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Vai Sambar! American Meaning Making in Afro-Brazilian Dance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2013

Jessica Damon
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Abstract

This paper describes the interaction between an American community of dancers and the wave of Afro-Brazilian influence that entered that community. Through personal experience, academic research, community observation, and conversations, the author examines the role of samba and the religious dances of the orixds within a suburban white community, highlighting how meaning is changed and constructed based on cultural context. The author emphasizes how women in this community responded to the political, social, and sexual implications of a non-native dance form, and how their resulting self-identification as a community was transformed. The essay questions how Americans can locate themselves within the greater cultural context of samba and other Afro-Brazilian dance forms, not simply as cultural outsiders but as women deeply connected to the unique American reality of these practices.

Type
Research Article
Information
Congress on Research in Dance Conference Proceedings , Volume 40 , supplement S1: Dance Studies and Global Feminisms , 2008 , pp. 49 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2008

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References

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