Dance, Human Rights, and Social Justice
(Room Encanto B)
03 Jul 19
3:00 PM
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4:15 PM
Have you ever heard of antidance literature? Did you know that until 2017 it was illegal to social dance in a New York club without a special cabaret license? This talk discusses dance in contexts of oppression and its subversion, along with the role of dance in healing from human rights abuses. It demonstrates how dance has consistently been used, at different periods in history and in many parts of the world, to advance strict adherence to certain ideologies – or to shame and humiliate – as well as to express resistance to repressive regimes and to heal and empower victims of injustice. Indeed, it reveals that dance, because of its power to unite people – and its associations with the body, sensuality, and joy – has proven a focal point in attempts to control human behavior, as indicated by attempts to regulate dancing through laws and bans and to censure, imprison, or torture people who dance.