Activating Whiteness: Racializing the Ordinary in US American Postmodern Dance
Abstract
“Activating Whiteness: Racializing the Ordinary in US American Postmodern Dance” explores how the choreographic turn to postmodernism twisted the trope of racial exclusion from a focus on trained bodies to a focus on ordinary bodies. Analyses of Yvonne Rainer's Trio A (1966) and Trisha Brown's Locus (1975) demonstrate how ordinary bodies shape racially exclusive spaces and activate the biopolitical mechanisms of normalization that their choreography allegedly contests. This essay argues that the spaces activated by the bodies that shaped them carry the physical trace of the performers’ race through the enduring invisibility of whiteness.
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- Authors
- Chaleff, R.
- Corresponding author
- Chaleff, Rebecca
- Venue
- Dance Research Journal
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2018-12
- Volume
- 50
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 71-84
- ISSN
- 0149-7677 (ISSN-L)
- 1940-509X
- OpenAlex
- W2906136230
- Semantic Scholar
- e01301ec0ab438538fa26453a4550914653a0885
- Cited by
- 44
- References
- 55
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 15 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 5
- FWCI
- 42.57
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Dance Research Journal (publishedVersion)
- Project Muse (Johns Hopkins University) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Visual Arts and Performing Arts › Arts and Performance Studies
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Visual Arts and Performing Arts › Theatre and Performance Studies
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Diversity and Impact of Dance
- Keywords
- postmodern dance, whiteness, racial exclusion, Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown, locus, normalization, biopolitics, choreography
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