Dance and Authoritarianism

These Boots Are Made for Dancing

Anthony Shay

• Publisher: Intellect Books
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781789383522
• eBook ISBN: 9781789383546
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Art & Politics

Everyone who viewed the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games can understand the power of dance and mass movement in the service of politics. While examples of such public performances and huge festivals are familiar in Nazi Germany, the former Soviet Union and today's North Korea, this new book addresses the lesser known examples of Spain under Franco, the Dominican Republic, Iran, Croatia and Uzbekistan, all of which have been subjected to various political regimes.

Dance and choreographed mass movement is the newest field of serious research in dance studies, particularly in the fields of politics and international relations and gender and sexuality. The author uses dance as a lens through which to study political, ethnic, and gendered phenomena so that the reader grasps that dance

constitutes an important non-verbal lens for the study of human behaviour.

This is the first study on dance and political science to focus specifically on authoritarian regimes.  It is a significant and original contribution to scholarship in the field, with the key studies drawn from a variety of different geographical and historical backgrounds.

In Spain under Franco, the Women's Section of the fascist Falange created a folk dance program that toured widely and through the performance of Spanish regional folk dances performed by virginal young Spanish women, embodying Catholic purity, permitted the regime to re-enter the world of polite diplomacy.

The Dominican Republic dictator, Rafael Trujillo, himself a gifted dancer, raised the popular folk and vernacular dance, the merengue, to the level of the "national" dance, which became a symbol of his regime and Dominican identity, which merengue it still maintains.

For over a thousand years, Croatia, has endured a series of authoritarian regimes – Hapsburg, Napoleon, the Yugoslav royal dictatorship, fascist, Josip Broz Tito's communist regime, Franjo Tudjaman – that ruled that small nation. For over 70 years, Lado, the National Folk Dance Ensemble of Croatia, has served as "the light of Croatian identity." Through its public performances of folk dances and music, Lado has become the face of a series of different regimes.

In Iran, dance became banned under the Islamic Republic after serving the Pahlavi regime as a form of representation of its peasant population and its historic Persian identity. Uzbekistan currently has expanded the role of the invented tradition of Uzbek "classical" dance, created during the soviet period, as a representation of Uzbek identity, in national festivals. Thus, through these examples, the reader will see how dance and mass movement have become important as political means for a variety of authoritarian regimes to represent themselves.

Primary readership will be dance scholars; particularly the growing number interested in ethno-identity dances of the second half of the twentieth-century

Will be of interest to academic libraries and departments, with valuable information and interest also for scholars of ethnology, anthropology, cultural studies, history.

1

Dance and Ethnicity

Introduction

Authoritarian states, perhaps more than any other, utilize ethnic and national identities as tools of population manipulation. Because ethnic identity and national identity can be linked, and often inextricably intertwined, in this and the next part of the volume I want to contrast and compare them. Ethnicity and national identities have many similar elements, and both phenomena can be accompanied by strong emotions. However, they are different. For example, there does not exist a single American ethnicity, but there does exist an American national identity. On the other hand, Japan has an ethnic identity as well as a Japanese national identity. Dance is linked to both in the form of serving as an element in the construction and maintenance of both ethnic and national identity for many individuals.

While dance may appear to be a relatively easy concept to understand, the concept of ethnicity is far more difficult to define: Theories and viewpoints abound and have increased exponentially over the past three decades, frequently in contradictory ways. Dance is inextricably bound to ethnicity. Like language and clothing, it frequently, but not always, serves as one of the visual markers of an ethnic group, particularly if the dancers wear iconic costumes (Desmond 1997). For example, Japanese classical dance genres like bugaku and buyo serve as markers of Japanese ethnicity. These genres are performed exclusively by the Japanese and they do not exist in other ethnic groups in the way that the polka can be found in the dance inventories of several ethnic groups (Hahn 2007; Pronko and Hall 2016; Sellers-Young 1993). However, solo improvised dance in the Persianate World, a cultural and historical concept, does not serve as an exclusive ethnic marker of Persian speakers in Iran. Rather, solo improvised dance is shared throughout the Persianate world, which includes speakers of a variety of languages and ethnic groups such as Persians, Pashtuns, Azerbaijanis, Armenians, and Uzbeks, among others (Shay forthcoming).

To illustrate my point, costumed dancing figures constitute symbols that frequently give instant visual evidence of an ethnic or national group. The hula girl, the female flamenco dancer, the Scottish highland dancer in his kilt, the Bavarian lederhosen-wearing German dancer, the Japanese geisha, the Bharatanatyam dancer—these are all iconic visual symbols, almost clichés, that signal in semiotic fashion to viewers all over the world ethnic and national identities. These visual symbols are found on tourist posters; travel guides; advertisements for food, drink, and other specifically ethnic items; television; and in many other media sources.

