Dance N 39; Culture

[Marcelene Vasconez]

ASociology Approach: Dance can be a useful tool for teaching students about culture and community. Through the language of Dance and Music (Caribbean Dance), context is given to social facts, which engages and informs students about such social issues as history, Colonialism,social class, gender, race/ethnicity, and social justice. The added bonus of using Dance as a lens is that it involves active, embodied learning (Dewey, English, Mead), making the material more memorable, meaningful, and relevant to the learner. A Communicative Approach (Task-based Learning Activity) & Language for Specific Purposes:Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) is a derivative of the Communicative Approach (CA) and Second Language Acquisition (SLA) studies. Certain types of communicative learning activities can lead to acquisition of language (Abdel Kazeroni, Aquilino Sanchez, Margaret Robertson, Yiqng Lin). When teaching a Hispanic Dance Session using specific Spanish vocabulary of the dance to address certain dance movements (like Flamenco dance), we engage language learners in acquiring Spanish parts of language related to the flamenco dance. We also immerse learners in the culture of flamenco dance, and its rich cultural context, so they can learn about the social context, gender issues, the different meanings of the dance movements, the metaphors, and by extension they will learn about diversity, tolerance, inclusion, and respect for another culture through dance and music (Language for Specific Purposes: Angela N. Gardner, Howard Gardner, Victoria Escaip).

Employing pedagogical practices deeply rooted in both her New Orleans upbringing and the Black church, Gibson provides cultural narratives and historical context for Diaspora and African American dance forms, music, and communal gatherings. Her embodiment of jazz music, traditional funeral processions, Congo Square gatherings, the Black church, and Second Line parades celebrating community, deeply informs her understanding and instruction of African American vernacular dance forms. In every aspect of her daily practice, Gibson shares her expertise, her passion, her healing practices and her culturally driven spirit with her students, her colleagues, her audiences...and, with you.

Gibson curated and shared her practice with Arts Walk West, hosted by the West Dallas Chamber of Commerce and AT&T in 2019. As a scholar-artist, 2020 was a year of continuous cultural exploration for Gibson and saw her sharing at symposiums and lectures with the Duke University Dance Department, University of Florida Dance and College of Arts, Sankofa Talks with Caribbean Cultural Center, Black Nature Conversation Series and a virtual interview with University of Southern California dance historian and ethnographer E. Moncell Durden, Intangible Roots, and the Black Artist Collective. In 2021 and 2022, Gibson curated Culture, Brass, and Jazz in the Park Festival as a partnership between The New Orleans Original BuckShop and ArtsBridge Powered by Toyota, a community arts program of the AT&T Performing Arts Center.

Gibson is currently serving as a Professor of Practice in Dance at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX. In the spring of 2023, she presented as a guest lecturer and practitioner for Black Women Embodied Aesthetics Symposium at Duke University and a guest speaker for SMU Meadows School of the Arts Executive Board Meeting. Gibson will also present at Intangible Roots Professional Development Summer Intensive at Glorya Kaufman School of Dance at University of Southern California and is one of the featured artists in Moving Together, the official documentary selected for Dance on Camera at Lincoln Center, which premiered in February 2023.

During the summer of 2023, Gibson will be sharing her gifts and practice in Port of Spain, Trinidad with New Waves Institute. Expressed in her interview with The New York Times posted July 2022, Gibson clearly states her purpose, which is to heal the world through the culture, and she does so with grace fused with intention.

The group, which Laidley no longer performs with, has transformed to include both male and female professional dancers whom she has recruited from her classes in the last eight years. Many of the group members came to her with no prior dance experience and only basic exposure to Brazilian culture.

The troupe, which is composed of about 10 professional dancers, has been performing for eight years in arenas all over the world, from the Brasil Brasil Cultural Center in Culver City to venues in Australia and Japan.

KUKUSANYA: International Africanist Dance Intensive exposes participants to dance from the perspectives of African American culture and the broader African Diaspora through master classes, panel discussions, and performances.

Previously known as the African American Dance Company (AADC) Annual Dance Workshop, the AADC and Director Baba Stafford C. Berry, Jr. proudly present KUKUSANYA as the 26th anniversary event offered to the IU and greater Bloomington and surrounding communities.

