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UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Choreographing Politics, Dancing Modernity: Ballet and Modern Dance in the Construction of Modern México (1919-1940) Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8z45r94t Author Reynoso, Jose Luis Publication Date 2012 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Choreographing Politics, Dancing Modernity: Ballet and Modern Dance in the Construction of Modern México (1919-1940) A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Culture and Performance by Jose Luis Reynoso 2012 © Copyright by Jose Luis Reynoso 2012 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Choreographing Politics, Dancing Modernity: Ballet and Modern Dance in the Construction of Modern México (1919-1940) by Jose Luis Reynoso Doctor of Philosophy in Culture and Performance University of California, Los Angeles, 2012 Professor Susan Leigh Foster, Chair In this dissertation, I analyze the pivotal role that ballet and modern dance played in the construction of modern México during the development of its post-revolutionary history and culture from 1919 to 1940. In this doctoral research, I approach dance as a means of knowledge production that contributes to shaping the cultural contexts in which individual and collective identities are produced while perpetuating systems of sociopolitical and economic domination and/or offering alternatives to restructure unequal power relations. As an organizing principle, this dissertation presupposes that dances always enact, explicitly and/or implicitly, sets of political assumptions that affect the bodies that participate by dancing or by watching dance. In other words, I examine how dance represents race, class, gender, and sexuality; how corporeal ii difference is arranged in space; what does the dance say about human relations; and how subjectivity is constructed through dance training and performing on stage. I also consider whose worldview, values and interests are enacted on stage and thereby normalized beyond the stage. In exploring these questions, I connect their answers to multiple forms that corporeal social interactions take in the formation of subjectivity at the world at large. Also, by examining specific dances and the discourses these engender, I offer various views of what it meant to be a modern Mexican across the different historical moments in which the country continually redefined and redirected its nationalist project of modernization. This discussion is framed by the various forms that México’s revolutionary nationalism took as well as by cultural and political imperatives modeled by countries of the “first world”. In chapter one I discuss Anna Pavlova’s visit to México City in 1919 and I argue that her dances created a homotopia, a social space that functioned to preserve the status quo and where a class of similars could reaffirm their identity as members of a class of civilized, modern Mexicans. By analyzing some of Pavlova’s dances, I emphasize how these elites also confirmed their affinity with European culture as the most representative symbol and source of human civilization. In chapter two I examine how Pavlova defied the class allegiances she had established with her homotopic elite audiences by re-choreographing a folk popular dance. With this “eliticized” rendition of the folk dance, I argue, she offered the country an opportunity to synthesize the universal and the local as a response to the conundrum that “third world” countries like México confront in developing a local identity while also trying to appeal to the “first world” by embracing a universalist discourse. In chapter three I trace some of the developments towards the institutional professionalization of Mexican dancers. I analyze how classical ballet technique, established as the foundational training for dancing bodies during the iii 1920s and 1930s, was employed in hopes to produce modernized Mexican subjects capable of embodying the essence of the nation through the formation of a genuinely Mexican dance form, a desire that Pavlova had set in motion in 1919. In chapter four I draw parallels between dance histories in México City and New York City during the 1930s in order to discuss distinctive embodied ideological aesthetics that developed in these different cultural contexts and which ultimately contextualized the advent of modern dance in México in 1939 and 1940. As I discuss different aesthetic approaches and discourses embraced by choreographers and critics in these two cities, I emphasize the debates that Anna Sokolow and Waldeen Falkeinstein helped to engender as they arrived in México City from the United States in 1939, invited to lead the first modern Mexican