UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE White Nose, (Post) Bawdy Bodies, and the Un/dancing Sexy Jewess A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Critical Dance Studies by Hannah Sarah Schwadron June 2013 Dissertation Committee: Marta E. Savigliano, Chairperson Anthea Kraut Susan Rose Jeffrey Tobin Copyright by Hannah Sarah Schwadron 2013 The Dissertation of Hannah Sarah Schwadron is approved by: ___________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________ Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside ! Acknowledgements The work of a dissertation deserves to be a practice in gratitude: Gratitude for the gifts of insight and energy from mentors and colleagues who have taught how to write with discipline and bravery. Gratitude for the time it takes to foment an argument from fragments of hunches, eye rolls, and amassing Word documents. Gratitude for the laughter that has sustained throughout this research, and Gratitude most of all for the friendships that have sustained a life in graduate school full of collaboration and support throughout the last six years of growing up. I am especially grateful to the members of my PhD committee who have lent their areas of expertise toward the creative weight of this project. To Jeff Tobin at Occidental College, I want to offer special thanks for the encouragement early on to reconsider my riot against Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan (2010) long enough to write about its possible relevance to dance studies as a Jewish movie. In all that has come up in development of a full dissertation chapter on the film, I have found this recommendation especially fruitful. Anthea Kraut’s gentle insistence to pursue the materiality of dance has been incredibly useful throughout. I have returned again and again to our conversations about the layered ways Jewishness may use the body to “do its work”, and I am indebted to the clarity and poignancy of her approaches to critical race and dance theory that have offered enormous insight into the shaping of this project. Although an indelible member of my PhD committee, Susan Rose has acted as advisor in ways that far exceed that role. As the faculty mentor of my MFA in Experimental Choreography in 2009, the choreographer with whom I have studied and performed improvisation for the last five ! "#! years, and consummate coach on all things puzzling, Susan’s impact on my scholarly and choreographic work has set in motion a mode of being in the world that is both more equipped and more convicted than ever before. To Marta E. Savigliano, the Chair of my PhD Committee, I owe the largest thanks for this dissertation and the life-altering process of its coming into being. Never before have I felt so validated by a professor for precisely what I come to write, nor have I been asked to answer quite so serious a call to crack open the codes of (my own) cultural, aesthetic, and moral conformity enough to hold them accountable to standards I truly stand behind. I would also like to thank Professor Priya Srinivasan who reminds all in ear shot that there is no such thing as individual genius, and if there were, we would be too busy working with one another to take too much notice of it. Thank you for your coaching since day one. You have lived your politics, and for the influence that has on all who get to work with you, I am grateful. To Linda Tomko for the careful attention to historical matters as evocative as “Period Whiteness” and for the real pleasure of the chance to train to share this work with students at the undergraduate level. To date as well, I believe Dr. Tomko has sat in the far, stage right seat of every conference paper I have presented during graduate school, and offered just as consistent an inspired question I cannot yet answer, delivered with undeniable mastery of the discipline and quite dancerly the words to do it. Thank you to Wendy Rogers, for your profound sense of the silly that uplifts every classroom you walk into, and your regular check-ins as to the progress of my “scribbling”. To Jacqueline Shea Murphy, I extend my gratitude for her interest in my ! "! performance projects early on that gave me the confidence to continue integrating theory and practice. In the course of my doctoral work in the dance department at UCR, the UC system has undergone extreme shifts in public support for education. The dance faculty has modeled a way to stay innovative in its launch of new programs like the Body, Performance, Research and Dance Platform (Byped), and the Choreographies of Access artist-residency. I am grateful for the invitation to assist these projects, which have added incredible resources in a moment when state budget cuts are imposing impossible pressures. I am also thankful to have received the Byped Travel Grant in two consecutive years, making it possible to visit key performance archives and share findings at professional conferences in the field. Reception of the university-wide Dissertation Year Fellowship, and