Dance Floor Research Articles

Science at the Club: Putrefaction as an artistic medium

Science at the Club explores the architecture of the nightclub space as a nucleus for queer testimony, relating it to a judiciary courtroom. This performance challenges legal doctrines of forensic identification and the binary of life and death, by transforming biological and forensic material into ephemeral essences within the performance of the dance floor. Divided into a case study surrounding my performances at nightclubs, research courses taken in human remains recovery and visits to various burial sites of South Texas, I pull from a variety of interdisciplinary studies relating to queer death theory, building on José Esteban Muñoz’s notion of ‘disidentification’ in relation to the human corpse, racial politics in science and the biological arts in a nightclub context. Science at the Club creates a catalyst platform challenging racial and scientific histories of the body and land within the current US political climate, while exploring questions of resurrection and disintegration with a focus on the language of forensics and identity.

In Memoriam: Duane L. Garner, PhD.

In Memoriam: Duane L. Garner, PhD.

The female body on the dance floor

Using dance perspective and Homi Bhabha’s postcolonial ambivalence theory, this study re-reads the events that occurred during the banquet at Herod’s house. Unlike previous perspectives that focuses on the gruesome murder of John by Herod, the study focuses on the banquet that resulted in the young girl to dance to the point whereby, having been intoxicated and greatly amused, Herod asks the girl what she can have as a reward. By intersecting the female body that culturally signifies gender inferiority to its ambivalence as a subject of attraction and pleasure, I develop the hypothesis that the body through its dance regained its power by becoming a somewhat equal patron; negotiating its rights and being the source of an alternative and yet subversive power. Instead of the female body being a source merely of the male’s gaze and pleasure, it attained agency and power.

Behind the Scenes of ESDR

Behind the Scenes of ESDR

Using Zoning as a Public Health Tool to Reduce Alcohol Outlet Oversaturation, Promote Compliance, and Guide Future Enforcement: a Preliminary Analysis of Transform Baltimore.

Alcohol outlet oversaturation often exacerbates negative public health outcomes. Recently, Baltimore City passed an extensive zoning rewrite ("TransForm Baltimore") that sought to give local government and residents a tool to reduce alcohol outlet oversaturation through land use regulation. The present investigation evaluated the outlet and neighborhood characteristics of stores impacted by two components of TransForm Baltimore: (1) a requirement that taverns licensed for on-premise consumption in addition to off-premise, carryout sales generate at least 50% of their business from on-premise sales, and (2) a requirement to close, repurpose, or relocate all package stores (i.e., off-premise alcohol outlets) that have been operating as "non-conforming" in residential zones since 1971. Research assistants visited every off-premise alcohol outlet in the city (n = 685) to complete an observational assessment. Approximately 77% (n = 530) of these off-premise alcohol outlets were open, including 292 taverns and 238 package stores. t tests and chi-square tests were used to compare neighborhood characteristics (neighborhood disadvantage, median household income, and racial segregation) of sham taverns (i.e., taverns with less than 50% space dedicated for on-premise sales that were primarily operating as a package store) and non-conforming package stores. Of the 292 taverns accessible during the study, the remainder were chronically closed (n = 130); 24 (8.2%) were deemed sham taverns. Sham taverns were more likely to be located in communities with more economic disadvantage and lower median household income (t test; p < 0.05). Compared to taverns, a lower proportion of sham taverns had visible dance floor space, patrons drinking, and menus available (chi-square test; p < 0.001). There were 80 residentially zoned, non-conforming alcohol outlets. These non-conforming alcohol outlets were disproportionately distributed in predominately poor and African American communities (t test; p < 0.05). As compared to conforming alcohol outlets, more non-conforming alcohol outlets sold sex paraphernalia and healthy foods (chi-square test; p < 0.05). With active enforcement, TransForm Baltimore offers the opportunity for local government and residents to improve public health and increase health equity in vulnerable and marginalized neighborhoods.

A Slippery Stage: Tensions and Solidarities in the Cairo Cabaret

This ethnographic case study viscerally explores the micro-level of tactics, tensions, and insights cabaret dancers offer in regard to macro-level gender, class, sexuality, and nationality politics within Cairo, Egypt. As the night wears on in a Pyramid Street cabaret, the dancer’s stage becomes increasingly slippery, not just from five-pound notes littered across the dance floor, but from the increasingly volatile intra-MENA male clientele, who contentiously perform their masculinities and nationalist identities through tahayas (greetings) and tipping. As the tipping wars become more heated, the cabaret ra’asa (female dancer), remains the centrifugal force in precariously performing, playing, and being policed by these intersectionally vexed power plays. This case study comes from larger Critical Dance Studies and Middle Eastern Studies ethnographic fieldwork in Cairo; it explores the ways raqs sharqi and other marginalized moving bodies engage with slippery possibilities despite and amidst the tensions of precarious political and economic transformations Egypt has been experiencing since the 2011 revolution.

