DANC 163 A

What is Black Dance?

What is Black dance and what is White dance? When race comes in the discussion of any field, it becomes a hot topic. Race has always been a means to categorize people into different groups. Through this article we can see that race has again appeared as a means to categorize different dance style. Black dance is seen as tribal, grounded, bare feet, lots of torso and hip movement as well as unrestricted movements; whereas White dance is seen as a structured, rigid and tamed dance form with grace and elegance. Although, the definition of Black dance wasn't concluded in the article, I couldn't stop but wonder why the general idea of Black dance was similar to the colonized Indians and the Africans. In my opinion, the white audiences perceive, the strong body movements of Black dancers as tribal since the strong body movements of black dancers can be seen as similar to the cultural dances in Africa. However, it may just be their dance personality. A white dancer may have a dance personality to that of a "black" dance and a black dancer can have the elegance and structure of White dance forms. Also, I disagree with Ronald K Brown when he says that "a black dance is any dance done by someone of african descent," because a white dancer could do what a stereotypical black dance and it wouldn't be considered a white dance. Similarly, if a Black dancer does a white dance, it is not a white dance. Therefore, the concept of categorizing dance through race is ambigious in America.

tenzin