- The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Ethnicity
- Dedication
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of Contributors
- Dance and Ethnicity: Introduction
- “And I Make My Own”: Class Performance, Black Urban Identity, and Depression-Era Harlem’s Physical Culture
- “Do You Want to See My Hornpipe?” Creativity and Irish Step Dance in the Work of Jean Butler and Colin Dunne
- Dancing Jews and Jewesses: Jewishness, Ethnicity, and Exoticism in American Dance
- Queering Ethnicity and Shattering the Disco: Is There an Enduring Gay Ethnic Dance?
- Dancing Multiple Identities: Preserving and Revitalizing Dances of the Skolt Sámi
- To Call Dance Japanese: Nihon Buyô as Ethnic Dance
- Diasporic Ethnicity, Gender, and Dance: Muslim Macedonian Roma in New York
- “An Interesting Experiment in Eugenics”: Ted Shawn, American Dance, and the Discourses of Sex, Race, and Ethnicity
- Dancing Angels and Princesses: The Invention of an Ideal Female National Dancer in Twentieth-Century Iran
- The Spectacularization of Soviet/Russian Folk Dance: Igor Moiseyev and the Invented Tradition of Staged Folk Dance
- LADO, the State Ensemble of Croatian Folk Dances and Songs: Icon of Croatian Identity
- Authenticity and Ethnicity: Folk Dance, Americanization, and the Immigrant Body in the Early Twentieth Century
- A Folklorist’s View of “Folk” and “Ethnic” Dance: Three Ukrainian Examples
- The Jarabe Tapatío: Imagining Race, Nation, Class, and Gender in 1920s Mexico
- Perception, Connections, and Performed Identities in American-Ghanaian Dance Encounters
- Orientalism and the American Belly Dancer: Multiplicity, Authenticity, Identity
- Black Erased: The Tango de Negros in Spain’s Romantic Age
- English-Canadian Ethnocentricity: The Case Study of Boris Volkoff at the 1936 Nazi Olympics
- La Meri: Purveyor of the Dancing Other
- Choreographing Interculturalism: International Dance Performance at the American Museum of Natural History, 1943–1952
- “Hot” Latin Dance: Ethnic Identity and Stereotype
- From Salsa to Salzonto: Rhythmic Identities and Inventive Dance Traditions in Ghana
- Spectacles of Ethnicities: The San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival
- Dancecapes of Dionysus: From Kali Vrisi (Northern Greece) to the Olympics
- Ballet and Whiteness: Will Ballet Forever Be the Kingdom of the Pale?
- Men and the Happiness Dance
- From Powwow to Stomp Dance: Parallel Dance Traditions in Oklahoma
- Beyond Colonization, Commodification, and Reclamation: Hula and Hawaiian Identity
- Crossing the Seas of Southeast Asia: Indigenous Diasporic Islam and Performances of Women’s Igal
- San Miguel the Arcángel, Capitan of Many Troops: An Ethno-Iconographic Study of Danza de Migueles
- Black Dance after Race
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
Exploring the ontological politics of disco, this chapter historically explains the use of improvised social dancing in the formation of an alternative ethnicity among gay men and lesbians. The chapter argues that improvised social dancing (and disco in particular) has helped create a shared sense of culture for gay people that mimics ethnogenesis, insofar as disco offered an oppressed group a shared sense of belonging, communality, and identity. Like traditional ethnic dances, disco (and its progeny—techno, house, trance, tribal, etc.) perpetuates not only aesthetics, but also belief structures, linguistic/behavioral patterns, and social relations by providing a space wherein queer interpersonal and social bonds have been created and sustained. In turn, these bonds have contributed to the construction of lines of descent and inheritance, as well as shared ideas about common ancestry and history that parallel ethnic configurations of kinship.
Keywords: Disco, ethnicity, gay history, queer, kinship, Weber, ethnogenesis, improvised social dance, ethnic dance
Darren Blaney, PhD is an independent scholar, actor, and lifeguard/water safety instructor who has taught theater history and practice at UC Santa Cruz, UC Davis, Pomona College, and the University of Miami, FL. Darren has contributed essays to Theatre Journal, the Association for Theater in Higher Education, the Comparative Drama Conference, the New England Theatre Journal, and the Gay and Lesbian Review, Worldwide. His plays and solo performances have been presented at the SF Fringe Festival, Highways Performance Space, Works San Jose, and UC Santa Cruz. He currently resides in Fort Lauderdale with his partner Laurence Re and their three canine companions.
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- The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Ethnicity
- Dedication
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of Contributors
- Dance and Ethnicity: Introduction
- “And I Make My Own”: Class Performance, Black Urban Identity, and Depression-Era Harlem’s Physical Culture
- “Do You Want to See My Hornpipe?” Creativity and Irish Step Dance in the Work of Jean Butler and Colin Dunne
- Dancing Jews and Jewesses: Jewishness, Ethnicity, and Exoticism in American Dance
- Queering Ethnicity and Shattering the Disco: Is There an Enduring Gay Ethnic Dance?
- Dancing Multiple Identities: Preserving and Revitalizing Dances of the Skolt Sámi
- To Call Dance Japanese: Nihon Buyô as Ethnic Dance
- Diasporic Ethnicity, Gender, and Dance: Muslim Macedonian Roma in New York
- “An Interesting Experiment in Eugenics”: Ted Shawn, American Dance, and the Discourses of Sex, Race, and Ethnicity
- Dancing Angels and Princesses: The Invention of an Ideal Female National Dancer in Twentieth-Century Iran
- The Spectacularization of Soviet/Russian Folk Dance: Igor Moiseyev and the Invented Tradition of Staged Folk Dance
- LADO, the State Ensemble of Croatian Folk Dances and Songs: Icon of Croatian Identity
- Authenticity and Ethnicity: Folk Dance, Americanization, and the Immigrant Body in the Early Twentieth Century
- A Folklorist’s View of “Folk” and “Ethnic” Dance: Three Ukrainian Examples
- The Jarabe Tapatío: Imagining Race, Nation, Class, and Gender in 1920s Mexico
- Perception, Connections, and Performed Identities in American-Ghanaian Dance Encounters
- Orientalism and the American Belly Dancer: Multiplicity, Authenticity, Identity
- Black Erased: The Tango de Negros in Spain’s Romantic Age
- English-Canadian Ethnocentricity: The Case Study of Boris Volkoff at the 1936 Nazi Olympics
- La Meri: Purveyor of the Dancing Other
- Choreographing Interculturalism: International Dance Performance at the American Museum of Natural History, 1943–1952
- “Hot” Latin Dance: Ethnic Identity and Stereotype
- From Salsa to Salzonto: Rhythmic Identities and Inventive Dance Traditions in Ghana
- Spectacles of Ethnicities: The San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival
- Dancecapes of Dionysus: From Kali Vrisi (Northern Greece) to the Olympics
- Ballet and Whiteness: Will Ballet Forever Be the Kingdom of the Pale?
- Men and the Happiness Dance
- From Powwow to Stomp Dance: Parallel Dance Traditions in Oklahoma
- Beyond Colonization, Commodification, and Reclamation: Hula and Hawaiian Identity
- Crossing the Seas of Southeast Asia: Indigenous Diasporic Islam and Performances of Women’s Igal
- San Miguel the Arcángel, Capitan of Many Troops: An Ethno-Iconographic Study of Danza de Migueles
- Black Dance after Race
- Index