Techno’s Sexual Counter-Space: Ecstasy and Electronics as Technologies of White Sex

This article aims to lift the veil on white sexuality by studying how young people ‘perform’ this within the Rotterdam techno scene. It relies on previous work that has highlighted that white sexuality is, like whiteness itself, rarely recognized, let alone referred to as white. This is also true of the sexuality practised by young people in the techno world. Our extensive observations and in-depth interviews conducted for this study identified that both ravers and cultural studies scholars construct an image of techno as a sexual ‘counter-space’ in which erotic agency can be experienced away from the confines of traditional hook-up sex. This space, they argue, is produced by the affective powers of ecstasy and electronics, which help young ravers to have a heightened sense of control over their sexual impulses, muting sexual desires that lead to hooking-up and, simultaneously, enabling them to feel ‘loved-up’ on themselves on the dance floor. We contend that, with discourses like these, ravers unintentionally reproduce white superiority in the ways they claim transcendence over their own sexual culture and corporeality.

Dance Floor Divas: Fieldwork, Fabulating and Fathoming in Queer Bangalore

Tracing his encounters with one particular song during fieldwork on queer nightlife in Bangalore, the author argues for the usefulness of ethnography as a critical method for studying dance and other modes of fun, play and pleasure in South Asia. He argues that ethnography’s many modes (co-performance, interview, observation, auto-ethnography) evidence how expressive practices integrate into the multiple strata of everyday life and political-economy, and how these cultural expressions facilitate inventions of new selves and worlds. While popular, improvised and social dances are challenging to study given their ephemerality, ethnography deepens our understanding of them and allows us to engage in creative dialogue in fieldwork.

Kizomba beyond Angolan-ness and Lusofonia: The transnational dance floor

ABSTRACTThe partner dance kizomba became fashionable in the eighties in Portuguese-speaking Africa and its European diasporas. Its commodification in Portugal in the late nineties turned it into a global craze, supported by a linear story: Angola is the source of kizomba, and Lisbon, its international capital. This essay moves beyond the methodological nationalism and the post-imperial geographical concept, lusofonia, that supports this narrative. Examining instead the circulation of people and practices through sites conceptualized as “hubs,” I present kizomba as a transnational field of practices deriving from deep histories of transoceanic, inter-African connections. Presenting Lisbon as the main hub for kizomba during the eighties and nineties, I develop the idea of the transnational dance floor, webbed across cities and connected through transnational ties that challenge post-imperial and linguistic geographies. Thus, despite the essay's ostensible Lisbon-centrism, I propose building collaborative geographies whereby transnational phenomena such as kizomba may best be examined.

On the Dance Floor, on the Screen, on the Stage: Popular Music in the Interwar Period: Polish, Jewish, Shared

On the Dance Floor, on the Screen, on the Stage: <i>Popular Music in the Interwar Period: Polish, Jewish, Shared</i>

Dreams of Germany: Musical Imaginaries from the Concert Hall to the Dance Floor ed. by Neil Gregor and Thomas Irvine

Dreams of Germany: Musical Imaginaries from the Concert Hall to the Dance Floor ed. by Neil Gregor and Thomas Irvine

Mi Casa es Su Casa: Cubanía in Cyberspace

Mi Casa es Su CasaCubanía in Cyberspace Sarah Town (bio) On March 13, 2020, I spent the final evening of my trip to Havana, Cuba with friends at Le Select, a restaurant in Miramar where the organization Proyecto Rueda de Casino hosts a weekly dance social. Rueda de casino is a social dance that emerged in 1950s Cuba and is one of the most popular forms of Cuban social dance both on and off the island today. It is danced in a rueda, or "wheel" formation, in which pairs of dancers form a circle and execute known patterns and combinations in unison. The crowd at Le Select tends to be a mix of older social dancers and younger friends of the Proyecto dancers, but that night the dance floor was rather empty, with just a few regulars stepping out song after song. Over the previous few days, news of the spread of COVID-19 in Europe and the United States had circulated with increasing urgency. Cuba had just announced the first four confirmed cases on its soil, diagnosed in Italian tourists who had been quickly quarantined. Rumors that recreational venues and events would soon be closed gradually became more concrete, and that night at Le Select, we counted ourselves among the lucky ones for having been able to get in "one last dance" before the shutdown. The next day as I waited for my connecting flight at Miami International Airport, notifications of impending travel restrictions and shutdown orders in Europe and the United States flashed persistently across the screen of my cellphone, and I prepared myself mentally to go into isolation for the duration. Over the next week, as this new reality set in, there was a surge of activity on social media. In particular, artists took to these networks to offer an unprecedented number of free and donation-based live shows and classes, to pursue innovative modes of collaboration, and to continue interacting with their audiences in the face of closed venues and canceled tours. Producers and fans of Cuban popular dance culture on the island and around the world contributed to this surge, mobilizing with creativity and resilience. Their goal was to exercise the role of artistic leaders by lifting people's spirits and encouraging people to stay home during the pandemic. On a more personal level, their online activities helped them to stay active, inspired, and positive during a time when generalized [End Page 99] health and financial uncertainty compounded the usual precarity of artistic lives in tangible ways. Decades ago, Fernando Ortiz defined cubanía as "full, felt, conscious, and desired Cubanness; responsible Cubanness, Cubanness with the three virtues […] of faith, hope, and love."1 Cubanía in cyberspace, then, is an extension of in-the-flesh spaces and relationships that have long fostered a global community, which has continued to flourish in recent months, strengthening those ties, producing new experiences for its participants, and gesturing toward a new, translocal kind of soundscape.2 Musicians and dancers have created songs and choreographies explicitly referencing and making sense of COVID-19 realities; existing organizations have curated new online #quedateencasa and #stayathome series, and new networks have sprung up to produce such series; teachers have shifted their teaching to online platforms like Zoom and Facebook; and community leaders have offered informal lectures online in their areas of expertise. At the same time, this burgeoning of online offerings raises a number of critical questions about present-day US society's troubled relationship with the arts, Cuban access to and use of Wi-Fi and internet-related technologies, and the life of the global Cuban dance community. Many COVID-19 inspired offerings have built directly on preexisting practices. For example, dance teachers and choreographers of the Cuban diaspora commonly share brief clips on social media of new choreographies to promote themselves and their work. Early on in the generalized quarantine, Cuban dancer Nano Manuel Hechavarría Ulloa, now based in Ness Ziona, Israel, offered a new choreography called "The Corona Dance."3 Set in a back patio—one imagines it's his—the clip heralded a new, intensified era of home video making by working artists. For music...

