HISTORY OF SOCIAL DANCING

Why do we dance—in groups, as couples, on our own, and in genres that range from ballroom dance to hip hop? How does the collective experience of dance create and transform community, produce subcultures or diasporas, and facilitate conformity or rebellion? This course approaches such questions by treating both reading and dancing itself as complementary modes of critical inquiry: we will divide our time between reading history, theory, memoirs, literature, and more; and actually learning and doing social dances of the past and present that have provoked upheavals in social orders. We will study dances that range across history while focusing on the twentieth century and present day, spanning topics that include Renaissance choreomanias, French-Caribbean minuets and contradances, the “wicked waltz,” “animal dances” of the ragtime era, lindy hop, salsa, voguing, viral dances of social media, and contemporary clubbing. Through the constant interplay of critical reading and critical dancing, we will query the power dynamics, historical forces, European and African aesthetics, and more, that intersect in social dances across history, and indeed in our own bodies. This introductory course welcomes students from any discipline, and of all abilities.