Throughout the United States and Canada people go to Native American intertribal powwows. At powwows women, men, and children execute rhythmic movement, drumming, and song as they experience and express sensory stimuli. The aroma of sage incense pervades as Indians and non-Indians socialize, share fry bread, and sell, buy, or “window shop” at concession stands. Vendors display T-shirts, fur, turquoise, silver, and beaded jewelry as well as artwork, CDs, and Ecuadorian and Peruvian items. All participants enjoy storytelling, comedy skits, Indian rap and country music performances, and Mexican “Aztec” dance presentations alongside rituals such as giveaways, the Eagle ceremony, or the Veterans dance. These social and spiritual celebrations occur in increasing numbers across North America. In the tristate region of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut alone, from 1995 to 2001, the number of powwow events has tripled.

Every Friday and Saturday night during the 1930s and 1940s in southern Alberta everybody danced, or so the story goes. And that is about as far as “the story” goes. Serious considerations of popular dancing are largely absent from existing historical records of this time and place, despite the apparent omnipresence of dancing in so many people's lives. Social dancing happened on a large scale at a pivotal time for community formation in Canada's West, when profound social changes occurred as the Depression gave way to World War II. What was going on besides and through and because of all that dancing? And how to investigate such an ephemeral phenomenon?

Today, I can still stand in the Trianon Ballroom in Lethbridge, Alberta's third largest city and the center of the region I will discuss here. The Trianon first opened its doors as a dance hall in 1931 and ceased operating in 1961. In the 1930s and 1940s literally hundreds of little Trianon-like halls graced small Canadian prairie towns, although most of these dance halls have since disappeared. In Lethbridge alone, four major dancing establishments were packed with patrons dancing to live bands on as many as three nights a week, the YMCA offered hostess dances for military personnel, the Kiwanis club gave teen dances every Friday night, and one could dance at the Masonic Hall and in local hotels (Viel 1998, 24).

On a table placed in the center of the stage squats a woman dressed in a rust-colored dress. The focus of the lighting on her, which keeps the rest of the performance space darkened, underscores her presence in isolation. Her arms are stretched out in front, parallel to each other, reaching to no one. The palms are rigid, the separated fingers are taut with tension. Her voice reaches out in a deep undertone, the mouth opens wide to enunciate each word by itself, reinforcing the strange disconnectedness between the relaxation of her lower back and pelvis, and the tension of her upper body, the emphasized separation between her fingers. Her eyebrows are raised, furrowing multiple lines of puzzled anguish across her forehead. Almost motionless, her eyes wide open and unflickering in the trembling light of the candle that is placed in front of her on the table, she speaks in near-choked baritones:

1947 was the year Jack Cole created Sing, Sing, Sing to the recording made famous by “King of Swing” Benny Goodman and his Big Band. “[We] kicked, spun, slammed and slid on our knees for seven minutes in true Jack Cole style,” said Rod Alexander about the dance performed by the Jack Cole Dancers when it premiered in New York at the Latin Quarter (Loney 1984, 85). “Everyone came off the floor, gasped, and threw up. It was a ball-breaker, a number that asked the impossible,” remembered Buzz Miller (Miller 1992). Described by critics as “a dance in the style of Harlem” (Martin 1947) and “a primitive dance of primitive ecstasy” (Terry 1947b), Sing, Sing, Sing was a stylized Lindy Hop, or jitterbug, that popular swing-era social dance that flung and flipped partners into “breakaway” solos and daring “air” steps. More than a step, the jitterbug was a style, a state of mind: a violent, even frenzied athleticism made it hazardous, exciting, sexual, cathartic; the jitterbugger became synonymous with the “hepcat,” a swing addict. Sing, Sing, Sing, however, was not a pat reproduction of the jitterbug. Cole had captured and distilled its energetic spirit. He codified its movement, disciplined its form, tamed and readied it for the stage.

The spectacular popularity of Riverdance in 1994, in Ireland and abroad, prompted critical reflection on notions of cultural authenticity, ethnicity, and identity. The attention focused on step dance led to increased discussions of national characteristics. This essay argues that the perceptions of Irish step dance, at first local, then nationalized and globally exported, reflect larger issues of relevance to the Irish state. Although these perceptions have influenced the development of Irish step dance locally, nationally, and globally, the dance practices themselves have assisted in molding and maintaining these same perceptions. I will illustrate how the commodification of Irish step dance practice, particularly during the past five years, has acted as a major catalyst for the emergence of marginal dance practices and has reenergized the Irish step dance tradition. Throughout this essay, I use the expression “marginal dance practice” to contrast with competition dance culture, which I interpret as the mainstream, accepted canon.

