Reading Response #3 Ricky Chen DANC-0163 Christal Brown

The article is interesting in a way that it is written in a different style than other articles on the subject of dance. First, it is written by a group of authors ranging from different academic disciplines and performance scholarships. I believe this is a great idea because in order to understanding African American dance, a subject so extensive and complex, we must look at the context of the time period, the history of the dance, and the culture of that society. This multiple-author style can provide in-depth study of Black Dance that is usually only criticized in single-author publications, written usually by a white critic.

“Don’t Look Back: Rock n’ Roll Orpheus” is a production that resulted from the Yale World Performance Project’s team-taught seminar on African American dance in the context of 1950s and 1960s. The article discusses how the course explores the premise of African American dance as a major impact in American cultural performances. It also examines how the “post-racial” generation reacts to kinesthetic movements that were characterized by racial identities during the 1960s and Civil Rights movement. I find it interesting that Roach, the only person in the class who has experienced the Civil Rights era still has muscle memories of the social dances such as Watusi, the Monkey, the Hand Jive. However, the rest of the class have not lived through the time period and do not have exposure to those dances. Is then, the new generation, colorblind or post-racial? If so, I believe the advantage of teaching African American dance to a new generation with colorblindess is to finally accept African American dance as a part of the American performance culture, as opposed to a distinct, separate genre. Black dance will then lose the idea of racial identity, and become more of an art form. However, the disadvantage of teaching Black Dance to a post-racial generation is that we forget the context in which the dance rose out of. Thus, it is necessary to “look back” when studying Black dance.