Feminist Theory Across the Millennial Divide

Abstract

Every so often I receive a request to anthologize my 1987 article, "The Balanchine Woman: Of Hummingbirds and Channel Swimmers" (Daly 1987), in which I used the feminist theory of the male gaze to analyze a prototypical pas de deux. So far, I have declined each one, or proposed that the article be published in tandem with "Dance History and Feminist Theory: Reconsidering Isadora Duncan and the Male Gaze," a 1992 essay that critiqued the very theory that had enabled the earlier work (Daly 1992). While I am grateful that "Hummingbirds" made a meaningful contribution to our understanding of how feminist theory could be a useful framework for dance scholarship, I also appreciate that both feminist theory and dance studies have come a long, long way since the groundbreaking paradigm of the male gaze. When I wrote "Hummingbirds," feminist theory was the most creative, rigorous, and productive discourse around. It articulated what had emerged as the fundamental issue of twentieth-century arts and humanities: representation. Feminist theory infused dance studies with a fresh, compelling set of questions that were quickly taken up, especially by younger scholars, critics, and artists. We were challenged to shift our angle of vision and expand the field of our vision. As a result, our critical acuity was honed, the dancing we chose to study became more inclusive, dialogue was opened with other disciplines, and dance literature as a whole grew more incisive, complex, and engaged. But no question, framework, or theory ever remains fixed. I began to question the theory of the male gaze almost as soon as "Hummingbirds" was published. When I attempted to adapt the model to my historical research on Isadora Duncan, I bumped up against its limits, which led me to other theories and more questions. It also led me to critique the then flourishing "success-or-failure" brand of feminist criticism, whose brittle, reductive analyses were not only unconvincing scholarship but problematic politics as well. So I wrote "Dance History and Feminist Theory" as a companion piece to "Hummingbirds." Theory is successful insofar as it is generative. Feminist theory proved so successful that it was superseded-by race theory, queer theory, and postcolonial/ transnational theory. In 1994, when I was asked to deliver a keynote lecture on gender to the annual conference of the Congress on Research in Dance, it was impossible for me to address issues of feminist criticism without considering these new axes of critical analysis. Drawing upon Pierre Bourdieu's theory of habitus, I called for a more complex understanding and analysis of how culture operates in constructing the gendered danc

The pulse of symmetry: On the possible co-evolution of rhythm in music and dance

“…Nor to dismiss the importance of feminist and gay/ lesbian interventions in music and dance (e.g. Carter, 1996;Daly, 2000;Hanna, 1987;Jones & Gillespie, 1995;McClary, 1992), or of undermining the concept of the patriarchal "male gaze" (that of not just the male, but also the "empowered" audience viewer, as initially identified by Laura Mulvey) in psychological and cultural studies. Darwin may have emphasised the struggle for reproduction effected by "poor" males, but he would have appreciated current evidence and social behaviour in which sexual activity is more sexually equitable.…”

Why Dance Literacy?

“…While long established paradigms continue to inspire work from structural, symbolic, and functional perspectives, two new trajectories have arisen [one sociopolitical, the other kinesthetic]. (p. 70) xi For some, the opening of these approaches creates a restlessness with traditional dance curriculum that focuses on the training of the body and the artist, without equally considering questions and perspectives that might bridge practice and theory, art making and scholarship, and create a more integrated dance culture (see for example, Daly, 2000;Desmond, 2000;Perpener, 2000;Sklar, 2000;and La Rocco, 2007). xii At the same time, arts educators have begun to think about the concept of multiple literacies as applied to dance in K-12 education.…”

The Balanchine Dilemma: “So-Called Abstraction” and the Rhetoric of Circumvention in Black-and-White Ballets

“…Agon is not the only interesting example of Balanchine's semantically abstract works that could be analyzed for its abstractive effects that have implications for dancers and their representations. The lens of abstraction could be used to revisit some of the existing interpretations, including Ann Daly's influential feminist analysis of the sections of Balanchine's The Four Temperaments (1946) as detrimental to the female dancer's agency as well as representations of the ballerina as an object rather than a transient subject (Daly 1987; her later contemplations in (Daly 2000)). Related points are raised in a controversial autobiography by the former NYCB ballerina Gelsey Kirkland, who illustrated the ways in which she felt "dehumanized" in Balanchine's ballets-for instance, the choreography of Concerto Barocco (1941) Kirkland experienced as a form of robotic, metronomic adherence to the beat where she sought "a distinction between human being and machine".…”