Dance and Migration

Third Space Politics in Zero Degrees (2005) and Desh (2011)

Source: Mitra, Royona. “Third Space Politics in Zero Degrees (2005) and Desh (2011).” Akram Khan, Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2015, pp. 92–114, https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137393661_5.

Summary: This chapter from Royona Mitra’s book Akram Khan: Dancing New Interculturalism (2015) examines how two of Khan’s contemporary dance pieces embody “new interculturalism,” a negotiation of multiple identity-positions within a globalized, diasporic context. Using the theoretical lens of the third space, “a metaphoric in-between space in which postcolonial diasporic identity-formations occur” (Mitra 93), the author explores how Zero Degrees (2005) questions this in-betweenness in the geographical borderland between India and Bangladesh and how Desh’s (2011) third space is articulated through Khan’s own body. This study illustrates how immigration-driven concepts of cultural heritage and displacement are mobilized through dance and how the dancer’s body is positioned as a site for exploring the psychological and physical realities of the migratory experience.

Introduction: Global/Mobile: Re-Orienting Dance and Migration Studies

Source: Scolieri, Paul. “Introduction: Global/Mobile: Re-Orienting Dance and Migration Studies.” Dance Research Journal [New York], vol. 40, no. 2, December 2008, p. V–XX.

Summary: In this article, Scolieri argues that the study of dance — defined as “the arrangement of bodily movement in time and space” (vi) — has introduced a range of new perspectives on human migration. The author outlines the historical trajectory of dance as a reflector of the social transformations driven by the transnational movements of bodies. He reveals and explains how different dance styles serve distinct roles in the migration context: eliciting empathy through debkes, reinforcing cultural identity through traditional forms like kolo, regaining ownership of one’s body and land through barangu circle dances, expressing resistance in the face of political subjugation through the “wide sweeping circles” in Sudanese and Ethiopian refugee contexts, reflecting on the experiences of power and exile through tango or cueca, and overcoming trauma through Acholi dances. By discovering various dance practices and understanding their historical, cultural, and psychological impacts on communities in a globalized context, the reader can gain a new and more comprehensive perspective on migration.

Traditional Dance as a Vehicle for Identity Construction and Social Engagement after Forced Migration

Source: Smith, Yda J. “Traditional Dance as a Vehicle for Identity Construction and Social Engagement after Forced Migration.” Societies (Basel, Switzerland) [Basel], vol. 8, no. 3, September 2018, p. 67, https://doi.org/10.3390/soc8030067.

Summary: Yda J. Smith, director and founder of the University of Utah Immigration and Refugee Resettlement Fieldwork Program, conducted research on members of the Karen ethnic group, aged 16 to 24, who were born in refugee camps in Thailand and now live in the United States. For her study, she focused on a dozen refugees living in Utah who engage in the production of traditional Karen dance. Interested in the experience of forced migration, Smith explored the reasons Karen youth join dance groups. The results showed that, through the performance of dance, these individuals seek to establish a direct connection to their Karen heritage, embody that heritage, and affirm their sense of identity. These refugees use dance to understand who they are “within the context of a society where they are a distinct minority, where the vast majority of people have no knowledge of who the Karen are or what has been happening to them in recent decades in Burma and the refugee camps in Thailand” (Smith 4).

Dance and Immigration: Eliciting Empathy

Source: Conz, Rosely, and Stephany Slaughter. “Dance and Immigration: Eliciting Empathy.” Journal of Dance Education, vol. 23, no. 2, 2023, pp. 102–113.

