Dancing in the archive: Bodily encounters, memory, and more‐than‐representational participatory historical geographies

Abstract

AbstractThis paper explores the potential of participatory methods and practices to address the methodological difficulties surrounding the historical geographies of dance, and moving bodies, within archival research. Dance has long challenged traditional notions of the ‘archive’. While non‐representational cultural geographers have privileged dance's ability to generate affect and embodied expression, historical geographers have predominantly struggled to engage with moving bodies through traditionally ‘disembodied’ archives. Ephemeral and embodied, dance escapes conventional historical documentation; this methodological challenge demands a more creative, participatory, and more‐than‐representational approach to historical geography and its privileging of the ‘archive’. Focusing on tap dance and its circum‐Atlantic performance, this paper will explore how bodily encounters with and within the archive can lead to new research questions, through contemporary embodied participation in creative practices. By combining participatory approaches with more‐than‐representational historical geographies, it is possible to reconcile the history and politics of dancing bodies with corporeal and affective dimensions of the past. This dual approach demands working with creative communities as a researcher, in the past and the present, to draw out previously marginalised voices. This paper discusses three specific methods: oral histories and records of lived experiences; approaching the ‘body’ as an archive; and fostering public historical geographies, including walking tours, memorials, and festival participation. The paper finally considers how these participatory approaches work to build memory, community, and place‐making through shared heritage.