I could also name other dancing figures that signal ethnic and national identities, but they tend to be known to a narrower group, mostly to individuals who belong to the specific ethnic group in which they are well known: the Mexican charro and china poblana dancing around a hat, Filipinos dancing over bamboo poles, Croatian dancers in red and white full skirts whirling, and the Greek dancer in his full-skirted evzone costume all provide the knowledgeable viewer with instant recognition and sometimes powerful feelings of ethnic identity and pride (Shay 2002).

Many states, particularly those with a single or majority ethnic group, use dance as a vehicle to support the cohesion of the named ethnic group. In building ethnic cohesion, the state will concomitantly build feelings of nationalism and patriotism. Because dance, especially folk, traditional, and vernacular dance genres, constitutes a symbol of both ethnicity and the nation, state-supported dance ensembles furnish the state with a valuable tool for creating, and continually reinforcing, those strong emotions. Croatia currently has a negligible non-Croatian population, and the national ensemble, Lado, is widely seen as the “proud light of Croatian culture” (Lado 2019: 63, inside back cover). Many individuals believe that these ensembles guard and perform dances, songs, music, and costumes that stretch back to the beginnings of a specific ethnic group. It is important to look carefully at such claims of ethnic origins.

In speaking of prehistoric ethnic groups in Europe, historian Patrick Geary issues a caveat:

Clothing and ornamentation certainly varied widely and may have been symbols of group identity. How certain members of a society dressed, what sorts of brooches or belts they wore, how they styled their hair could all have important symbolic meaning. What such meanings were is impossible to discern in retrospect.

(2002: 76)

However, clothing and jewelry items, especially luxury trade products, discovered in the graves of a specific historic group may have been made elsewhere and traded into the society in which they were found and in which they took on new meanings. If Geary can assert that clothing and jewelry have left traces, how then can dance scholars and other writers claim to know the meanings of early dance when the evidence we have is a few paltry illustrations? Depictions and illustrations of prehistoric, and even historic, dancing can tell us precious little about what dance looked like and what meanings it may have had (Shay 1994, 1999).

Because of the complexity of the topic of ethnicity, I will divide the discussion into three sections. The first part constitutes introductory observations, the second will look into the fascinating topic of ethnogenesis, or how ethnic groups are born and morph over time, sometimes disappearing, and the third part is a more formal presentation of the elements of ethnicity, what I call the “contours” of ethnicity.

The topic of ethnogenesis is important because groups like Greeks, Iranians, Chinese, and Japanese, which have undoubtedly long histories, today largely stake the claim that their genetic makeup derives from ancient sources in an unbroken and, by extension, ethnically pure blood and kinship line and cultural continuity (Rutherford 2017). The ethnogenesis of a particular ethnic group is almost always shrouded in mythology because we cannot know the actual origins. I address this topic with a degree of specificity in the sections on Iran and Croatia, because many individuals in societies in which the origins of ethnic groups are not important find it difficult to comprehend the importance that individuals place upon it in societies in which ethnic identity is a core element of one’s identity, and stories of ethnic and national origins, some historical some mythological, abound in these societies. Ethnic origins are sometimes so important that they appear in literature courses in school curricula (Ramet and Matić 2007).

In discussing ethnogenesis I will offer some arguments concerning the conditions of warfare, slavery, and massive human movements that contributed to altering and shaping current gene pools in major ways, and that is the reason I think many claims of ethnic purity and a single unbroken line of ethnic identity are in need of modification. When an individual was taken as a slave, they were ripped out of their former identity, including ethnic identity, and, in most cases, had to adopt a new identity just to survive. “The great divide in the Roman world lay between those who were slaves and those who were free” (Geary 2002: 64). In all of these cases, slaves—who made up a sizeable portion of the population, especially in Rome, Athens, and Baghdad, and could sometimes purchase their freedom—were ultimately assimilated into those populations. Many noncombatants of the losing side in the constant warfare among the Greeks, Romans, and other historic groups like the Aztecs, were sold as slaves. Thus, millions of individuals were forcibly taken from their original ethnic group and placed into a new context. They often produced children in the areas where they had been slaves.

It is important to remember that ethnicity is fluid and dynamic, not a static phenomenon passed uninterrupted from generation to generation. For example, Iranian and Greek histories are frequently presented as if contemporary Iranian or Greek ethnic identities form an unbroken link to a glorious ancient Persian or classical Greek identity. Everyone assumes that they are directly linked to the past, that they are descendants of the nobility, the philosophers, the literati, and other great figures who made ancient Iran and Greece glorious, never coming from the peasants that made up the vast majority of the population and, not insignificantly, kept the elite fed (see Rutherford 2017, chapter 4). In contemporary Greece, “Greek identity not only in a political sense but with all the connotations of unbroken continuity with the classical past (and beyond) is an almost universally claimed possession” (Just 1989: 71), and “what had to be proved was that they were the very descendants of Pericles” (Just 1989: 84, emphasis in the original). “The lure of fame or infamy in your family is strong” (Rutherford 2017: 166).

