Diaspora Citation: Choreographing Belonging in the Black Arts Movement

Abstract

This dissertation examines the work of concert dance artists within the Black Arts Movement (1965-75) in order to situate the impact of their work in the present. I use a method of diaspora citation to comprehend their choreographic strategies in articulating forms and critiques of belonging that continue to resonate today. My method builds on Brent Hayes Edwards’ theorization of diaspora as an articulated, or joined, structure of belonging (Edwards, 2003). This necessitates attending to décalage, or the incommensurable gaps in experience and differentiations of power across lines of nation, class, language, gender, sexuality, etc. My development of diaspora citation departs from Edwards’ provocative concept metaphor of “articulated joints” as a way to envision diaspora—as the joint is both a place of connection and is necessarily comprises the gaps which allow for movement. I propose that concert dance choreographers in the Black Arts Movement worked through the articulated joints of choreographic intertexts to build critiques and offer alternative structures of diasporic belonging. I define diaspora citation as a choreographic strategy that critiques the terms for belonging to the figure of the ‘human,’ conceived in Western modernity through property in the person, as white, Western, heteropatriarchal, propertied Man. Simultaneously, this choreographic strategy works to index, create and affirm alternative forms of belonging, articulated in/as diaspora, that operate on distinct terms. One way in which the practice of diaspora citation occurs is through Signifyin’ or ‘reading,’ a strategy of indirection and critique developed in African American social contexts. Rather than conceiving of movement as a form of property (on the terms of property in the person) these artists are driven by a sense of connection, motivated by the forms of assembly and structures of belonging enabled by bodies in motion. In their refusals of the terms for belonging to the ‘human’ (i.e. normative subjectivity), the dance artists of the Black Arts Movement examined in this dissertation announce a queer capacity to desire differently. Half a century after the historical Black Arts Movement, this project turns to its manifestations in concert dance as a usable past. The structure of the dissertation moves from 1964 into the present in order to consider the resonances of this past today. Through oral history interviews, performance and archival analysis, and participant observation, this project moves between historical, cultural analysis and embodied knowledge to pursue the choreographic uses of citation developed in Black Arts Movement concert dance contexts that imagined new ways of being human (together) in the world.