This course focuses on questions of "queering" dance as a historical, cultural, social, and political enterprise. Focusing on both historical and postmodern dance contexts, the course explores key issues around gender and identity, with special reference to the concepts of performativity, impersonation, sexuality, and transformation. The course places the notion of "flows of gender and transformation" at its center, and examines historical, social, and aesthetic shifts in these ideas over the past 50 years. It draws on case studies ranging from female/male dance traditions of impersonation in India, China, Japan, and Indonesia, to postmodern shifts of "classical" dance (such as the all-male cast of Matthew Bourne's "Swan Lake") and more popular forms such as voguing and "RuPaul's Drag Race." |