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Prancing Babushkas and Twirling Lawn Mowers: Dancing the Polka Down Main Street

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2013

Carrie Stern
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Abstract

A long, physicalized Polish joke marches through Whiting, Indiana's, Pierogi Fest. Traditional in form, this parade embraces once malicious stereotypes. Having assimilated “American” ways of moving and behaving in order to “belong,” the children of Eastern European immigrants are now secure, invisible in their whiteness. An in-joke, the parade humorously, lovingly embraces immigrant characters. Altering their carriage and movement style, the paraders reclaim ancestral bodies. In doing so this community gains an identity denied by homogenous “whiteness.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Congress on Research in Dance Conference Proceedings , Volume 39 , supplement S1: Choreographies Of Migration: Patterns Of Global Mobility , 2007 , pp. 193 - 199
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2007

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References

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