{"title":"From Race Crisis to Race Celebration: Online Body Politics and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theateri","authors":"M. Alexandru","doi":"10.2478/abcsj-2022-0016","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Throughout the history of the United States, there have been many critical times associated with racism. When other forms of crisis overlap the existing ones – as the Covid-19 pandemic – even more challenges appear, calling for a more complex artistic response. The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is well known across the United States and the world not only through their innovative ballet style (which builds on classical choreography and enriches it with creatively processed blues, jazz, and Afro-Caribbean tones), but also through what Thomas F. DeFrantz calls Alvin Ailey’s “embodiment of African American culture” in the subtitle of his book (Dancing Revelations, 2004). This essay looks at Ailey Theater’s politics of the dancing body, with a focus on recent productions included in the Ailey All Access online project, meant to replace a Fall 2021 United States tour that could not take place because of the pandemic. I will argue that the company’s choreographic overcoming and even beautifying sorrow through dance expands Ailey’s healing narrative about African American history to the Covid-19 pandemic. Their recent projects propose a desirable post-racist world, in which those who have been through much sorrow can support those who have been through less, and thus promote a politics of human togetherness, hope, and reconstruction.","PeriodicalId":37404,"journal":{"name":"American, British and Canadian Studies","volume":"34 1","pages":"31 - 53"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1000,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"American, British and Canadian Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.2478/abcsj-2022-0016","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERARY THEORY & CRITICISM","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract Throughout the history of the United States, there have been many critical times associated with racism. When other forms of crisis overlap the existing ones – as the Covid-19 pandemic – even more challenges appear, calling for a more complex artistic response. The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is well known across the United States and the world not only through their innovative ballet style (which builds on classical choreography and enriches it with creatively processed blues, jazz, and Afro-Caribbean tones), but also through what Thomas F. DeFrantz calls Alvin Ailey’s “embodiment of African American culture” in the subtitle of his book (Dancing Revelations, 2004). This essay looks at Ailey Theater’s politics of the dancing body, with a focus on recent productions included in the Ailey All Access online project, meant to replace a Fall 2021 United States tour that could not take place because of the pandemic. I will argue that the company’s choreographic overcoming and even beautifying sorrow through dance expands Ailey’s healing narrative about African American history to the Covid-19 pandemic. Their recent projects propose a desirable post-racist world, in which those who have been through much sorrow can support those who have been through less, and thus promote a politics of human togetherness, hope, and reconstruction.
期刊介绍:
Founded in 1999, American, British and Canadian Studies, the journal of the Academic Anglophone Society of Romania, is currently published by Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu. Re-launched in refashioned, biannual format, American, British and Canadian Studies is an international, peer-reviewed journal that sets out to explore disciplinary developments in Anglophone Studies in the changing environment forged by the intersections of culture, technology and electronic information. Our primary goal is to bring together in productive dialogue scholars conducting advanced research in the theoretical humanities. As well as offering innovative approaches to influential crosscurrents in contemporary thinking, the journal seeks to contribute fresh angles to the academic subject of English and promote shape-changing research across conventional boundaries. By virtue of its dynamic and varied profile and of the intercultural dialogue that it caters for, ABC Studies aims to fill a gap in the Romanian academic arena, and function as the first publication to approach Anglophone studies in a multi-disciplinary perspective. Within the proposed range of diversity, our major scope is to provide close examinations and lucid analyses of the role and future of the academic institutions at the cutting edge of high-tech. With this end in view, we especially invite contributions in the fields of Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, Postcolonial Theory, Area Studies, Cultural Anthropology, Language and Linguistics, Multimedia and Digital Arts, Translation Studies and related subjects. With its wide subject range, American, British and Canadian Studies aims to become one of the academic community’s premium scholarly resources.