Changing Movement, Changing Dancers, Changing Identity: The Potential for Dance to Maintain or (Re)Negotiate Cultural Identity

• In Event: Dance as an Experience of Sociality – Moves of Critique, Culture, and Community

Abstract

According to Anne Cooper Albright in Choreographing Difference, “we can further our understandings of how social identities are signaled, formed, and negotiated through bodily movement.” This paper will explore how Irish dance constitutes identity and consider how bodily movement becomes a marker of tradition and authenticity. It asks, “what if this movement is expected to remain static and uncontested to maintain a particular cultural identity? Is it still possible to be creative, change movements, and (re)negotiate identity?”

Author

• Jessica Tomell-Presto, DePaul University