Summary: Following Donald Trump’s September 2017 announcement that his administration would end DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), immigrant choreographer Rosely Conz created Uprooted (2017), a screendance project highlighting the instability immigrants experienced under the new administration. Through movement and metaphor, the piece aimed to influence participants’ perceptions regarding immigration, challenge dehumanizing and homogenizing discourses, and emotionally connect with the audience through “kinesthetic empathy.” The concept of kinesthetic empathy refers to a spectator’s ability to connect with the emotional and physical experience of dance by internally sensing movement while watching it (Conz 104). In her article, Conz details the making of her project and explains the educational potential of screendance to provoke this kinesthetic response, “empowering [performers] to use dance as a form of resistance and expression to engage social and political issues” such as immigration (Conz 103).

Traumatised Refugees: An Integrated Dance and Verbal Therapy Approach

Source: Koch, Sabine C., and Beatrix Weidinger-von der Recke. “Traumatised Refugees: An Integrated Dance and Verbal Therapy Approach.” The Arts in Psychotherapy, vol. 36, no. 5, 2009, pp. 289–296.

Summary: In this article, Koch et al. explore the potential of dance/movement therapy (DMT) as a treatment for refugees experiencing complex psychological trauma and its aftermath. The authors specifically focus on case studies conducted at REFUGIO, the Centre for Treatment and Counselling of Refugees and Survivors of Torture in Germany, to examine how DMT can help address refugees’ memories, which are deeply embedded in the body. This research is relevant to performance and migration studies, as it directly informs how to represent refugees’ experiences truthfully by foregrounding the body as a site of memory. The detailed reports of patient interventions highlight the physical repercussions refugees may face as a result of persecution in their homeland, the experience of exile, and living in disadvantaged conditions in their host country. They may include generalized body pain, dissociation, recurring body shakes, and physical distress: all embodied responses that should not be overlooked and must be considered in performances that share the stories of refugees.

La Danse : Un Médium de Relations Interculturelles Entre Les Québécois et Les Immigrants Vivant À Québec

Source: Lapointe-Therrien, Isabelle. La Danse : Un Médium de Relations Interculturelles Entre Les Québécois et Les Immigrants Vivant À Québec. Université Laval, 2008, http://central.bac-lac.gc.ca/.redirect?app=damspub&id=9647fbd2-efa4-40e9-9b50-7c1c62ee283e.

Summary: This thesis examines the potential of dance as a relational medium for fostering intercultural relationships in Quebec. Grounded in the idea that dance functions as a nonverbal means of communication and enables individuals from various cultural backgrounds to connect through shared embodied experiences, the research focuses on a group of Quebec-born dancers who participated in African and Latin dance classes over a four-month period. The findings suggest that engaging in culturally rooted dance practices helps cultivate intercultural sensitivity and counter covert racism, an indirect form of racial discrimination that involves individuals refusing to view a minority group in a positive way (Lapointe-Therrien 15). Relevant to performance and migration studies as it explores the relational dynamics between migrants and residents, the article shows how such practices can reduce assimilationist pressures driven by identity-based insecurity (Lapointe-Therrien 18). In fact, Dorais argues that dance can contribute to acculturation, the phenomenon resulting from “individuals having different cultures come into continuous first-hand contact, with subsequent changes in the original cultural patterns of either or both groups” (Redfield et al. in Lapointe-Therrien 18).

Channels Through the Humane: The Exiled Body in Crystal Pite’s Flight Pattern

Source: Golomb, Sariel. “Channels Through the Humane: The Exiled Body in Crystal Pite’s Flight Pattern.” Theatre Journal (Washington, D.C.) [Baltimore], vol. 75, no. 3, September 2023, pp. 301–320, https://doi.org/10.1353/tj.2023.a917480.

Summary: In this essay, Golomb conducts a choreographic analysis of Crystal Pite’s 2017 contemporary ballet Flight Pattern, a piece that responds to the refugee crisis and explores the humanitarian themes of displacement, loss, and community. This paper specifically examines the symbolic and political implications of Pite’s staging of the refugee condition as a universal experience stripped of political signification and historical timestamps. In Flight Pattern, the refugee transcends place and time and is independent of relations to exterior power structures, “voiding the scene of exile of its conditions and erasing the political from the vision of the refugee” (Golomb 303). By representing this figure as an abject, kinetic body, Pite’s piece suggests that a dancer’s body can access a refugee experience through movement. This article is a valuable resource for understanding the multiplicity of refugee portrayals in performance, how such representations shape audience perception, and how this figure can be defined not only by a non-repeatable biopolitical situation but also through a series of movement patterns and gestures (Golomb 306).

