I will be presenting a paper, “Dancing Misfits: Ethnicity, Alterity, and Cultural Representation in ‘Contemporary’ Dance,” at the 2018 Dance Studies Association conference, entitled “Contra: Dance & Conflict,” at the University of Malta in Valleta, Malta from June 5-8, 2018.

Abstract: This paper examines work by minoritarian artists who strain at the epistemological limits of contemporary and ethnic/world dance labels, whereby “contemporary” is associated with unmarked whiteness and aesthetic innovation, and “ethnic” with identity-based representation and racialized cultural traditions. What happens when there are “mismatches” between dancing bodies, physical/aesthetic techniques, and choreographic subject matter, yet none of the three are steeped in whiteness or Eurocentrism? How do these dancing misfits complicate the conflation of cultural identity and aesthetic belonging, disturbing dance as racialized self-representation within liberal multiculturalism and as ethnocultural nationalism in postcolonial contexts?