May we have this dance?: Cultural ownership of the Lindy Hop from the swing era to today

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-64
Author(s):  
Kendra Unruh
Keyword(s):  
Lindy Hop ◽  
Swing Era

Placing Django: Narratives of heritage and race in a Parisian exhibition

2021 ◽  
pp. 095715582110074
Author(s):  
Siv B Lie
Keyword(s):  
White Identity ◽  
French Society ◽  
National Belonging ◽  
Urban Modernity ◽  
Swing Era ◽  
Museum Exhibitions ◽  
Colour Blindness ◽  
Django Reinhardt

Django Reinhardt: Swing de Paris, an exhibition that took place at the Cité de la musique in Paris, depicted the life and environment of famed Manouche (French Romani/”Gypsy”) guitarist Django Reinhardt. In this article, I explore how the exhibition performed a spatialized centre-periphery model of citizenship that both reflected and reinforced Manouche marginality in relation to broader French society. I argue that museum exhibitions generate and harness place-oriented narratives to reinforce hegemonic conceptions about ideal citizens. In marking out an ethnoracially segregated imaginary of swing-era Paris, the exhibition reproduced stereotyped ideas about Manouche exoticism and inadaptability to urban modernity. These narratives are not exceptional, but are part of a long-standing project to define national belonging in terms of a normative white identity. As such, they are symptomatic of a much broader problem of state-sanctioned racism in France that is denied through claims to colour-blindness.

scholarly journals Review of "American Allegory: Lindy Hop and the Racial Imagination"

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Wade
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Change ◽  
Black Youth ◽  
Black Culture ◽  
White Americans ◽  
White People ◽  
Social Dance ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Lindy Hop ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

American Allegory uses lindy hop—a social dance invented in the 1920s by black youth in Harlem and now practiced mostly by white dancers—to gain insight into the relationship between black and white Americans and their cultural forms. It aims to contribute to theory about how superordinate groups manipulate culture to maintain power, while also accounting for cultural change and exchange. On page 204 Hancock begins to ask sophisticated theoretical questions but, by then, it is far too late to answer them. While Hancock’s central premise is one to which I am sympathetic—that the community of primarily white people who dance lindy hop today are participating in an appropriation of black culture—he’s never able to move past his premise to a useful contribution.

scholarly journals QUANTITATIVE ASSESSMENT OF DANCE THERAPY INFULENCE ON THE PARKINSON’S DISEASE PATIENTS’ LOWER LIMB BIOMECHANICS / ŠOKIŲ ĮTAKA APATINIŲ GALŪNIŲ BIOMECHANIKAI SERGANT PARKINSONO LIGA

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
pp. 583-586
Author(s):  
Donatas Lukšys ◽  
Julius Griškevičius
Keyword(s):  
Parkinson’S Disease ◽  
Parkinson's Disease ◽  
Lower Extremity ◽  
Lower Limb ◽  
Dance Therapy ◽  
Inertial Sensors ◽  
Dance Music ◽  
Lindy Hop ◽  
Spatio Temporal

Parkinson’s disease – progressive neurologic disorder that damages a variety of motor function and reduces the quality of life. Patients with PD are subject to various physical therapy exercises, but recently is applied more often the dance – music therapy. This study aims assessing the therapeutic effect of the modified Lindy Hop dance therapy on lower extremity biomechanics. The experimental study was performed using inertial sensors that registered lower extremity biomechanical parameters during gait. Several spatio-temporal parameters of lower limb were calculated and were found statistically significant between groups, which allows quantifying the influence of dance therapy. Parkinsono liga (PL) – progresuojantis neurologinis sutrikimas, kuris pažeidžia įvairias motorines funkcijas ir sumažina gyvenimo kokybę. Sergant PL, taikomos įvairios fizinių pratimų terapijos, bet paskutiniu metu dažniau taikoma šokių – muzikos – terapija. Eksperimentinio tyrimo metu buvo naudojami inerciniai jutikliai, siekiant registruoti apatinių galūnių biomechaninius parametrus eisenos metu. Šio straipsnio tikslas – įvertinti modifikuotos lindihopo šokių terapijos įtaką apatinių galūnių biomechanikai. Buvo apskaičiuoti apatinių galūnių kinematiniai parametrai ir surasti statistiškai reikšmingi skirtumai tarp grupių ir grupių viduje, kurie leidžia kiekybiškai įvertinti šokių įtaką.

Blackface Transformations II

2019 ◽  
pp. 102-117
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Smith
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
African American Community ◽  
Malcolm X ◽  
Spike Lee ◽  
Lindy Hop ◽  
White Gaze

This chapter draws upon iconography, film studies, and semiotics in two examples of electronically mediated masking that intentionally subvert the voyeuristic white gaze. It investigates the descriptions of Lindy Hop in The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1966) and the blackface in Spike Lee’s Bamboozled (2000), which intentionally juxtapose explicitly racist caricature and performative virtuosity, reading those passages for their cultural/political subtextual discussions. It argues that Malcolm X and Spike Lee--as cultural commentators from within the African American community--use dance as a means to problematize the paradox of black creativity’s virtuosity as it has flourished “behind the minstrel mask.”

Forties Swing, Hollywood Flash

2021 ◽  
pp. 127-156
Author(s):  
Constance Valis Hill
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Swing Era ◽  
Stormy Weather ◽  
One Step ◽  
Run Up ◽  
Half Minute

This chapter discusses the Hollywood musical films of the Nicholas Brothers under a five-year contract with Twentieth Century-Fox that brought them to the highest level of notoriety as jazz tap dancers in the Swing era. In Down Argentine Way, despite the mere three-and-a-half-minute scene in which the Brothers appeared, audiences flocked to the theater to see them perform the title song. In Sun Valley Serenade, with Dorothy Dandridge, the Brothers’ Chattanooga Choo Choo number was the aural and visual embodiment of swing music. In Orchestra Wives, Harold performed a run-up-the-wall into a backward flip and split that had never before been seen on film. And in their spectacular Jumping Jive number in Stormy Weather, Fayard jumped down one step and landed in a split, Harold leap-frogged over Fayard and landed on the next step into another split, and the Brothers alternately jumped over each other until they reached the bottom of the stairs—a routine Fred Astaire said was the greatest he had ever seen on film.

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