War Fought on a Delicate Front: Ballet in the Russo-Ukrainian War

Source: Chan, Adrienne. “War Fought on a Delicate Front: Ballet in the Russo-Ukrainian War.” Harvard International Review [Cambridge], vol. 44, no. 4, October 2023, pp. 18–23.

Summary: This article examines how ballet has been weaponized during the Russian invasion of Ukraine by Russian and Ukrainian protesters and refugees. While historically ballet has served as a symbol of the Russian government’s power and as an instrument of national pride, dance has also become a form of diplomacy and a powerful medium of cultural persistence and resistance during the conflict. Chan provides various examples, including the June 2023 performance of Giselle (1841), adapted by choreographer Alexei Ratmansky and presented by the United Ukrainian Ballet at the Segerstrom Center for Arts in Costa Mesa, California. This ballet company, composed of refugees from many of Ukraine’s dance institutions, concluded the piece by unfurling Ukrainian flags on stage as the orchestra played the Ukrainian National Anthem. This essay’s relevance is tied to the fact that it presents how ballet, “an art form which some have predicted is dying” (Chan 20), remains central in exploring contemporary crises and how it “is not just a distraction from, nor victim of, politics, but [an art that] reflects, shapes, and breeds discourse in politics as well” (Chan 23).

Defying Distance

Source: Saleh, Farah. “Defying Distance.” Img Journal, no. 3, February 2021, pp. 366–379, https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2724-2463/12264.

Summary: In this article, Palestinian choreographer Farah Saleh reveals the creation process behind several of her participatory dance performances, which use performative gestures to reflect on the ongoing Palestinian refugee problem and its connection to the current global refugee condition. Through her bimodal pieces, Saleh invites the audience to witness, re-enact, transform, and deform Palestinian refugees’ stories and gestures in their own bodies, with the goal of transmitting and disseminating some of the refugees’ — and the children of refugees’ — bodily archives to the bodies of the spectators (Saleh 374). Archiving gestures of generations provides them with an afterlife while also allowing the audience to experience the condition of collective vulnerability, political resistance, and solidarity (Saleh 370). Saleh’s explanation of the production process is relevant to performance and migration studies as it highlights the advantages of using performative gestures as a model for creating affective archives and soliciting empathy within the viewer, both through live performance and through media.

Movement Initiation: Dance and Refugee Performance

Source: Kaplan, Jeff. “Movement Initiation: Dance and Refugee Performance.” Involuntary Motion, 1st ed., vol. 1, Routledge, 2021, pp. 20–38, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003097068-2.

Summary: Kaplan’s article explores how dance can express a response to migration, to the involuntary motion of a plight of people on the move (Kaplan 27), and how the movement initiation produced by a migrant’s body works in ways similar to that of the dancer’s body. As the author points out, “all motion begins from prior movement” (Kaplan 36), whether the motion is voluntary or involuntary. Kaplan specifically provides an analysis of Crystal Pite’s Flight Pattern (2017) and investigates the ways in which the Canadian choreographer aimed to promote kinesthetic empathy through the use of “the universality of the language of embodiment” (Kaplan 27). Through dance, Pite evokes Jill Dolan’s notion of “utopian performatives,” moments in theatre in which the stage shares a glimpse of a more hopeful world, reanimated by “a new, more radical humanism” (Dolan in Kaplan 29). This text is pertinent to performance and migration studies as it highlights the ways that dance can recreate “the kinetic chains that movement initiates follow within global body politics” (Kaplan 36).