Histories of and for ‘Contemporary Dance’: Rethinking Dance History Pedagogy in and from the Periphery
DOI :
https://doi.org/10.58786/rbed.2025.v4.n8.71982Mots-clés :
Autobiography;, Teacher training;, Curriculum, Dance History, Teaching PracticeRésumé
The paper argues that true decolonization of dance history pedagogy requires a dismantling of epistemological hierarchies of value that promote only certain dances as worthy of aesthetic theorization and critical attention. These valued dances are ones from Europe and neo-Europe, usually staged for an audience, and always labelled ‘art’. Often, they appropriate practices from the much broader field of dance, presenting these appropriations as novelties within art institutions of the Global North that dominate the discourse on dance, including who are considered ‘professionals’ and what is valuable enough to constitute ‘core’ subject matter for future generations of dancers – in practice as well as theory. In the process of colonialist extractivism, theoretical frames for art dance inimical to the continuously changing life of dances utilize history (singular) to make dances from peripheries of (neo-)European (former) empires appear either within anthropological frames of exotic otherness and folk culture or as belated reactions to the centre and the vanguard at the heart of these empires. Tracing the emergence of the unmarked-as-white discourse and its effects on dance history textbooks and pedagogy alike, this paper suggests some steps towards a more equitable future.
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