We're Street Dancers: Race, Class and Culture in Global New York City's Salsa Scene

• In Event: 505 - Section on Global and Transnational Sociology Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 10. Race, Class, and Gender in Global Crossroads

Abstract

Salsa dancing has become a global phenomenon, spawning a variety of styles and levels of standardization. Ballroom Latin “is a stylization of social ballroom dances that, although inspired by Afro-Caribbean social dance practices…bear little in common with contemporary or historical practices in Latin America,” or indeed in Latino New York (McMains 2001). The relationship between Latin Ballroom styles and their cultural referents has become partly imagined. This effect is amplified as Hollywood has birthed popular dance reality television that disseminates previously localized dance styles to national audiences.
At the same time, since the first “salsa congress” was held in Puerto Rico in 1993, “on2” salsa dancers in New York have participated in a global salsa industry that exists parallel to hegemonic representations of Latin Ballroom as portrayed on television or in professional and collegiate dance training programs. Using a variety of data, including close reading of popular media, qualitative research with “on2” dancers in New York City, and theoretical frameworks laid out by cultural theorists of transnational Latino communities, I argue that salsa dancers in New York view themselves as simultaneously more culturally authentic and less professionally legitimate than classically trained dancers. Understanding the these dancers conceive of themselves in relation to dominant narratives about Latin dance gives insight into the commodification of culture and the ongoing power of mass manufactured narratives as a tool of cultural hegemony and allows us room to critique the enforced professionalization and portrayal of ethnic cultural practices.

Author

• Carmela Muzio Dormani, City University of New York-Graduate Center