Dance, outside of self-expression, fulfills a number of functions: social ritual, choreographed art, religious practice, entertaining enterprise, or military exercise. In Dance as a Weapon, I trace how the body-in-motion serves various communities and nations. I am especially interested in how the social choreography of each nation changes in terms of community and or national concerns. Dance is a social and political tool. It has the power, at once, to bolster the status quo, or resist the damaging effects of repression.
As illustrated by one of the most extreme cases in history, the Propaganda Ministry in Nazi Germany was strapped with the task of developing, “the ultimate German Dance.” The latter was supposed to exude a rhythmic power so distinctive and strong that it would awaken “the German soul,” forging a community art form that would inspire, and eventually produce, a nationalistic mass movement. In other words, choreography became inextricably tied with fascist State ideology and propaganda.
In contrast, the contemporary Brazilian combat dance, Capoeira, grew out of African resistance to the Portuguese slave trade that began early in the 16th century and didn’t end until the middle of the 19th century (importing, against their will, almost 5 million African people). Enslaved on plantations, working under extreme duress, living in abominable conditions, Africans resisted in many forms: “armed revolt, poisoning their owners, abortion and escape.” (1) Capoeira first developed as a martial art, escaped African slaves formed small, underground communities outside of Brazilian plantations, and taught each other to use their bodies as weapons to surprise and attack their oppressors. By the 1800th, it spread to Africans living in towns and cities, so much so that it became a common, well-known, radical language of movement that expressed opposition, pride, and unwillingness to be subservient in any form. By the onset of the 20th century it had progressed into a complex, athletic, but elegant dance form in urban Brazil, eventually achieving international acclaim by mid-century.
Dance as a Weapon (2020) is a series of 70 plus works on paper where I map the gestures of more than thirty different international war dance practices. I am interested in how narratives of aggression transform, over time, into iconic, celebrated dance forms, often losing their initial ideological force and direction. How are these contemporary artifacts expanding or limiting our reading of the past? At what point does the transition from aggression to “emblematic National dance practice” occur? What kind of a translation is occurring from text to gesture (or gesture to text) in these works? This study is particularly interested in how non-verbal cues feed national narratives in both conscious and unconscious ways. It presents a visual vocabulary of war and resistance, revealing both the extreme differences, as well as the commonalities of these discordant moments in history.
I am referencing the following war dances in this series: Aduk Aduk, Brunei; Al-Ayyala, Oman, UAE; Ardah, Arabia; Baris, Bali, Indonesia; Ohafia, Eastern Nigeria; Buza, Russia; Crip Walk and Blood Walk, USA; Cakalele, Indonesia; Capoeira, Brazil; Dirk, Scotland; Haka, New Zealand, Hoko, New Zealand, Samoa, Tonga and Fiji; Indlamu, Southern Africa; Juego de maní, Cuba; Kapa Haka, Maori; Kabasaran, Indonesia; Kailao, Tonga; Khattak, Pakistan, Afganistan; Khorumi, Georgia; Pentozal, Crete; Pyrrhichios, Greece; Reggada, Morocco; Sagayan, Philippine; Manu Siva Tau, Samoa; Tahtib, Egypt; Takalo, Niue; Yarkhushta , Armenia; Yowla, UAE; Hopak, Ukraine.
*1 Juan Goncalves-Borrega “How Brazilian Capoeria Evolved from a Martial Art to an International Dance Craze”
