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CRITICAL FOLKDANCE PEDAGOGY: WOMEN'S FOLKDANCING AS FEMINIST PRACTICE BY DEISYE.DAVILA B.A., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1995 M.A., Illinois State University, 1999 DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Educational Policy Studies in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2009 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Antonia Darder, Chair Professor Norman Denzin Professor Wanda Pillow Professor Cameron McCarthy UMI Number: 3363127 INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI UMI Microform 3363127 Copyright 2009 by ProQuest LLC All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ABSTRACT This study explores women's contribution to maintaining folkdance as an embodied feminist practice. Women folkdance educators project a social consciousness from personal and public experiences, a knowledge that stems across a variety of spaces and performances that serve to politicize ethnic cultural identities. The survival of Carnival, theatrical events and school competitions depend on grass roots resistances to preserve ethnic solidarity, assert economic compensation and negotiate meanings between personal, regional, and national symbols. The underlying messages reveal a complex historical past, a nostalgic past where traces of race, class, and gender oppression are overturned as symbols of liberation through dance and through women's voices. Social action thrives through a collective solidarity pulled together by a union of African, Native, and Eurpean cultures. The plural contexts of embodied counter memories reveal a mutual need to express social equality and human integrity projected as a sacred inheritance of knowing lands, navigating oceans, and celebrating community. This research focuses women's ability to cross timespace boundaries using past and present recreate and contest modern tendencies of selling folkdance spectacles as a global commodity. The various uses of folklore as a patriarchal concept reify nationhood that differentiates "first" and "third" world knowledge. The lack of feminist perspectives in this area of study leads to the absence of critical "third world" feminist interpretations as a foundational lens that validates folkdance as corporeal liberation. Folkdance as oppositional to male dominated histories focuses on an appreciation of the body linked to an epistemology of Earthbound consciousness as a substantive approach to a critical ii fokdance pedagogy as a conceptual framework. A critical folkdance pedagogy is a dialectic between revolutionary tendencies of Carnival theory, and a reinterpretation of dance as staged history, culminating as praxis in the classroom. A folkfeminist methodology meshes qualitative/interpretive analysis, 'near native' reflexive ethnography and participatory dimensions throughout the research process. Barranquilla, Colombia South America, an Atlantic coast is the primary location for the study. Cross referencing a variety of textual literary sources provides evidence that validates women's voices as feminist practices. in In loving memory of my mother, Maria Trinidad Davila Estrada IV ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank Luz, Monica. Carmen, Martina, and Esther for allowing me to represent their voices as part of the world of dance. I thank tia Araido, tia Salo, Tim, my sister Maria, and my father Jose for your faith and support. I thank the institutions who opened their doors: Instituto Tecnico Nacional de Comercio, Universidad del Atlantico, Universidad de Simon Bolivar, National Security Education Program, University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, Educational Policy Studies Department and Institute of Communication. I thank my colleagues at Kankakee Community College. I thank my committee for your patience and support. Professor Antonia and Professor Denzin, your invincible support, persistence and faith in me throughout this process have meant the world. Many boundaries have been Crossed because of you. v TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES viii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1 Introduction 8 Why Folkdancing in Colombia? 9 CHAPTER 2 FOLKLORE NATIONHOOD 12 Historical Trajectory 13 Folklore and National/Colonial Romanticism 16 Commercialization of Folklore 21 Conclusion 26 CHAPTER 3 CRITICAL THIRD WORLD FEMINISMS 28 Why a Third World Feminism? 