Title: The Curious Case of Maxixe Dancing: From Colonial Dissent to Modern Fitness Journal: Atlantic Studies: Global Currents Special issue: African Heritage Couple Dances in and beyond the Circum-Atlantic World Editor: Ananya Jahanara Kabir Author: Cristina Fernandes Rosa Filiation: Department of Dance, University of Roehampton, London, UK Email:
[email protected] Bio: Dr. Rosa is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Roehampton’s Department of Dance. She has previously taught at University of California Riverside, Tufts University, Reed College, Florida State University, Tallahasse, CalArts and, from 2012 to 2013, she was a research fellow at Freie Universität’s International Research Center “Interweaving Performance Cultures” (Germany). Rosa has been published in peer-reviewed journals, such as TDR, and edited books, such as Performing Brazil (2014) and Moving (Across) Borders (2017). In her book Brazilian Bodies and Their Choreographies of Identification: Swing Nation (Palgrave McMillan, 2015), Rosa examines how movement qualities cultivated across the black Atlantic contributed to the construction of Brazil as an imagined community. Rosa earned her PhD from UCLA.
[email protected] The Curious Case of Maxixe Dancing: From Colonial Dissent to Modern Fitness Abstract: The primary goal of this article is to shed new light on the meteoric rise (and fall) of maxixe dancing, from Rio de Janeiro’s practices and performances in the late 1800s to its international explosion in Parisian venues in the 1910s, and subsequent codification in US’s dance manuals published in 1914. Drawing on my previous scholarship, I examine how different kinds of bodies have articulated maxixe at four distinct scenarios, paying close attention to the positionality of female partners.