The Black Scholar Journal of Black Studies and Research

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Un/Natural Disaster and Dancing

Rachel Carrico

To cite this article: Rachel Carrico (2016) Un/Natural Disaster and Dancing, The Black Scholar, 46:1, 27-36, DOI: 10.1080/00064246.2015.1119636

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00064246.2015.1119636

Published online: 03 Feb 2016.

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Download by: [Rachel Carrico] Date: 04 February 2016, At: 10:19 Un/Natural Disaster and a serious art form requiring mastery of a par- Dancing ticular aesthetic or capable of articulating a political consciousness. Like much black ver- Hurricane Katrina and Second Lining in nacular dance, it is often seen as an inevitable New Orleans expression of the dancers’ natural ability or rhythm, attributable to their racial identity. A RACHEL CARRICO closer look reveals, however, that paraders’ movements cannot be reduced to what comes naturally. Moreover, perpetuating a n December of 2006, over a year after Hur- connection between blackness and natural- I ricane Katrina made landfall in New ness in the realm of dance contributes to per- Orleans, the Big Nine Social Aid and Pleasure nicious constructions of black people as less Club (SAPC) held their annual parade in the than human, closer to nature, and primitive. Lower Ninth Ward, an African American The effects of this construction were made neighborhood devastated by the Industrial starkly apparent during the Katrina disaster, Canal’s levee breach. They danced through when African American New Orleanians the streets with a brass band, in what is were treated as subhuman, savage, and known as a “second line,” following routes disposable. they had taken since the club’s inception in This essay places New Orleans’ black 1995.1 dance traditions in conversation with Hurri- Though their houses and businesses cane Katrina, investigating the ideological remained vacant and family members ground wherein diverse phenomena and remained scattered around the country, the events are figured as “natural.” It reveals residents who joined the parade willed their how such discourses—which frame both neighborhood back to life, performing a black dance and disaster as unmediated, ritual procession that has enabled New Orlea- inevitable, and spontaneous—work to veil nians of African descent to maneuver through the mechanizations of white supremacy, crises for over a century. As they marched past making institutionalized racism appear to be National Guard soldiers, danced atop sagging beyond anyone’s control. This essay simul-

Downloaded by [Rachel Carrico] at 10:19 04 February 2016 porches, and grooved their way over the taneously argues that New Orleanians’ self- Industrial Canal, their movements pro- identifications as natural dancers can, claimed, in the words of Big Nine co- perhaps paradoxically, be a form of resistance founder Ronald W. Lewis, “We gonna show to white supremacy: ideologies of the natural the world that we still exist. We’re not going are differently inflected for different speakers, to accept people saying that we can’t function audiences, and dancers. as a people in the Lower Ninth Ward This essay does not propose an equivalent anymore.”2 or causal relationship between dance and dis- Dance is a powerful expressive form within aster. Rather, it argues that dance is an impor- New Orleans’ second line tradition. Never- tant arena in which race is constructed and theless, second lining is seldom regarded as contested; and that such constructions and

© 2016 The Black World Foundation The Black Scholar 2016 Vol. 46, No. 1, 27–36, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00064246.2015.1119636 contestations have material effects, as was including members’ funerals, since at least made apparent by Hurricane Katrina. Due to the late nineteenth century.4 As the gains of New Orleans’ tourism economy, dance is a Reconstruction declined and Jim Crow laws highly visible form of representation in (and took hold, African American and Afro- in images of) the city. Second line perform- Creole musicians and dancers paraded ances and visual depictions of second-lining through the very streets where lynchings bodies are widely deployed to promote the occurred, defying repressive laws and a city’s culture. The currency of such images racist culture by asserting their right to became especially evident when President move.5 Over the next century, eager dancers Bush delivered his first post-Katrina address. continued to follow black brass bands across Speaking from the relatively unscathed segregated spaces, reclaiming neighborhoods French Quarter two weeks after the levees gripped by poverty and mourning lives lost to broke, he likened the region’s recovery to a violence.6 Throughout New Orleans’ history, jazz funeral. “Once the casket has been laid people of African descent have deployed pro- in place, the band breaks into a joyful cessions to transform urban space, voice ‘second line’— symbolizing the triumph of dissent, and build communities with music the spirit over death. Tonight the Gulf Coast and dance. is still coming through the dirge, yet we will Dozens of SAPCs remain active in the city, live to see the second line.”3 Bush’s use of and almost every Sunday afternoon, one of the second line to symbolize resilience them holds its anniversary parade in the attests to the powerful roles of dance and members’ home neighborhood. The hosting music in forming dominant images of New SAPC members and musicians, or the “main Orleans, especially its black residents. This line,” lead a multitude of joiners, called the essay deconstructs the discursive work of the “second line,” through New Orleans’ natural subtly operating in representations of African American neighborhoods for four black vernacular dance, and joins broader straight hours. Second liners chant, play cow- efforts to understand the intersections of bells and tambourines, rap on glass bottles, race, citizenship, and disaster ignited by Katri- walk, and strut. Most notably, second liners na’s aftermath ten years ago. dance. Spilling onto sidewalks and front