31 The Body and Third World Feminist Practice 34 Dance as Third World Feminist Resistance 41 Freeing the Body: An Autoethnographic Experience 58 Conclusion ...60 CHAPTER 4 CRITICAL FOLKDANCE PEDAGOGY 63 Folkdance as Pedagogy... 63 Folkdance on a Stage of Resistance 67 Autoethnography: "Cumbaya" Finds Peace in Class 78 Conclusion 81 CHAPTER 5 CRITICAL FOLKFEMINIST METHODOLOGY 82 Combining Tradition: Participatory Dimensions 88 Textual Analysis in Folkfeminism 91 Near Native Indigenous Ethnography (Marginality) 93 Methodological Practices: Qualitative/Interpretive 99 CHAPTER 6 RESTAGING CARNIVAL: FOLKDANCE AS RESISTANCE 102 Carnival as Freedom of Expression 103 Folkdance Histories as Resistance 110 Cantaora's Sing Resistance and Hope 135 Cantoara Martina Camargo 146 Meeting Esther Forero 157 Conclusion 173 CHAPTER 7 WOMEN'S VOICES AND FOLKDANCING 179 Meeting Luz Marina 180 Luz Marina's Folkdance Pedagogy 193 Dancing With Monica Lindo 196 VI Monica's Folkdance Pedagogy 206 Carmen Melendez: Director of Palma Africana 210 Carmen's Folkdance Pedagogy 216 CHAPTER 8 CONCLUSION 219 Fieldnotes Journal, December 24, 2008 219 Conclusion 241 REFERENCES 243 APPENDIX A FOLKDANCE VIDEOCLIPS 257 AUTHOR'S BIOGRAPHY 258 vn LIST OF FIGURES 1. Barileke mask 112 2. Marimonda mask 112 3. Sombrero vueltiao 114 4. Zemi hydrolic system 115 5. Farota dance 116 6. Kids playing freedom 118 7. El Garabato 120 8. Mapale 121 9. "Cumbia" by Jorge Artel 125 10. Cumbia Banquena 133 11. Bullerengue 136 12. Esther, statue, and moon 158 13. Luz's dance class 180 14. Mamoncillo fruit 181 15. Two nuns and dancers 183 16. At dance studio 197 17. Dance rehearsal in Carmen's home 210 viii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Now and then when we are worn out by our lives in big buildings, we will turn to you as we do our children-to the innocent, the ingenuous, the spontaneous. We will turn to you as to the childhood of the world. (Fanon, 1984, p. 132) This project unfolds as a form to legitimize dance as an embodied dialogue to consider folkdance as counter history where a combination of indigenous histories and women's contributions retain folkdance knowledge as an on-going practice. The geographic spaces, especially in many third world countries, are a site of resistance where capitalist driven spaces are appropriating carnival, a central space for the performance of folkdance, as cultural capital. This project begins with exploring the concept of folklore and various aspects of how this category of knowledge as an informal alternative educational experience is woven into the social fabric of national representations. As an academic field of study, the collection of information from subordinate groups is coming from the perspective of patriarchy in search of establishing traditions that are separate from other ethnic groups. Folklore nationhood upholds nation-state hegemony, on one end, which cements part of a national/colonial romanticism through myths, epics, and travelor's tales as a justifiable heroes journey with the purpose of establishing sovereignty among the common populace. Maintaining folklore traditions becomes a foundation for a cultural wealth and identity of a people where an attitude of nostalgia, authenticity, and origin create a sense of reality for dominant cultures. As such, the politics of folklore and more specifically folkdances become a terrain for class distinctions, gender relations, and ethnic representations creating tension between the state and the people. Moreover, 1 deconstructing patriarchal folklore nationhood is a contemporary critical practice that is concerned with understanding the uses of folklore as a critical nostalgia/ romanticism that reifies group identities and solidarity. In addition, the establishment of the "new world" through the colonial literary genre of folklore "history" is contested through critical folkdance as a restaging of indigenous resistance. Where dehumanizing ethnic traditions through folklore as a form of patriarchal nationhood creates the nature vs. culture divide, an alternative base using key words within the Latin American modernist literary canon such as romanticismo, naturalismo, and indiginismo are reconceptualized through critical folkdance pedagogy as an opposition to the destructive forces of first world consumption. Critical folkdance pedagogy revisits, land, ocean, and earth symbolism as a continuance of a Utopian practice synchronized with third world feminist representations that embrace a collective consciousness through folkdance. To draw attention to the meaning of folklore for those who practice traditions