the Graduate Mentorship Research Fellowship have also afforded the opportunity to focus on research and writing in critical breaks between quarters spent teaching. I am also humbled by the logistical support and overall genuine friendliness of Katrina Oskie, Micheal Molinar, Melisa Vicario, Reasey Heang and Cindy Redfield that has eased the strain of necessary forms and formalities even in times of increasing furloughs and overwhelming office change. The Gluck Program for the Arts has provided the means for me to continue developing interests in community dance engagement throughout graduate school. To the current and past administrators of that arts outreach program, Christine Leapman, Shane Shukis, and Karen Wilson, I extend very special thanks for leaving the office door always open for caring advising on teaching and more. ! "#! For my dance colleagues Michelle Timmons, Rachel Carrico and J. Dellecave, I am majorly thankful for the willing reflections on my work and the privilege to offer my perspective on yours in the intensive online sessions of our lovefest writing swaps. To the Dissertation Divas: Alicia Cox, Kate Alexander and Regis Mann, I am humbled by your brilliance and breadth of curiosities across disciplines and the wealth of your perspectives exchanged in our preliminary drafts. To my fellow campus Jewish queers, Sonia Crasnow and Kate Alexander, I am thankful for a space to revision together the promise of a shared ethicoreligious conceptual home, and for Kate especially, for offering such rich feedback on the entire draft. Thank you also to Adanna Jones, Melissa Templeton, Asheley Smith, Laura Vriend, Adan Avalos, Peter Witrak, Harmony Wolfe, Chelsea Rector, Nick Lowe, Minerva Tapia, Amy Hough and Kara Miller who have cheered on the writing and choreographic crafting of this project; Jessa Tarbet, Rachel Stark and Shannon Lynch for the yogic perspective on leading from the heart; Darren and Talene at Back to the Grind for keeping Riverside afloat; My samba, dance hall, capoeira maestres, Julie, Myesha and Steve at World to Dance, where it has helped so much to be big and joyous by night; and the Collective Members at the Blood Orange Info Shop for their vision of radical art and activism that has rechanneled the downtown Riverside scene for serious good. Most tenderly, I want to acknowledge my fortune at having lucked into a best friendship with my cohort and co-captain on all matters, Melissa Bell, who taught me to raise my eyebrows and my spirit in the face of uncertainty and find there the courage to speak my mind. And, to my Riverside family, Alicia Cox, Rachel Stark, Sue Roginski and Cesar Lopez, I owe the most special thanks for being the precious ones ! "##! closest to me in this period of intensive wreckoning on all fronts. My mother, Patch, father Terry, brother, Louis and sister, Julia plus her husband, Josh and baby, Gabriel deserve much more thanks than these pages allow for having my back the whole way here. ! "###! This dissertation is dedicated to the funny girls who make us laugh the most. ! "#! ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION White Nose, (Post) Bawdy Bodies and the Un/Dancing Sexy Jewess by Hannah Sarah Schwadron Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in Critical Dance Studies, University of California, Riverside, June 2013 Dr. Marta E. Savigliano, Chairperson “White Nose, (Post) Bawdy Bodies and the Un/Dancing Sexy Jewess” looks at asks how and why the 19th century figure of the exotic Jewess reappears in progressive US pious and porn subcultures, recent cabaret and burlesque acts, mainstream dance films, and magazine spoofs of the sexier Israeli sabra to articulate an updated Jewish femininity through various techniques of parody. I argue that today’s Sexy Jewess embodies the most recent addition of a specifically American lineage of Jewish jokes predicated on an excessive and unattractive Jewish female body, and assess how the self- professed sexiness of contemporary Jewish female performers both challenges and reiterates long-standing cultural anxieties tied to race, gender, class, and sexuality. The phenomenon of the Sexy Jewess raises questions about the so-called ‘post-assimilatory’ and ‘post-feminist’ implications of Jewish female performance modalities that tweak and play with stereotypes even as they insist upon a double Jewish and gender difference. My ! "! research: 1) introduces how performers complicate self-critical jokes of the inferior Jewish female body through both marking and modifying a Jewish otherness, 2) documents the techniques Jewish female performers employ to mimic and master ‘sexiness’ and, 3) theorizes how performances of Jewish female identity use the body to both participate in and parody ‘appropriate’ femininity toward distinct ends. In order to question the viability of sexy ruse as a critical means of performing Jewishness, I draw on and intervene in three interrelated fields: Jewish Studies, Gender and Feminist studies, and Dance and Performance studies.