UC Riverside

My research expands normative understandings of “dancer” by studying ballet(European concert dance), hula (Indigenous Hawaiian dance), and bachata (Dominican social dance). I compare how “dancer” is invoked depending on dance form and context (stage, class, ceremony, home, club) thus giving nuance to “dancer” as a category. In particular, I unpack the ways access, participation, and ideas around home construct dancer identity. To do so, I couple analysis of media representations with practice/lived experiences, utilizing movies, video advertisements, YouTube, and social media, along with social media user comments, interviews, observant participation, and autoethnography. I argue that the identity of “dancer” is not solely obtained by movement – it is also highly contingent on social categories like race/ethnicity and age as well as access to training spaces and notions of “appropriate” participation.

I look across ballet, hula, and bachata to analyze how nonprofessional dancerstrain and participate in different value systems. My ballet chapter contributes to filling the xx iii gap on adult ballet scholarship, working against exclusionary and ageist mechanisms to claim adults as valued and important dancers. Because of the globalization of hula, movement and choreography are pushed into the spotlight while important aspects such as chanting, language, histories, craft, and culture risk being marginalized. My chapter on hula focuses on the many things one must do in order to participate fully and respectfully in hula. My chapter on bachata centers home training (learning dance at home). Stereotypes around social dance as an expression of innate talent and without rigor or technique invisibilize home training and family labor. I intervene by rendering home visible and valid as a training space, family/friends as teachers, and people who learn to dance at home, as dancers. Together, these chapters highlight how nonprofessional dancers acquire technique and how they navigate cultural values. In dance, bodies are regulated by a dominant value system; analyzing who is interpolated as “dancer” allows for an analysis of how value operates. Consequently, understanding and expanding the category of “dancer” nuances how bodies come to matter in life more broadly.