ISBN 1-894773-10-1

$21.95 CD - $14.95 US

292 pages

15 b + w photographs

6 x 9"

Dance — Human Rights — Politics

Right to Dance: Dancing for Rights

Editor: Naomi M. Jackson

Banff Centre Press releases a book about the intersection of dance and human rights.

To date, no scholar has seriously examined the relation between dance and human rights. Yet in terms of human rights organizations, there appears to be intimate connections between dance and human rights issues. Such connections appear most frequently in the context of dance being used as a tool for inciting people to violence, as a means is of humiliation, and as a means of uniting communities in times of hardship. Dance is often employed as a nationalistic propaganda tool, as a means of healing individuals and groups after traumatic events, and as a powerful form of theatrical expression and education by artists/choreographers who have undergone or witnessed gross violations of human rights.

The ways that dancing, as an embodied, highly sensual, and sexually charged activity exposes inconsistencies and abuses in human rights are myriad. This anthology examines the intersection of dance and human rights.

Excerpt

Of all the First Nations of the Northwest Coast, the Kwakwaka’wakw have proved most successful at maintaining performative practices through the period of colonial infringement, and they currently wear this reputation as a badge of pride and identity. They have shown a remarkable resilience in the face of prohibition and a willingness to adapt dance display to non-ceremonial contexts, including tourist visits to the coast, residency in ethnographic villages at World’s Fairs, celebration of provincial and federal holidays, and openings of art gallery and museum exhibitions.

This paper discusses specific strategies adopted by various Kwakwaka’wakw bands to evade the potlatch prohibition and maintain dance practices under restrictive colonial policy between 1922 and 1951. Four general and related strategies are presented: sheer defiance, taking advantage of the language and loopholes of the law, altering the form and content of dance performances, and staging performances for colonial contexts and audiences.

From: “The Thin Edge of the Wedge: Dancing Around the Potlatch Ban, 1921—1951” by Aaron Glass

Contributors

Introduction: Human Rights, Cultural Rights, and Dance in Canada

  Naomi M. Jackson

Dance, the Church, and Repressive Morals in Catholic Quebec

  Iro Valaskakis Tembeck

The Thin Edge of the Wedge: Dancing Around the Potlatch Ban, 1921—1951

  Aaron Glass

The Show Did Not Go On: An Episode in Canada’s Red Scare

   Cheryl Smith, Ph.D.

Negotiating Artistic Spaces: Beijing Opera and the Cultural Revolution in China

  Margaret Chan

Remembering: The Weight of Memory

  Peggy Baker and Liz Marshall

Sacrifice in the Studio: A History of Working Conditions, Contracts, and Unions for Dance in Canada, 1900–1980

  Amy Bowring

Putting it into Words: An Anecdotal History of the Canadian Alliance of Dance Artists — Ontario Chapter’s Professional Standards for Dance

  P. Megan Andrews

Championing the Individual, Believing in the Dance: Human Rights in the Works of Paula Ross, Jay Hirabayashi, and Judith Marcuse

  Kaija Pepper

Dance in Action: Six Nova Scotia Stories

  Dianne Milligan

The Exile of Poetic Imagination: Challenges to the Use of Expressive Arts with Children in Adversity

  Christopher Lowry

Human Rights — Not Like a Document, Like a Dance

  Lisa Doolittle and Anne Flynn