Blacking Queer Dance

Author(s): Thomas F. DeFrantz

Source: Dance Research Journal, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Winter, 2002), pp. 102-105
Published by: Congress on Research in Dance
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1478465
Accessed: 18-11-2018 22:01 UTC

REFERENCES
Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1478465?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents
You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

Congress on Research in Dance is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to Dance Research Journal

This content downloaded from 34.192.2.131 on Sun, 18 Nov 2018 22:01:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
IV. Blacking Queer Dance probe unruly sexual energies and speculative
There is a power in queer. There is a power in physical desires. Surely the rise of experien-
seeing things differently, disrupting the tial documentation in dance studies is con-
everyday, resisting hegemony. Queer theo- nected to the recovery of queer histories, to
rists focus on enabling these possibilities, on the articulation of unspoken attractions, real-
recasting history against dominant norms, on izations, practices. But this is an important
articulating worldviews that reveal the con- speculation: the queer precedes the dance.
tingent nature of many social histories. In Dance becomes a "safe space" for queer, but
"queer," we are creating a usable past that not vice versa.
will allow others to move with self-aware- We can look to the marketplace here. The
ness, considered decisiveness, and attack. logic of capitalism demands a heterosocial
There is a power in black. By now, black standard; it demands a denial of the expres-
sive potentials of the body. The body cannot
represents a reconstituted subjectivity, a post-
civil rights, postmodern reclaiming of caste offer a widespread site of public possibilities;
as a marker of cultural ubiquity. A nascenta realization of unruly creative possibilities
black studies entered the academy a century for each and every body could too easily over-
ago, when W.E.B. DuBois began to publish run the commercial marketplace and ulti-
mately the state. The marketplace and the
his subtle, highly theoretical explications of
African American corporeal memory as state an are not the same, but their need to con-
trol the individual have similar effects on
intertwined account of social, political, spiri-
tual, sexualized, and aesthetic history.2 Of
dance as labor and, more importantly, the con-
course, as Houston Baker Jr. has written, struction of the closet and queer. Queer
black studies gained its latter-day importance
emerges not only as a corrective to "straight,"
as a result of American civil rights activism,
but also as a necessary category of social pro-
but its roots stem from the need of African duction, an obvious binary counterbalance to
Americans to recover histories that could heteronormativity and unmarked heterosexual
privilege. Let's face it, what could we possi-
counter the physical afflictions and institu-
tionalized racisms circumscribing everydaybly do without queer? Certainly not dance.
black life.3 Black studies began purposefully,But queer studies are also driven by the
marketplace. Consider that its scholars are
to disrupt "official" American histories that
negated black presence or importance. It those who need a place to "land" that is
often
hoped to combat the abjection of being
hot, fresh, new. Surely in its earliest manifes-
unmoored from a homeland or denied a tations, specialists in literature who felt they
hadtolittle to add to established paradigms of
usable past. Quickly, black studies turned
criticism turned to the emerging field. Queer
theorizing presence, and in the last decade,
modernity. Black studies have proven studies invigorates the academy; it also pro-
prophetic for understanding cultural vides a way to shake up the power structure
resiliency in the face of rampant capitalism.of the academy itself. This is about shifting
Many of us enter dance through the queer paradigms of analysis and interpretations, but
it is also about the marketplace and its power
door, body first. Denied access to pleasurable
heteronormative socialization, we seek out even within the academy.
darkened theaters and acrid dance studios in To articulate the queer in dance, we are
an effort to explore concepts of beauty and often compelled to materialize excess: excess
rarified physical expression. For the queerof gesture, effeminate displays, curt, butch
among us, dance offers a generative site to phrasing; excessive strength by women who

