| Scholars frequently link improvised dance with the term "freedom," but fail to analyze the social and historical conditions in which dancing inevitably occurs. This dissertation breaks from these works by arguing that improvisation's keenest political power exists not as a "free" mode of creation where one can do whatever one wants, but as an immediate interaction with social, historical, and formalist constraint. One's social position in the world, neither stable nor essential, affects one's ability to move. To claim otherwise is to deny the real conditions that shape daily life, while also denying improvised dance its exquisite political power.;I begin by discussing mambo at the Palladium ballroom during the mid-1950s, where dancers emphasized the importance of solo improvisations, poetically known as "open shines." The next chapter moves from the dancehall to the concert stage to consider collaborations between postmodern dancers and jazz musicians during the late '60s and early '70s, largely driven by the civil rights movement. The third chapter explores intersections between physical techniques of nonviolent protest and early innovations in contact improvisation, a partnered form of improvised dance that developed in the mid-1970s. The fourth chapter discusses the political significance of improvisation across Bill T. Jones's career, from his rejection of contact improvisation, to his identity-driven works of the '80s, to his controversial return to formalism in the '90s. Drawing from Michel Foucault's late interviews, the final chapter analyzes the extent to which improvised dance can be considered a "practice of freedom.";Despite the chronological order of the chapters, the dissertation does not present a linear progression from the "beginning" of postmodern dance through its current concerns. Instead, the chapters constitute a collage in which it is impossible to reduce "black dance," often linked with traditions of improvisation, to a separate sphere of dance history. Paying particular attention to questions of identity as well as the politics of form, the dissertation analyzes instances in which dancers improvised across difference, bringing to the fore issues of appropriation; cultural belonging; misunderstanding; and, at times, stunning ensemblic collaboration. |
