Using Dance as a Tool of Resistance
Dance has been a part of the human story for as long as humans have existed. It is thought that our early ancestors used dance as a way to attract mates, communicate, and form social bonds. Studies show that people who are better dancers also tend to be more social, giving credence to the idea that social awareness and communication were some of the main reasons why we dance. In times when we were in small bands of hunters and gatherers, it was absolutely imperative that we communicated and maintained morale among our groups. If dance was a way of facilitating social harmony among groups, there is good reason to believe that is why the activity has stood the test of time. While dance can serve as a way for people in groups to achieve social harmony, it can also be used as a tool for facilitating resistance. Dancing as a form of resistance can create social harmony among those in a group while disrupting the ones outside of the group. Often members of the out group are the ones in power, while members of the in group use dance to resist, create and wield their own form of power.
If dance was a way of facilitating social harmony among groups, there is good reason to believe that is why the activity has stood the test of time.
One example of dance as resistance is Bomba — dancing and music which originated in Puerto Rico as a result of the Atlantic slave trade. The Spanish created sugar plantations on the island, then enslaved people from different groups and cultures to the island who were stripped of their autonomy and their culture. In response, these enslaved peoples drew on, adopted and adapted elements of the various cultures they hailed from, as well as a bit of Spanish and indigenous Taíno culture to create many things, among them, Bomba dancing.
Bomba dancing has been a form of resistance from the beginning. Santurce, Loiza, and San Juan Puerto Rico, all in the Northeastern part of the island became the places where Bomba music and dance flourished as many Black people came to these cities after slavery was abolished on the island in 1873. Bomba was a way for these formerly enslaved peoples to reclaim their agency and share in a cultural tradition together. Although colonial Puerto Rican culture rejected Bomba dancing and music along with other traditionally black cultural traditions, people have kept the tradition alive. The art form has seen a resurgence more recently and has been performed at Black Lives Matter protests, as a way of protesting the injustices faced by the Black community on the Island and the US as a whole as well as to celebrate Afro-Latinx culture.
Another dance as resistance is Vogue dancing. Voguing is a relatively new art form, developing throughout the 1970’s and 80’s. It is also intentionally intersectional, meaning that resistance is not only about racism, but also about breaking class, gender, beauty, and sexuality norms. Vogue takes its name from the magazine of the same name and shows dancers shifting from one pose to another in rapid succession. The art form was developed by Black and Latinx queer, working class youth in New York City, influenced by the Harlem Renaissance of the previous decades. It was thrown into the mainstream with Madonna’s music video and song Vogue as well as the film Paris is Burning. While Voguing has been an act of resistance from its beginnings, it has found a new stage in the Black Lives Matter Movement. Three vogue dancers that gained attention on social media for their voguing during a Black Lives Matter Protest in Chicago, Gorgeous Karma Gucci, Adonte Prodigy, and Amya Miyake-Mugler all used voguing as a way to show support for the Black Lives Matter movement, express themselves, and as Gucci said, “…I wanted to contribute in the best way I knew how, to make noise to let people know that [Black] trans and queer people do exist and we exist in the least harmful way.” After this protest in June, voguing made an appearance at other protests in San Francisco and Philadelphia.
A third dance form of resistance is not a genre, but rather a piece choreographed by Pearl Primus. Primus used her piece, Strange Fruit to bring attention to injustices faced by Black people in the US. Strange Fruit is a short but stunning dance piece that is staged to the poem of the same name by Lewis Allan. The poem was inspired by the 1930 public lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, where a photograph of the event was widely circulated. Lewis Allan was horrified by the image and was inspired to write this poem. The dance itself features the dancer making sharp, sudden, and violent movements that tell a haunting story of the realities of violence faced by Black communities in the southern United States.
Dancing in the context of resistance can give agency to the dancer and be a means of wielding power. Dancers manipulate their bodies to make the shapes, movements, and gestures that assert their right to be and to express themselves in the world, in effect taking power back from institutions, systems of oppression and people who would deny it to them. In Bomba and Voguing, dancers use their bodies which are often scrutinized by an institution in power to take ownership of the space they occupy and to feel empowered in those spaces. Pearl Primus not only uses her body to illustrate this point but also gathers the inspiration from the bodies of the men that were lynched to create her piece Strange Fruit. These are movements of resistance that are meant to give voice, assert place, and move stagnant air when we need it most.
