning. The dance world, too, should be interested, not only because of the images of dancers, dancing and dances that the work conveys, but specifically because of McLean’s cogent discussion about the collaboration between Valerie Bettis and Rita Hayworth [172–197]. McLean’s treatment of the disparity between the constructed image and the person [81], and thus of Rita Hayworth’s struggle to define self and identity [6], amid the processes of commodification and their influence on modes of subjectivity, seems to me unexceptionable. McLean asserts that the visibility of women on the screen becomes a sign of their invisibility as historical women and as agents at work in the world [5], emphasizing the subjectivities that are located in the actions and responses of spectators in relation to the film image: ‘‘Hollywood films . . .determine and produce their own concepts of ethnicity Visual Anthropology, 18: 485–488, 2005 Copyright # Taylor & Francis Inc. ISSN: 0894-9468 print=1545-5920 online DOI: 10.1080/08949460590958455

Waltzing in the dark

Dixon Gottschild, Brenda. Waltzing in the Dark: African American Vaudeville and Race Politics in the Swing Era. New York: St. Martins Press, 2000: xii + 270 pp., notes, bibliography, index and 9 pages of photographs between pp. 106–107.

Anthropology and the Dance: Ten Lectures

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