Darkowaa A-K - DANC0163- "Post-Racial Class," Response 3

In the article, the Yale World Performance Project members, created a production where students would stimulate dances and music from the 50's and 60's and link these dance forms to the classic Orpheus story and their well known present day culture. They called this production, "Project O."

The most interesting section of this article was, "Are we 'Post-Racial' Yet"? This discussion was very intriguing in that, many believe that in this present day, the United States of America is post-racial. It was shocking to read that a white student (also in the production) discussed the fact that she never thought about race and did not know what class belonged to which categories, etc. Though this notion of America being post-racial is debatable, Obama's victories in various States during his campaign, and moreover, his presidency, further strengthen this belief. But the students brushed off other issues, like discrimination during Hurricane Katrina and the blatant statistical evidence of less blacks furthering their tertiary education as opposed to spending time in jail. These issues grabbed my attention and had me thinking if America is really post-racial yet or even if our present generation has the 'first colorblind Americans.'

Another notable section of this article is the differences in bodily motions of present day students, as opposed to dance styles of the 1950's and 1960's. The article addressed that, in the 50's and 60's, 'black' dance was whitened. Hence, from the students' perspective, the past dance moves were more rigid and simple, as compared to present day dances in night clubs, parties, etc. The functions of dance nowadays seem to be more skewed to debauchery, as opposed to its earlier functions like: alleviating pain and releasing stress. Hence, students' dance movements consist of more bumps, grinds and 'hooking onto one another.' But on a whole, it was noticed that, the students' perspective of social dancing had a multicultural aspect to it, as the students adopted come Asian and Latin American dance into their dance styles.