dance companies in the country. I conclude this chapter with an analysis of different artistic subjectivities that these various approaches to dance making produced in New York City and México City in this period of history. iv The dissertation of Jose Luis Reynoso is approved. David H. Gere David J. Rousseve Chon A. Noriega Susan Leigh Foster, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2012 v With deep gratitude I dedicate this dissertation In memory of Noy, my mother, who taught me about love by example To Susan who showed me how to appreciate the knowledge of the moving body and thus to discover new ways of perceiving and experiencing the world To Pepito for daring to learn how to fly vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION ii COMMITTEE PAGE v DEDICATION PAGE vi TABLE OF CONTENTS vii LIST OF FIGURES x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xii VITA xv INTRODUCTION 1 Bodily Training and the Choreographing of Dances, Identity, and Writing 1 Ballet and Modern Dance in the Construction of Modern México (1919-1940): An Overview 9 CHAPTER ONE: Choreographing Homotopia in Constructing Elite Modernity: Anna Pavlova in México City (1919) 22 The Mythology of “Artistic Genius”: On Becoming a Star 27 Modernizing Genius in Constructing Homotopia: Shifting Locales, Shifting Roles 32 Choreographing Homotopia: Pavlova as (her) La Muñeca Encantada (The Enchanted Doll) 40 National and International Politics in the Construction of Homotopic Spaces 46 Integrative dances of the Cultured, Civilized Modern: The Critic as Constructor of Cultural Discourse and Subjectivity 57 Choreographies of Homotopia and Divergent Mexican Subjectivities 65 Embodiments of Class in the Production of Homotopic Elite Modernity 65 Reverent Admirers and the Religiously Devout 66 Mexican Effeminate Pavlovians 67 Embodiments of Homotopic Femininity 68 Racialized Class and Sexual Normativity: Palova’s Amarilla and Raymunda 71 The triumph of civilization over the potentially corruptive pleasures of the flesh: Pavlova’s “Bacchanale” 74 CHAPTER TWO: “Eliticizing” the Folk and the Popular in Constructing Mestizo Modernity: Anna Pavlova’s Refined El Jarbe Tapatío 85 De/Constructing the Genius: Dis/Embodying the Modern and the Universal in Pavlova’s The Dying Swan 87 Auto/Exotifying Encounters: Towards an Indigenized Mestizo Modernity 94 Flirting with the Local: The Transgressive Anthropomorphic Swan 100 Tracing Genealogies of Pavlova’s El Jarabe Tapatío 104 vii Popularazing High Art: The Materialist, the Ideological and the Dancing “Humanitarian” 115 Civilizing Mission and Interclass Colonization in Popularizing High Art and/or “Eliticizing” the Folk and the Popular 119 Re/Constructing the Nation: Towards Choreographing Eliticized Mestizo Modernity 124 Embodying Eliticized Mestizo Modernity: Dancing The Nation 131 Dancing on Geopolitical Terrains: Choreographing National and International Politics 138 El Jarabe Tapatío: The Embodied Emblem of the Nation 142 El Jarabe Tapatío: Almost 100 Years Later 144 Concluding Steps 145 Pavlova’s Concluding Dancing Steps 146 CHAPTER THREE: Dancing Bodies Producing Distinctive Modern Mexican Subjects 150 “The goddess of Folkloric Dance on Pointe” 151 The Return of the Winged Dancing Genius: Pavlova and a Different México City (1925) 154 Passing on the Torch: Ballet as Embodied Exclusivity and Moral Edification 167 Carroll’s “Chicas Bien” as a Racialized Homotopic Space 177 Let Us Instead Dance the Revolution: The 1930’s Dancing Steps 181 Professionalizing Mexican Dancing Bodies, Aspiring to Produce Modern Subjects 195 Concluding Disclaimer 207 CHAPTER FOUR: Histories of Embodied Ideological Aesthetics in the Production of Mexican Dance as Legitimate Modern Art 210 Points of Dis/Encounters: Histories of Embodied Ideological Aesthetics 223 Socialist Mass Dances in México and the U.S.: Towards a Revolutionary Modern Dance 223 Modern Dance and the Politics of the Revolutionary and the Bourgeois in New York City in the 1930s 228 Taking a Stand: José Limón’s Notion of Depoliticized Modern Dance as Legitimate Art 239 Integrative Embodiments: Anna Sokolow as the Rebel and the Bourgeois in New York City During the 1930s 242 The Embodiment of Revolutionary Modernism: Anna Sokolow in México City (1939-140) 247 The Embodiment of Dance Innovation: Waldeen Falkeinstein in México City (1939-1940) 252 The Question of Mexican Dance as “Real” Legitimate Modern Art: Waldeen’s and Sokolow’s Distinctive Approaches 260 Choreographing Politics, Dancing México and the Universal: La Coronela as Il/Legitimate Modern Art 271 Mestizo Universalism 272 viii The Politics of De/Politicizing Dance: Embodied, Verbal and Written Discourses 279 Towards De/Constructions of Artistic Identity: Modern Dance in