Downloaded by [Rachel Carrico] at 10:19 04 February 2016 yards, snaking between parked cars, and A Brief History of Second Line Parades even scaling roofs and overpasses, paraders showcase an embodied repertoire developed African American voluntary organizations, by generations of black New Orleanians like the Big Nine SAPC, grew out of nine- moving to black brass band rhythms. Second teenth-century benevolent societies that liners’ movements also evoke a time before offered people of African descent in the Amer- the brass band, when enslaved and free Afri- icas access to medical care, burial insurance, cans and people of African descent danced and social and political networks. In New and drummed on levees and plantations, on Orleans, black voluntary organizations have the lakefront, and in Congo Square. Contem- regularly hosted brass band-led processions, porary second lining retains core

28 TBS • Volume 46 • Number 1 • Spring 2016 characteristics of these historical influences, some African Americans refute the notion including an emphasis on improvisation, that their rhythmic abilities are biologically rhythmic play with the feet, and a collective determined, citing instead the effects of and occasionally competitive spirit. Dancers repeated study and rehearsal. The latter pos- constantly incorporate popular trends and ition has been articulated most publicly by invent signature moves, but these flourishes professional artists, such as jazz musicians emerge within second lining’s enduring phys- and choreographers, to refute racist devalua- ical elements: high-knee stepping, scissor-like tions of their skills.10 This debate opens a footwork, and “buck jumping”—a term used window into the discursive operations of to describe dramatic leaps, drops, and stunts. white supremacy, for, as Robert Farris Thomp- son summarizes, “The belief that African Do-Watcha-Wanna Americans have an innate ability in [music and dance] represents a stereotype that has Many practitioners and admirers of second endured throughout American history. [ … ] lining share a belief that it simply “comes Blacks were categorized as savages who natural” to African American New Orlea- were oversexualized, immoral, and intellec- nians. For example, veteran second liner tually and culturally underdeveloped.”11 Doratha “Dodie” Smith-Simmons described The implications of this enduring stereotype with a chuckle how she began second extend far beyond the realms of music and lining: “Quite easily. [ … ]It’s something that dance to include histories of colonialism, comes natural. [ … ] No one teaches you chattel slavery, legalized discrimination, how to second line, it’s just something you and, more recently, the US government’s do from the feel of the music.”7 Smith- abandonment of African American citizens Simmons’ response articulates a commonly who suffered in Katrina’s wake. held position: that second lining is a “do- The equation of blackness with savagery watcha-wanna” expression that requires gained traction in nineteenth-century scho- neither specialized knowledge nor rehearsal.8 larly and popular discourse. In 1837, Frie- And yet many second liners give detailed drich Hegel articulated a common European descriptions of learning footwork, practicing view of the “African character” as the absolute

Downloaded by [Rachel Carrico] at 10:19 04 February 2016 their technique, and even coaching others. alterity to the enlightened white man: “The Their dance labor complicates, and contra- Negro represents the Natural Man in all his dicts, popular notions of second lining as wildness and indocility.”12 Following do-watcha-wanna. Hegel’s legacy, Europeans and Euro-Ameri- Such divergent narratives illustrate a long- cans created the “Negro” as a “dumb beast,” standing tension within discussions about unfit for self-rule, fit for (and benefited by) black music and dance. The notion of slavery and/or the civilizing social order “natural rhythm” has long provided a sense resulting from colonization.13 The ways Afri- of racial belonging among African Americans cans danced were occasionally offered up as (and a sense of exclusion for those who do not evidence of their primitivity. In 1880, white identify as naturally rhythmic).9 Conversely, author George Washington Cable published