To register for classes, click on the "Register Now" button below. You may also visit the On-Site Registration table located in the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center, Bridgwaters Lounge. "Register Now"

West African dance is becoming more common among dance studios, collegiate dance programs and social parties. Teaching methods vary, however. For example, you may be in Las Vegas and come across a group of people playing djembes and dancing in the center of an outdoor mall, or it may be shared in a college dance class setting, like here at the University of Utah. Dancer and teacher Rosie Banchero is our on-campus West African dance teacher. Banchero is also the founder of Wofa, an African dance company here in Salt Lake City. When interviewing Banchero, she had a lot to share about this cultural dance style. Why not study a culture that respects artists in such a phenomenal way?

We then discussed which main events really brought African dance to the United States. The biggest was the slave trade. The African people, as we hopefully know from our own history classes, brought over their culture during these dreadful times, trying to hold on to what they knew.

The opportunity to learn about a culture so different and so immensely rich is, unfortunately, rare in our Western world. To have a teacher who knows the issues, understands the people and is dedicated to learning all that is necessary to teach is an amazing opportunity. Plus, the time you spend dancing to the djembes will never feel like time wasted.

Chicago Lawn, on the Southwest Side, was once a starter neighborhood for Middle Easterners migrating to Chicago, especially Palestinians and Egyptians. After putting in their generation in the city, most moved on to the suburbs, like the Poles and Lithuanians who preceded them. Today, Bridgeview, which has one of the largest mosques in Illinois, is the center of Arab-American life in the Chicago area.

Phaedra Darwish, a Palestinian-American dance instructor, wanted to bring the Middle East back to its old neighborhood for a day, an afternoon, an hour. On June 3, she was the emcee and impresario of Raqs Hafla: A MidEast Dance Party, at the Marquette Park lagoon. It was one of the most colorful hours in the history of the Chicago Park District, and perhaps the zaniest, since it featured women dancing with candelabras on their heads.

Darwish has been teaching Middle Eastern dancing at Candace Dance, 4901 N. Elston Ave., for 15 years. As a second-generation Arab American, her mission is not only to share the dance styles of her ancestors, but to dispel stereotypes of Arab culture from Broadway musicals such as Kismet, and Hollywood movies such as Aladdin.

After the Raqs Hafla dancers went home, a hip-hop show took over the Marquette Park stage. The MidEast Dance Party will continue, though, on June 15 at 6:30 p.m. in Hamlin Park, and July 12 at 6:30 p.m. in Haas Park.

Copyright: 2022 Doria, Numer. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Body dissatisfaction, which is associated with a heightened risk for the development of EDBs, has increased in recent decades among adolescent girls [23, 24]. This has largely been attributed to the internalization of the thin body ideal, which is a socially defined ideal of attractiveness that is often unrealistic and fostered by the pressure to be thin [25]. The oppression of women and young girls to obtain the thin ideal is a post 1960s phenomena. The blame is often placed on the influence of the fashion industry because the 1960s is when slenderness became the pinnacle of fashion [26].

The work of Ortner [34] and Hesse-Biber [15] discuss the role of patriarchy in this male/female dichotomy that causes women to become obsessed with the thin ideal. Women have been historically dependent on male approval for their survival, and both judged and rewarded for their appearance. It is therefore not surprising that young women want to have a body that appeals to men [35]. For young girls today, consumption of media and social media are great enforcers of the thin ideal and subsequently produce a drive for thinness that influence food and body choices [15, 17, 21].

Westernized sociocultural values that associate thinness with beauty, popularity, happiness, and success are transmitted through almost all media messages [36]. Media messages that encourage thinness have been found to have more influence on the development of negative body image in girls than any other influencer (family, friends, and peer pressure) [37, 38] and create an additional risk factor for the development of EDBs in adolescent girls [39, 40]. Research suggests that girls as young as seven internalize media messaging regarding their bodies [41]. Young girls embody and enforce this ideal and constrain themselves within the confines of this image. They are vulnerable and powerless to the influence of advertising and unable to resist the impossible, yet desirable, images presented to them [42].

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