Although no one grand theory of globalization exists, considerable thinking on the subject has emerged over the past several decades among theorists from both the humanities and the social sciences. The term “globalization” appeared in the mid-1980s to replace others such as “internationalization” and “transnationalization” as a description for our ever shrinking world and the perceived process of “cultural homogenization on a global scale” (Hoogvelt 1997, 114; King 1991, viii). Different paradigms exist in the literature and, for the most part, they fall within two areas: international relations and world-system-theory.

The excellent body of literature on African-American (or black) expressive culture often refers to the importance of improvisation in black vernacular dancing. In their discussion of key precepts upon which black vernacular dancing is based, Marshall and Jean Stearns explain that dance in the African diaspora “places great importance upon improvisation, satirical and otherwise, allowing freedom for individual expression; this characteristic makes for flexibility and aids the evolution and diffusion of other African characteristics” (1968, 15). Jacqui Malone notes that black vernacular dancing is “an additive process…a way of experimenting with new ideas; that mindset is Africa's most important contribution to the Western Hemisphere” (1996, 33). She goes on to declare:

The overwhelming stench of alcohol hovers in the hotel bathroom as my dance partner lathers a fourth layer of brown body paint onto my belly. “You have to learn how to apply your tan properly,” he admonishes sternly as I squirm under the sting of chemicals burning my skin. After rejecting twelve self-tanning products, I have finally found one that stains my fair skin dark enough for me to “pass” as a professional Latin dancesport competitor. Dancesport refers to a highly stylized version of ballroom dancing performed in competition circuits across the United States, Europe, and Asia. International Style Dancesport encompasses both the standard category, comprised of dances most readily associated with aristocratic ballrooms (e.g., waltzes and foxtrots), and the Latin division. Among the many rituals I scoff at in this sport I love to hate is the mandate that any competitor who wishes to be taken seriously must cover his or her body with brown paint. At twenty-seven dollars a bottle, the German made PROFI-TAN-Intensive-Latin-Color is my product of choice. After three generous coats of the bronze elixir have absorbed into my skin, my “brownface” is complete, and I am ready to withstand an entire evening of competition cha-chas.

Almost since the inception of moving pictures, those pictures have often featured dance. The obvious reason for this is that the natural subject of moving pictures is movement. And dances—along with hurtling locomotives, car chases, cattle stampedes, tennis matches, intergalactic dog-fights, and the like—move. Thus, a significant portion of the history of moving pictures involves dance movement. Many moving-picture makers have devoted admirable amounts of effort and imagination to portraying dance in or through media as diverse as film, video, and computer animation. The purpose of this essay is to attempt to offer a philosophical characterization of this field of activity; that is, I will try to define moving-picture dance.

Many readers, learning of my intention, are apt to groan “labeling again, how boring.” To a certain extent I can sympathize with that sentiment. It is far more interesting to talk about work than it is to set about classifying it. The concrete achievements of the field are more important than abstractions about it. Nevertheless, despite my ready acknowledgment of this, I will persist for several reasons.

First, whenever festivals of this sort of work are held, it is very likely that at one time or another almost everyone present will be tempted to say of some work that it doesn't really belong on the program. Everyone complains about labeling, but sooner or later most people feel compelled to invoke some favorite definition of their own. For human beings, categorizations are unavoidable, even if we like to pretend indifference to them. And most of us can feign indifference only for so long; most of us have a breaking point. Thus, it seems to me a good idea to get this issue out in the open and to discuss it abstractly—to compare and contrast the various categorizations in play and to develop dialectically from them a comprehensive framework that makes sense of our practices and that resonates with our intuitions about its compass.

In writing this paper, we—Jill Crosby and Ann Dils—render into text six years of sporadic dialogues. Through our explanation and examination of the 1994 movement analysis and description project that began our exchanges and discussion of subsequent readings, we hope to explore important aspects of dance studies research. Our use and understanding of Laban-based movement analysis as a tool for understanding movement as it is felt and observed, awareness of concepts of dialogue and the dialogical process as potential frameworks, critical lenses, and theoretical bases for dance studies research, and adaptation of the interpretive paradigm to suit dance research are especially important to this exploration. Little of our text is written in dialogue form (Crosby:, Dils:); rather, we hope, by drawing examples from our project, Crosby's dissertation, and the works of other researchers, to capture the bubbling-up of understanding that stems from the cooperative and confrontational exchanges of dance studies research.

