Conclusion

The conclusion reflect on the meaning of Hip-Hop dance as witnessed in the U.S. embassy’s diplomatic convention “America in 3D: Diplomacy, Development, and Defense” (2011) in the Philippines. It argues for more engagement between Black feminist theory and Filipina performances, like “Pinays Rise,” a dance within the convention that challenged gender and class stereotypes of Filipinas as caregivers. The conclusion first analyzes “Pinays Rise,” and then connects the convention’s theme to the historical significance of stereoscopy, or the depth-enhancing imaging technique. The conclusion reviews the book’s main arguments and addresses the potential uses for performative euphemism in academic studies of culture and race. Finally, it calls for a holistic approach to Hip-Hop that reckons with discourses of Filipino cultural politics and dance.

Judges and International Competitions

This chapter continues to emphasize embodied critiques against liberal multiculturalism and post-raciality by turning to large-scale commercial competitions and their increasing role in rejuvenating street dance globally. The chapter focuses on the World Hip-Hop Dance Championships (HHI), which enlists judges to watch more than 3,500 dancers from over fifty countries. With an analysis of judges and their practices from 2012 to 2014, the chapter shows that their standardization euphemizes racial, gender, ethnic, and technical difference. At the same time, the chapter reveals dance criticism that undermines the stereotype of Filipinos as naturally gifted dancers in the cultural imaginary. Discourse around dance judging enables discussions of how multiple ethnic traditions are codified similarly amidst a vexed desire for hip-hop universalism.

Heroes and Filipino Migrations

This chapter highlights the stories of 1990s and 2000s street dancers in order to explore the impact of Filipino familial and labor migration since the early 1970s. Although scholars have usually depicted global hip-hop as an outward flow from the United States, this chapter points to an alternative trajectory—when Filipino talent is part of the 10 percent of the Filipino population to have worked outside the Philippines. This chapter analyzes two figurations—overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) and Petisyonados—that simultaneously recode state-brokered gendered migration, economic motivation, and personal rationale. The processes of migrant identity formation reveal a crucial narrative by which racial and sexual formation factor into the rooting and uprooting of Filipino people and culture. Demythologizing talent and the migrant hero trope, these Filipinos exemplify how the global mobility of people and individual motility of bodies prove to be more closely related than previously thought.

Robots and Affirmative Choreographies

This chapter centers dance theater as an entry point into the relationship between race-based admissions policies (affirmative action) and dance-based articulations of racial agency. The chapter focuses on Pilipino culture nights (PCNs), student-produced annual performances that typically work to affirm a connection to the homeland through the performance of traditional folk forms. However, for Home (2000), a University of California–Berkeley PCN, the dancers and choreographers used hip-hop to emphasize U.S.-based cultural formations. While existing scholarship focuses on the “born again” mode of traditional folk dance within the culture night genre, the analysis centralizes Filipino American use of street dance styles (popping and robotic dancing). The configuration of these elements exaggerates ideologies of multiculturalism and post-raciality in an innovative response to the model minority stereotype.

Introduction

This chapter establishes key concepts for subsequent chapters in the histories of AfroFilipino formation, neoliberalization of Filipino popular dance, and corporeal orature. Although Black expressive culture and dance has long been thought of as peripheral to the development of Filipinoness, Choreographing in Color underlines how Filipino dancers engage Black dance in ways that navigate the crosshairs of colonialism and neoliberalism. It begins with a broad racial framework for comprehending the unique corporeal histories and ongoing racial, gender, and colonial complexities of Filipinos in relationship to Blackness. Then the chapter provides contexts for the popularization of locking, a form of hip-hop dance, during increasing neoliberal shifts in the 1970s. Lastly, it defines a type of corporeal orature in the original concept, performative euphemism, a strategy of social criticism cultivated by performance.

Zombies and Prisoner Rehabilitation

This chapter looks at how, in 2007, 1,500 inmates in the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center (CPDRC) went “viral” with their online rendition of Michael Jackson’s music video “Thriller.” Representing an exercise program aimed at building teamwork and reducing gang activity through dance, the CPDRC’s “Thriller” circulated as performance-based proof of prisoner rehabilitation. This chapter argues that central to the production’s worldwide popularity are narratives of discipline, colonial choreography, and the alterity of Wenjiel Resane, the cross-dressed leading lady. It situates the dance in relation to the African American original, the actions of the prison administrators, and ideologies of Filipino mimicry. This chapter examines how neocolonial and market-oriented reforms fundamentally influenced the social construction of Filipino Otherness presented in the dance and thus shaped its popularity in unexpected ways.