Gender in American Protestant Dance: Local and Global Implications

Abstract

In the field of dance studies much discourse surrounds notions of gender identity and women's rights within Western dance traditions. One group of scholars asserts that early modern dance practice successfully resisted patriarchal notions. Another contends that early modern dance perpetuated traditional assumptions. A third perspective proposes that early modern dance realized a simultaneous reiteration and subversion of traditional gender roles. In similar fashion, this paper delineates the parameters of a growing subset in contemporary dance and religious practice, the field of contemporary professional Christian dance, and explores the ways in which these groups reify traditional gender roles through choreographed depictions of rigid gender binaries while simultaneously subverting them through the introduction of the female body and the female voice into the traditionally male-dominated Protestant worship space. In terms of its relevance to global feminisms, contemporary professional Christian dancers reify and subvert traditional gender roles on a global scale through international touring and arts-based missionary outreach programs.