UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Competition Dance: Redefining Dance in the United States A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Critical Dance Studies by Alexis Arnow Weisbrod June 2010 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Derek Burrill, Co-Chairperson Dr. Anthea Kraut, Co-Chairperson Dr. Dylan Rodriguez Copyright by Alexis Arnow Weisbrod 2010 Signature Approval Page The Dissertation of Alexis A Weisbrod is approved: __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside Acknowledgments The process leading up to this dissertation project has been a long one that requires many thank yous. First, I’d like to thank Coby Richardson who introduced me to my first dance competition. If it had not been for your love of dance and constant support I may have deviated from this path many years ago. Thank you for all your encouragement and for being the first to instill me with a life long love for dance. I’d also like to extend a huge thank you to Jackie DelPrete and Arthur & Nancy Stone. Thank you for not only giving me a job and research experience but also great friendship and support. And to all the staff and faculty at Dance Olympus and International Dance Challenge, thank you for being my second family. Thank you for all the energizing conversations and bits of history and thoughts. There is also endless gratitude to my committee for your constant support and interest in my work. To my chair Dr. Derek Burrill, thank you for constantly pushing me to grow and for always seeing me for what I am and what I can be. To Dr. Anthea Kraut, your excitement for my work always kept me interested in the possibilities. Your encouragement and kindness has impacted me more than you are even aware. And to Dr. Dylan Rodriguez, it was your fascinating work that opened my eyes to the layers of my own work. If you had not agreed to speak at colloquium early in my time at UCR I would have continued on unaware of the possibilities. Thank you for so warmly welcoming so many dance graduate students, you help make us well-rounded scholars. To the all the staff and faculty of the Dance Department, thank you. My time at UCR has taken me to places I never anticipated. The experiences I had as a student have iv allowed me to grow exponentially. I am so appreciative of having spent five years as a student around the talent and intelligence of so many great artists and scholars. Thank you also to Dr. Anne Sutherland, Dr. Susan Ossman and the staff of the Global Studies program. You gave me an opportunity to expand my knowledge, research and teaching experiences. Dr. Sutherland and Dr. Ossman, it was a privilege to experience your unique teaching styles and I am a better instructor because of it. Jennifer, Rosie, Sue, Maral, Melissa, Ying, and my cohort at UCR, if it were not for you I would have not seen this process to completion. There are no words to express how grateful I am to have you all in my life. Thank you for the all the discussion, feedback and insights. Thank you for all the nights out, laughter, tears and all. But most of all thank you for putting up with my all crazy ideas and helping me see them through. And to every one of my colleagues that ever agreed to help me out by working backstage at a competition, I’m sorry! But think of how much you helped me with my work once those discussions became more personal for you. I promise not to ask you help again. I cannot forget Anna, Romelle, Keimi and Katie Rose. Thank you for supporting my move to graduate school, even as unexpected as it may have been. Thank you for so willingly giving up small parts of your own life so that I could travel down this path. And thank you for letting me come “home” whenever I have wanted and for letting me continue to be a part of your lives. I am proud of where we all are now and where I know we’ll be in the future, even if it does mean we are hundreds (or more) miles apart. There have been many remarkable teachers that have shaped me in the direction that I am headed now. Arabelle Luckhardt who first taught me the joys of learning, v Bernie Schein who taught me to always question, and Donna Ellwood whose endless respect for all her students made me see how exciting learning can be. Most importantly is Dr. Ananya Chatterjea. I came to the University of Minnesota all those years ago looking for something very different than what I came upon. Thank you for seeing something in me that even I didn’t know was there and for giving me all the tools to connect the dots and expect more of myself as a dancer and scholar. You single handedly changed the course of my life towards a direction better than anything I could have mapped out on my own. Of course, thank you to my brother Kyle who has always challenged me, for better or for worse. I am so lucky to have you as a brother. I know that you are always there for me and I am so glad we have grown to be good friends. Also, thanks for a great sister in law who inspires me to a better woman. And to you both, thank you for Champ!! Thank you to Samantha Jane and Abby Tabitha for your endless company during my long and lonely days of writing. Corey, who always punctuated the end of those long days, you changed my world. You have stuck through this long process no matter what the day’s emotion was. You have made all of this that much sweeter as I celebrate every success with you and prepare for every potential downfall knowing that you will be there to catch me. I can’t wait to start our life beyond all this together. There is truly no way to properly thank two people who not only organized their entire life around you. I was born to two educators who not only made my education a priority but also gave me all the space I needed to make that education exactly what I wanted. To my parents Beth and Steve, I know there is no way to give you even a vi fraction of what you have given me but I hope this degree at least begins to illustrate my endless gratitude. Thank you for always being there and for never expecting anything from me except my happiness. You gave me space to learn and make mistakes, to decide what I wanted and discover what I needed out of my life. I am so proud to be your daughter and so indebted to your selflessness. This dissertation is the longest thank you letter in the world. Don’t worry; I don’t expect you to read it. Just flip through the pages and know that its an homage to the education you have provided me over the last 27 years. vii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Competition Dance: Redefining Dance in the United States by Alexis Arnow Weisbrod Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in Critical Dance Studies University of California, Riverside, June 2010 Dr. Derek Burrill, Co-Chairperson Dr. Anthea Kraut, Co-Chairperson One of the most prevalent forms of dance training for young dancers in the United States, competitive dance has a significant role in the production of dance. This dissertation examines the multiple and various structures that construct this site of dance. Initially this project locates corporate competition dance within other familiar practices that characterize American culture while also considering the unique rules and regulations that frame dance within this context. In this project I call for an understanding of the distinct characteristics of the competition body that make it similar to but still unlike any other dancing body currently housed in the archive of dance studies. In addition, the role of this body in popular culture is explored through its presentation on the reality show So You Think You Can Dance. In particular, I examine how the competition body, in contrast to the hip hop dancer, becomes racially marked and how the marking of both bodies results in a presentation of dance as spectacle. The final chapter of this dissertation draws upon the theories established in the three preceding chapters as I argue for the position of competition as a technology that enables viii and sustains hegemonic structures of the State. Through the inclusion of political theory and an understanding of how bodies work in relation to State structures I establish competition dance as a site that recreates the United State’s practice of white nation building. This project is a cultural analysis of competition dance within the United States and the American culture. Merging dance studies with cultural and media studies as well as political theory, I look at what is produced and reproduced at the site competition through the dancing body as well as the aesthetic and practice of competition. With a distinct focus on the systems that construct and contribute to competition dance I seek to place this dance practice in relation to the many others that have been well articulated by scholarship. In doing so, I hope to foreground competitive dance within the production of dance in the United States, and globally, in the 21st century.