102 Dance Research Journal 34/2 (Winter 2002)

This content downloaded from 34.192.2.131 on Sun, 18 Nov 2018 22:01:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
lift men; flamboyant costuming or fantasy; The title evokes a prominent queeress, a
men without women for entire movements of vernacular phrase that ties temperament to
ballets; women without men for entire biology and desire to destiny. In perform-
dances. This excess is at the core of what Jose ance, the bad blood of the dance emerges
Est6ban Mufioz has theorized as "disidentifi- among the failed relationships and the
cation."'4 But all artists disidentify; this is missed communications of a vicious septet
how we recognize art. Queer artists may veer gathered around a mourner's bench. Here,
farthest from established social norms, and as always, Dove's work is filled with images
for my thirty-dollar admission the farther of violence as a metaphor for dis-ease and
from the norm the better. Isn't this market- affliction. For me, this dance is clearly
place reality true for most? As we pay more queer, from its disidentificatory use of
for the experience of performance, our "white rock" music, its depiction of a dys-
expectations for its uniqueness rise commen- functional family bound by custom, tradi-
surately. In a previous era, excess and flam- tion, or political circumstance, but rent by
boyance were routinely linked to African desires and attractions that are enacted and
American expression. But by now, theorists implied during its course. I also term
speculate that the excessive is not always a "queer" the assembled sense of movement
self-contained marker of "black." Excess is vocabulary that Dove employs here and
an interpretive marker of scale. "Excess," throughout this work; the physical articula-
tions of line are hard-edged and precise,
and here it is placed in quotations, is about
requiring the dancers to work at the edge of
the pursuit of excellence. In Africanist per-
corporal possibility, but the movement
formance theory, moving beyond established
norms are how we move toward the beauti- resists flow; it does not allow for seamless
ful, the inevitable, the profound. execution or continuous, even expenditures
Queer studies tend to assume these of energy. Instead, the movements are
extrapolations as the evidence of their verybound and erratic, built from a series of
being. If the dance gestures are excessivelystatic postures strung together by lightning-
effeminate, they can be described as queer. fast shifts of weight and queer gestures of
In allowing this, we colonize ourselves reaching, flexing, and flailing. But I also see
along the way, expecting the flamboyant this dance as incontrovertibly "black" in its
excess to reveal a desirous counternarrative.
percussive accents, its sharp-edged preci-
In order to define ourselves as queer, wesion, its presumption of coolness within an
acknowledge straight; in this process, weoverall narrative of abrupt bursts of emo-
inevitably mourn for something in the com-tional turmoil. Does my analysis have to be
parison. I do not know that this has to beprioritized according to analytical devices?
Or can this queer dance be blacked?
true, but in our willingness to materialize
excess, in writing about queerness in dance, Intersections of black studies and queer
I am convinced that we propagate a het- studies are everywhere even as they remain
erosocial mainstream discarded by the very largely uninvestigated. Parenthetically, these
work we identify as queer. intersections are how discussions of African
Artists do not necessarily do this; as American cultural practices are often present
several authors in Jane Desmond's new in discussions of "queer," even if black peo-
anthology suggest, this maneuver happens ple themselves are not the source or subject
of the conversations. Obvious also are the
in the interpretation of work by an observer.
intersections of dance studies and queer stud-
Consider Ulysses Dove's 1984 Bad Blood.

103
34/2 (Winter 2002) Dance Research Journal

This content downloaded from 34.192.2.131 on Sun, 18 Nov 2018 22:01:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
ies. But what about dance studies and black 4. This text was written for oral delivery. It
was not edited for publication in order to
studies? Why do these areas consistently dis-
retain the tone of its original perform-
connect? And why is queer dance too often ance. The text was, however, condensed
sidestepping theoretical paradigms estab- for publication.
lished in black studies?
5. "Bill T. Jones in Conversation with Ann
There can be a great power in queer
dance, drawing from and in relationship to
Daly," Art Performs Life: Merce
black studies and African American dance Cunningham/Meredith Monk/Bill T.
Jones (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center,
histories. But not until...Not until we can
1998), 123.
articulate a liberatory theory of aesthetics;
until modem dance histories begin in the 6.cru-Philip Brett, Elizabeth Wood, and Gary
cible of the marketplace and its articulationC. Thomas, eds., Queering the Pitch:
of the moder enabled by the slave trade;The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology
(New York: Routledge, 1994).
until tap dance is allowed to be conceived as
a gay male prerogative and not a hypermas- 7. Philip Brett, "Musicality, Essentialism,
culine alternative to ballet; until strategies ofand the Closet," in Queering the Pitch,
improvisation and spontaneity are valued as11.
ancient cultural imperatives completely
8. Susan C. Cook, "Passionless Dancing
imbricated in classicism; until struggles to
and Passionate Reform: Respectability,
gain access to stages are understood as theModernism, and the Social Dancing of
triumph of body wisdom over scientific and Irene and Veron Castle," in The Passion
social constructions of race, class, and gen- of Music and Dance: Body, Gender
der. Speaking from experience, body wisdomSexuality, ed. William Washabaugh
is sometimes queer, and it is a potent site(Oxford: Berg Press, 1998), 133-150,
where black studies and dance studies can and "Performing Masculinity on the
surely convene in theory and in practice. Social Dance Floor," paper delivered at
Thomas F DeFrantz the 1997 annual meeting of the Society

Massachusetts Institute of Technologyof Dance History Scholars, Barnard

Notes
1. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A
Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and
Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1987).
College, June 13-16, subsequently pub-
lished in the conference proceedings.
9. Adrienne Rich, "Compulsory
Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,"
in Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected
Prose 1979-1985 (New York: W.W.
Norton, 1986), 23-75.

2. These comments are elaborated in 10. Anne Enke, "Locating Feminist

Valerie A. Briginshaw, Dance, SpaceActivism: Women's Movement and
and Subjectivity (Basingstoke and NewPublic Geography," Ph.D. dissertation,
York City: Palgrave, 2001). University of Minnesota, 1999.

3. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible11.

andElizabeth Wood, "Sapphonics," in
the Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingus Queering the Pitch, 27-66.
(Evanston, IL: Northwestern University
12. W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black
Press, 1968), 134.
Folks (Chicago: A.C. McClurg, 1903).

104 Dance Research Journal 34/2 (Winter 2002)

This content downloaded from 34.192.2.131 on Sun, 18 Nov 2018 22:01:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
13. Houston Baker Jr., Black Studies, Rap,
and the Academy (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1993).

14. Jose Est6ban Muiioz, Disidentifications:

Queers of Color and the Performance of
Politics (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1999).

105
34/2 (Winter 2002) Dance Research Journal

This content downloaded from 34.192.2.131 on Sun, 18 Nov 2018 22:01:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms