The Revolution Was Danced

This chapter examines previously undocumented intersections between Argentine contemporary dance and leftist political militancy in the early 1970s. It first explores how the dance archive revealed stories of two women, Silvia Hodgers and Alicia Sanguinetti, who led separate lives as artists and political militants. These artists’ account of their incarceration at the Rawson Penitentiary in 1972 reveals how dance created community among incarcerated political prisoners. The chapter also analyzes the role of dance in the escape plot that prisoners planned and executed that year, which ended tragically with the military’s execution of sixteen prisoners, an event known as the Trelew Massacre. Finally, the chapter demonstrates how two 1973 concert works, Cuca Taburelli’s Preludio para un final (Prelude for an Ending) and Estela Maris’s Juana Azurduy, might be productively considered “militant.” I argue that these cases of militants dancing and dances about militancy reconfigure the normative choreographies of both repertoires.

Epilogue

The epilogue examines the 2011 human rights march in Buenos Aires on the National Day of Memory for Truth and Justice (Día Nacional de la Memoria por la Verdad y la Justicia), the anniversary of the start of the last military dictatorship (1976–83). It analyzes the author’s participation with Oduduwá Danza Afroamericana (Oduduwá Afro-American Dance), a group that brought together scores of volunteers to perform choreography based in Orishá dance. Orishá dance’s Yoruban origins and connection to the African diaspora made it an unexpected addition to the demonstration given the construction of Argentina as exceptionally white among Latin American nations. The group strove to connect Orishá dance’s link to the violence of the trans-Atlantic slave trade with Argentina’s history of political disappearance, as well as the country’s own violence against Afro-Argentines. Oduduwá’s project reiterates the importance of dance as both a political practice and one linked to memory.

Mobile Bodies

This chapter examines how contemporary dance enabled intersecting forms of artistic, social, and political mobility in the midst of rapid change that marked 1960s Buenos Aires. It demonstrates how influential choreographers Ana Kamien and Susana Zimmermann translated the artistic and social mobilities that dance afforded in the first half of the decade into critique of de facto president Juan Carlos Onganía’s repressive military government in their concert works and innovative creation processes in the late 1960s. The chapter first focuses on how these choreographers developed their early careers through new cultural organizations and institutions that emerged in the early 1960s, including the Friends of Dance Association (Asociación Amigos de la Danza) and the Torcuato Di Tella Institute (Instituto Torcuato Di Tella). The second half of the chapter examines two works that responded to the climate of repression under Onganía: Zimmermann’s Polymorphias (1969) and Kamien’s eponymous Ana Kamien (1970).

The Dancing Body on the Line

The introduction first considers the movement for a National Dance Law (2008–), which aims to establish infrastructure and federal funding for all genres of dance in Buenos Aires and throughout the Argentine provinces. It introduces the book’s central concept of “moving otherwise,” outlining the kinds of political engagement it encompasses, as well as how it dialogues with conversations in dance and performance studies. It then explains how the category of “contemporary” dance functions in the text, and argues for an approach to contemporary dance history that decenters the United States and Europe as the original sites and ongoing loci of production. Additionally, it offers a brief overview of the transnational history of modern and contemporary dance in Buenos Aires through examination of the work of Miriam Winslow; Susana Tambutti; and Luciana Acuña and Alejo Moguillansky. Finally, it details the archival, ethnographic, and embodied research methodologies that Moving Otherwise employs.

Moving Trauma

This chapter examines how choreographers integrated tango themes in contemporary dance works that engage the physical and psychic trauma of the last military dictatorship (1976–83). It begins with Susana Tambutti’s La puñalada (The Stab, 1985), a solo work that cites tango culture to address histories of violence in Argentina. It then considers Silvia Hodgers’s María Mar (1998), which confronts Hodgers’s experience as a political prisoner in the early 1970s, the loss of her partner to forced disappearance, and her exile in Geneva. The discussion draws on the Swiss documentary Juntos: Un Retour en Argentine (Together: A Return to Argentina), which features clips of María Mar alongside footage of Hodgers’s trip to Buenos Aires in 2000. Finally, the chapter examines Silvia Vladimivsky’s El nombre, otros tangos (The Name, Other Tangos, 2006) as well as her appearance in the Italian documentary Alma doble (Double Soul), which follows the development of this piece.

Common Goods

This chapter examines how contemporary dance embraced cooperative politics following Argentina’s 2001 economic crisis. It begins with the 2007–8 labor dispute at the San Martín Theater that gave rise to the Bailarines Organizados (Organized Dancers) labor movement and the Compañía Nacional de Danza Contemporánea (National Contemporary Dance Company, CNDC 2009–), whose repertory initially focused on social justice issues generally and the last military dictatorship specifically. It analyzes Daniel Payero Zaragoza’s 2010 Retazos pequeños de nuestra historia más reciente (Small Pieces of Our Recent History). The chapter then considers Bailarines Toda la Vida (Dancers for Life 2002-), a community dance group that rehearsed for fifteen years in the cooperatively run “Grissinopoli” factory. Like the CNDC, the group’s repertory emphasizes memory of the last military dictatorship. This chapter examines the works . . . Y el mar (. . . And the Sea, 2011) and La oscuridad (The Darkness, 2006).

Dance as the Art of Survival

This chapter demonstrates how contemporary dance moved otherwise as a strategy of survival during the last military dictatorship (1976–83), a period synonymous with the forced disappearance of an estimated 30,000 people (desaparecidos) accused of political “subversion.” During this period, contemporary dance offered protected spaces in studios, schools, and professional companies for negotiating bodily autonomy as dictatorial terror restricted quotidian movement. The chapter also examines expresión corporal (corporeal expression), a movement practice that expanded during the dictatorship. Outside of the studio, it considers how the Danza Abierta festival staged community, cohesion, and endurance during the waning years of the dictatorship. Lastly, the chapter examines Renate Schottelius’s Paisaje de gritos (Landscape of Screams, 1981) and Alejandro Cervera’s Dirección obligatoria (One Way, 1983), works that premiered at the San Martín Theater in the later years of the dictatorship and addressed the experience and violence of the military dictatorship.