Over a three-month period in 1994, we conducted a movement analysis and description project as part of Crosby's work for her doctoral dissertation, “Will the Real Jazz Dance Please Stand Up? A Critical Examination of the Roots and Essence of Jazz Dance with Implications for Education.” Crosby investigated the aesthetic shapings of jazz expression inclusive of its West African roots from a cross-disciplinary perspective, using ethnographic methods as tools for understanding artistic form (Crosby 1995). An arts educator and dancer, Crosby wanted to establish a pool of descriptive and potentially inherent characteristics for music-based jazz dance. These characteristics would comprise a personal definition for the form and provide Crosby with a point of departure for a discussion of jazz as a movement tradition.

The media attention surrounding Raves in the last couple of years has brought the subject of nightlife and dancing to the foreground of American consciousness. Yet even as dancing and nightlife were enjoying renewed popularity, a national crackdown on clubs was taking place. Almost concurrently, and partly in response to the crackdown, a nostalgia movement arose among the new generation of clubbers for the Utopian ethos of the 1970s and 1980s “Underground-House” scene. These new “Househeads” yearned for the carefully cultivated constructs of the “family,” the “vibe,” and the distinctive styles of House music and dancing—all of which they were attempting to recreate in their parties in 2001. Since the September 11 terrorist attack and its devastating aftershocks, the longing for a safer, golden past has intensified. As eloquently demonstrated by the tremendous popularity during the Depression of escapist movies, in hard times people seek good times and the reassurance of nonviolent congregations.

During the fall of 2000, I met with Bio, a thirty-four-year-old writer from the Bronx, at his studio in Hunt's Point. He was once the embodiment of the graffiti hero, a young vandal, illegally bombing New York subway's No. 6 IRT line as part of the Tough and Talented (or TATS) CRU. “We started at the height of the scene,” he reminisces in an interview with Mhari Saito. “There was so much painting going on, with everyone talking to each other” (Saito 1996, 2). But things began to change under the heavy fist of the city's antigraffiti campaigns. With the advent of the new paint-resistant metal subway cars, or “ding-dongs,” in 1987, TATS CRU and other writers were driven out of the subway and above ground. Rather than living the myth of the New York graffiti writer, committing beautiful acts of transgression against social law and accepted order, Bio was forced to give up the struggle.

In 1995, Bio and two lifelong friends, BG 183 and Nicer, transformed their graffiti into a commercial enterprise, marketing their skills to private interests and corporate advertisers. The three writers refounded (and renamed) their group as Top Artistic Talent's Cm, Inc., now an advertising agency commissioned to create graffiti for business murals and billboards, rap music backdrops, and video sets. In the past decade, the group's transition has proved financially successful. They have painted fifty murals for Coca-Cola throughout the New York area and are working on a project for the House of Seagram's. Local churches, schools, and individuals also hire the agency to create public murals and memorial walls (plate 1).

For B-boys and B-girls in the South Bronx in the early 1980s, this type of event was common. This cardboard square became a haven for self-expression and hope, a source of life. Within these rings of familiar faces, young black and Latino teenagers, almost exclusively male, used breakdance—in Nelson George's words “a serious game, a form of urban vernacular dance” (George 1985, 83)—to earn respect and authority in a neighborhood that provoked feelings of insignificance and hopelessness. Hip hop dance, George continues, “symbolizes hope for the future…. As Fab Five Freddy puts it…what's at stake is a guy's honor and his position in the street. Which is all you have. That's what makes it so important, that's what makes it feel so good” (George 1985, 111). For male teenagers growing up in poor, dangerous neighborhoods, the desire to become someone, to overcome and make it out as a somebody is a powerful drive.

Bronx teenagers found their voices through their bodies. They built up and perfected a large vocabulary of hip hop moves to communicate a wide variety of emotions and messages. Each move merged with the next to create a fluid, poetic language. From the inception of the hip hop culture, and persisting through its various eras—”Old School to the New School through gangsta rap to the latest innovators” (Bing 1998, 58)—hip hop dance has provided the arena for the expression and affirmation of masculinity. Built into this artistry is competition and domination, sexuality and libido, and hero worship.