Stripping the Emperor

This article was particularly interesting because when I first came to Middlebury and took a dance class, it was very eerie and peculiar. The dance was something I had never seen before; something I was not at all familiar with. However, as I experienced the new form of dance called modern contemporary, I kept finding my body leaning to my cultural vocabulary and behavior. Cultural dances that my body was familiar with, was similar to the black dance when it came to democracy of body parts and movements. And I feel very connected to the African American influences. Hence, I feel like my body's vocabulary has been culturally developed. My culture has made me connect to African American culture through the use of hip movements in dance. Since the hip movements is vital in Nepalese dance, it has been easier to embrace African dance forms. And my experience in NYC with the city culture, popular culture has also affected my take on dance or how to present it. It was in nyc, where I unconsciously try to pick up the "cool" factor during dance. It is very interesting to see, this factor of "cool" in dance because many of my black and african male friends do have this mien quality, or swag and bring it to the dance floor as well.
Something that completely, took me out of surprise was when I learned that American ballet has African American influence. I am not a sucker for American Ballet or jazz or any dance of that sort, however, something I saw far away and a complete distinction of "black dance" was ballet. It was very surprising and thought provoking that the history of african american dance does go further than I had originally thought and its influences have spread far and wide, even in the most unlikely dance forms.