She’s the Queen: A Child’s Reorientation of Disciplinary Norms in Dance Through Embodied Authoring

• In Event: Reauthoring Queer Joy and Justice

Abstract

This paper describes a critical arts-based (Finley, 2017) learning experience for a group of children between 5- and 7-years-old during a 2-week summer dance camp in a major Northeastern metropolitan city. Tasked with co-authoring and enacting a short story through movement, drama, music, and visual art, this group of children challenged gendered and racialized norms of dance through an embodied dialogue. Using figured world analysis (Holland et al., 1998) and queer phenomenology (Ahmed, 2006), I illustrate the micro-developmental progression of a Black, girl-identifying 6-year-old child in her embodied authoring toward disrupting the disciplinary norms of Western colonial dance.

Author

• Luke Muscat, University of Calgary