Dance and Authoritarianism: These Boots are Made for Dancing

by Anthony Shay

Overview

Everyone who watched the opening ceremony of Beijing’s 2008 Summer Olympics can understand the power of dance and mass movement in the service of politics. Public performance and festival at such scale are familiar to us in Nazi Germany, the former Soviet Union, and contemporary North Korea, but this new book addresses lesser-known examples—in Spain, the Dominican Republic, Iran, Croatia, and Uzbekistan—and explores the various political regimes that ruled them. 

Using dance as a lens through which to study political, ethnic, and gendered phenomena, Anthony Shay shows us how dance and mass movement have served as important political tools throughout history and across a variety of authoritarian regimes. Dance and Authoritarianism is a significant and original contribution to the scholarship at the intersection of dance, ethnology, anthropology, cultural studies, and history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781789383522
Publisher:	Intellect, Limited
Publication date:	03/18/2021
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	6.69(w) x 9.61(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Anthony Shay is professor of dance and cultural studies in the Theatre and Dance Department at Pomona College in California. 

Table of Contents

List of Figures viii

Acknowledgments x

Introduction: Dance and Authoritarianism 1

1 Dance and Ethnicity 27

2 Dance and Nationalism: The Nation, the State, and the Nation-State 45

3 Iran: The Shah's New Dance 73

4 Croatia: Lado-"Light of Croatian Culture" 105

5 Spain: Women's Work-Franco's Sección Femenina and Spanish Folk Dance 157

6 Dominican Republic: The Dictator's Fancy Dance-Trujillo, Merengue, and Nationalism 171

7 Uzbekistan: Old Lamps for New-The Creation of Uzbek Classical Dance 201

Conclusion 243

References 253

Index 285