Vertical ground reaction force while performing an Indian classical dance, ldquo;Bharatanatyamrdquo;- A biomechanical study comparing three different surfaces

Introduction: Surface hardness of the dance floor has been implicated as a cause of repetitive strain injuries.The study aims to determine the peak ground reaction forces(GRF) on three different surfaces Wood (WD), Granite (GR) and Rubberised Polyvinyl (PV) Flooring) while performing Bharatanatyam. Methods: Five pre professional dancers performed dance step [Tatta Adavu] and a jump over three different surfaces fixed over two identical force plates. The Peak GRF forces during the dance step from the right lower limb was acquired. Analysis was done with one-way ANOVA for three independent groups p-value (0.05). Conclusion: A non-resilient surface and an elastic surface both produce higher impact forces while performing dance steps. Hence, selecting an ideal surface for dance is imperative to avoid injuries.

Leadership on and off the Dance Floor: “Six Levels of Connection” Framework

Leadership on and off the Dance Floor: “Six Levels of Connection” Framework

Technology of installation and dismantling of soft synthetic fencing rod spatial dome

This article deals with the issues of prevention, installation and dismantling of removable tent fencing, with an area of 1250 m2, space-rod dome with a diameter of 43 m of a multi-purpose public center: dining room, cinema-concert and conference hall for 600 seats, dance floor for up to 1000 people. Subject of research: installation and dismantling works on soft synthetic fencing of the dome - shaped structure of the public center. Objectives: to determine the technological sequence and take into account the nuances of the process of operation, installation and dismantling of soft synthetic fencing of the spatial dome of the public center.

Erratum: Dreams of Musical Germany: Musical Imaginaries from the Concert Hall to the Dance Floor

Erratum: Dreams of Musical Germany: Musical Imaginaries from the Concert Hall to the Dance Floor

Dreams of Germany: Musical Imaginaries from the Concert Hall to the Dance Floor

Dreams of Germany: Musical Imaginaries from the Concert Hall to the Dance Floor

The dancing body in peace education

ABSTRACTThis article discusses the potentials of the dancing body in peace education seen from a transrational perspective. The author explores how the multifaceted and creative body as worked with in the conscious dance and movement practice Open Floor can be tapped into and drawn upon to engage the multiple potentials of humans as contact boundaries at work. She reflects in this regard upon her own experiences as an Open Floor teacher. The article first discusses how the experience of dancing in Open Floor unfolds a creative process that is 1) both intrarelational and interrelational, and 2) always in transformation. Further, the article discusses how the dancing body is engaged as holistic, relational and dynamic through the Open Floor teaching tool 4 × 4, and how this dancing body supports a creative engagement with intra-inter dynamics in peace education.

Building Shanghai\u2019s Dreamworld: Architects and Elite Ballroom Designs of the 1920s and 1930s

Using historical records from the period including newspapers and architectural journals, this paper examines seven ballrooms built in Shanghai between the 1920s and 1930s. These ballrooms were all designed by leading architects and reflect their ambitions and visions in creating fantastical spaces for the city’s elites to celebrate their status while socializing with other members of high society. Their technological features include sprung dance floors, sophisticated lighting schemes, and other technical wizardry to enhance the experience of dancing and being entertained. One ballroom was in the style of a traditional Chinese palace, highlighting the connection to earlier forms of culture in China. Today most of these ballrooms still exist and many of their original features are still intact, although the dancing has been superseded by other activities such as wedding banquets, conferences, and even the stock exchange.

Enumerations: Data and Literary Study. Andrew Piper. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018. Pp. xiii+243.

<i>Enumerations: Data and Literary Study</i>. Andrew Piper. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018. Pp. xiii+243.