"Dance With Your Body": Combating Inequality Through Embodiment in a Racially Diverse Youth Dance Organization

• In Event: 67.070 - Sheraton Roundtable 14 - Grand Centre
  In Roundtable Session: 67.070-5 - Criticality, Diversity, and Cross-Cultural Methodological Possibilities of Arts-Based Educational Research

Abstract

This paper considers how youth participants in a community-based dance school thwarted oppressive language embedded in a dance form’s lexicon by locating power in their dancing bodies. For participants in the study, the body spoke louder than words. Youth learned to read and speak with their bodies as text (Mills, 2010). Studying dance became a way for youth to develop a consciousness of movement’s cultural context while contributing to their socio-political awareness (Ladson-Billings, 1995) about “young people of color” (participant interview) in performance. Our findings suggest dance education can be used to combat inequality by teaching youth to speak with their bodies. This paper contributes to literature on critical dance pedagogy, embodied learning and culturally relevant pedagogy in dance.

Authors

• Betsy Maloney Leaf, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

• Bic H. Ngo, University of Minnesota