Historian Walter Pohl notes, “It is self-evident that the Croats, Bulgars, and Turks of the early Middle Ages are not identical to the present-day nations with these same names” (2018: 19). In the same way, the Iranians and Greeks of the past are not the Iranians and Greeks of the present, a point that I cannot stress enough and, given the history of human movement and migration, widespread slavery and warfare, many of them may not even come from the same gene pool as those they claim as ancestors.

I also agree with archaeologists Ton Derks and Nico Roymans that “Ethnic identities are always constructed in close association with political systems. It is politics that define ethnicity not vice versa” (2009: 1). I would include, as well, social and economic systems that promoted widespread slavery and warfare. As I noted above, the concept that today’s populations are direct descendants of past populations, as I observed about the Iranians and Greeks, defies the reality of history.

As part of the fluidity of ancient gene pools, “Despite frequent claims by ethnic groups to the contrary, all ethnic formations are intrinsically unstable and dynamic over time. Much of the dynamism is to be understood in close association with conflict, violence and changing constellations of power” (Derks and Roymans 2009: 1–2). That is the reason why, in constructing ethnic histories, I believe that insufficient attention has been paid to three of the most important impetuses of ethnic dynamism, that is, population movements, war, and slavery, which have dramatically altered gene pools and which I will briefly address in this portion of the introduction. In the ancient world incessant warfare, human migration, and the institution of slavery dramatically uprooted millions of individuals that originally began with a small gene pool (Bellwood 2013; Bradley 1994; Cunliffe 2011; Rutherford 2017; Wickham 2005). And yet, many people continue to imagine the past through the romanticized lens of unbroken ethnic origins.

What Is Ethnicity?

For many individuals, ethnicity is a basic component of identity that constitutes socially constructed differences between groups and determines insiders from outsiders: us from them. Ethnic identities can be self-ascribed or ascribed by others, and those two ascriptions may not match. For others, ethnicity has no meaning within our personal lives.

In this way Fredrik Barth’s concept of the boundaries of ethnicity (1969) is useful: the boundaries that mark the differences between two or more ethnic groups, which differ situationally.

The only thing I would add to the theories of Barth is that the criteria are not chosen at random. Language, religion, physical features, and common history are often recurring boundary marks. The notion of a common descent, though often fictitious, but mostly with a kernel of truth, always plays an important part in the perception of ethnicity. In Antiquity, the situation was not very different.

(Van der Spek 2009: 102)

Some boundary markers, like language and religion, appear more frequently than others, such as dress or food ways, and, as Barth has indicated, each case is unique.

While the actual fact of ethnicity, as we understand it today, most likely existed prehistorically as an “us and them” phenomenon, according to John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith (1994) in their study of ethnicity, the word “ethnicity” was first employed in English in the 1950s and was not widely used until the 1970s. Ethnicity, in short, is about individual and group identity, but as such it is inextricably bound up with class, race, and nationalism, and this point cannot be stressed enough. Frequently, when individuals speak of ethnicity, they are actually discussing race or nationality. These subjects overlap significantly, especially in the United States where many Caucasian individuals can select an ethnicity for purposes of identity, even if that ethnicity has been reduced to reproducing one’s Polish or Italian grandmother’s recipes, but ethnic minorities are frequently perceived as racial as well as ethnic minorities, and many individuals have a perceived notion that racial identity is fixed (Rutherford 2017, chapter 5).

In public discourse and official government forms in the United States, the categories of race and ethnicity constitute confusing areas. Are Latino or Hispanic, Asian, or Native American racial or ethnic categories? These questions are important because state and federal largesse is frequently dispensed on a racial/ethnic basis, even though the notion of race has been scientifically discredited (Fenton 2003; Steinberg 2001; Waters 1990).

In this part, I want to define what I mean by the term “ethnicity,” as the second of the three elements in this study of dance and authoritarianism.¹ First, I conceive of both ethnicity and nationalism in the plural: ethnicities and nationalisms because they are not a singular experience, but multiple experiences, and individuals and groups experience them differently. Unfortunately, we often think of and discuss ethnic...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Frontispiece
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Dance and Authoritarianism
• 1 Dance and Ethnicity
• 2 Dance and Nationalism: The Nation, the State, and the Nation-State
• 3 Iran: The Shah’s New Dance
• 4 Croatia: Lado—“Light of Croatian Culture”
• 5 Spain: Women’s Work—Franco’s Sección Femenina and Spanish Folk Dance
• 6 Dominican Republic: The Dictator’s Fancy Dance—Trujillo, Merengue, and Nationalism
• 7 Uzbekistan: Old Lamps for New—The Creation of Uzbek Classical Dance
• Conclusion
• References
• Index