Counterstorytelling in Concert Dance History Pedagogy: Challenging the White Dancing Body

Abstract

In academia dance programs, dance forms, training models, curricula, aesthetic criteria, pedagogic approaches, faculty hires, and student enrollments all function to ascribe the White body with power over Other bodies, Other dance forms, and Other perspectives. As white property, the white dancing body becomes a means to build and maintain another hierarchical structure in academia. In dance history pedagogy, the persistent privileging of the White concert dance canon maintains this norm. Critical analysis of how the Black dancing body was diminished or omitted throughout American concert dance history forms a counter-narrative. Such analysis of dance history leads to its restoration and functions to mediate the asymmetrical power relationship of whiteness over blackness in in concert dance.