Rachel Carrico 29 an account of dancing at Congo Square, essay takes up McQuirter’s call by detailing describing scenes of “ecstasy” and the actions involved in learning to second “madness” for the readers of Century Maga- line. As the disaster of Katrina shows, the zine. Cable’s similarly sensationalist writing stakes are high for understanding the dis- on voodoo highlighted dancers’“bestialized courses of the natural in discussions of both savagery.” 14 As Michelle Y. Gordon explains, dance and disaster. such reports of voodoo (I would add social dances) in print media linked dance with Stealing and Styling Steps black criminality and hypersexuality, estab- lishing them as “fearsome ‘fact’” in the Second liners’ labor of training and rehearsing popular imagination.15 Like his many con- occurs in backyards, schoolyards, kitchens, temporaries, Cable’s narratives about black barrooms, and innumerable other spaces dance served as unmediated proof for where they buck jump to the encouragement Hegel’s colonialist formulations of the Negro (and criticism) of their families and peers. A as Natural Man in all its guises: savage, crim- few SAPCs hold practices for their members inal, primitive, and rhythmically gifted. so that they will be able to perform enviable Such formulations extend beyond nine- footwork in precise formations on parade teenth-century New Orleans, and remain day. The Young Men Olympian, Jr. Benevolent trenchant in American cultural history. From Association (YMO), which celebrated its 131st antebellum Congo Square to midcentury ball- anniversary in 2015, is one such club. Retired rooms to present-day nightclubs, social dance YMO member Kenneth Washington recalls his arenas have been persistently posited as division “go[ing] through drills a month before “automatic, already-constituted cultural the parade. We’d go in the park and practice space[s]” where African Americans display for what we going to do that Sunday.”19 Simi- innate abilities that, in turn, signify their sup- larly, the Lady Buckjumpers SAPC (established posed “African instinct.”16 The unstated in 1984) convenes for a practice session every equation is that African Americans “are how Sunday during the weeks before their Novem- they dance, and they dance how they ber parade. They usually meet in the yard of are.”17 Marya Annette McQuirter calls for the club’s president, Linda Porter, or her

Downloaded by [Rachel Carrico] at 10:19 04 February 2016 further explication of the actual actions sister’s yard, and have long been distinguished involved in learning to social dance in black by their performance of choreographed communities, in order to gain “a fuller and phrases. As Porter reflects, “It looks so pretty more complex understanding of the role of when it’s together, you know? And see, dance in community and cultural for- people be saying, before our parade, they be mation.”18 We may more fully interrogate like, ‘Where y’all going?’ And we’ll be like, assumptions about naturalness and blackness ‘Oh, we got to practice.’ And they think that’s by tracing the connections between the see- ajoke,becausetheydon’t realize that we mingly benign appreciations of one’s natural really put our own into these routines, you gift for rhythm and the lingering white supre- know, to be able to have them like we do macist assumptions of black primitivity. This when we parade.”20 Porter’scomment

30 TBS • Volume 46 • Number 1 • Spring 2016 reveals that rehearsal is often considered and I just started watching people. And I anathema to second lining; and yet, rehearsal was like, “Oh, I got that move. Oh, I got has earned the Lady Buckjumpers their repu- that move. OK, I can do this, I can do that.” tation as exceptional performers. On parade So I just kind of put all that together and day, they move into various formations and kind of created my own style with a little return to their designated marching positions swag from this person, a little swag from seamlessly. that person. That’s where I came from. The Lady Buckjumpers are also regarded as That’s what created me. From everybody excellent improvisers, which likewise else. It’s always basically stealing. That’s all requires rehearsal. Club practices not only you’re doing, is stealing different moves.21 allow time for them to drill choreographed formations, but also to improvise and socia- Smith’s narrative suggests that second lining’s lize within the less formal dance party set of gestures is irreducible to natural context. Practices provide a fairly private expression and details how these gestures arena where members pick up footwork are learned: by stealing moves. Stealing, moves from each other and refine those however, is just the first step; the second, moves before hitting the streets. When they more crucial step is to tailor stolen steps to break from their precise routines for a full- fit one’s unique style. throttle bout of exuberant footwork and no- Perhaps the most prized quality in second holds-barred buck jumping, they are prepared lining is originality, and second liners devote to wow the crowd. Hours of improvising hours of practice to styling a singular together in Porter’s yard pay off when they oeuvre. For example, Terrinika Smith, a dedi- respond to second liners’ demands: “Show cated second liner in her mid-20s and a me what you’re working with!” member of the Jazzy Ladies SAPC, does not An important method second liners use to want to be seen as a mimic but as the practice improvised dance is to observe dancer that others try to copy. She admires others’ movements, imitate them, and alter those who are “not trying to be somebody them to create their own unique styles. This else. Because if you copy off of somebody kind of practice occurs at every dance event, else, they going to say, ‘Man, they’re doing ’ Downloaded by [Rachel Carrico] at 10:19 04 February 2016 including second-line parades. Tyree Smith, what he doing. But if you bring your own Secretary of Family Ties SAPC, remembers this style, they going to say, ‘Man I’m going to process when he first started second lining at go home and try that!’”22 By going home age 13. For him, it did not come naturally. and trying that step, Smith sharpens her improvisation skills, drawing upon an ever- Oh my god it [second line dancing] was increasing repertoire when she creatively hard! It was real hard because at first I structures stolen steps in the moment of per- couldn’t keep up. You know, I couldn’t formance. Making moment-to-moment artis- keep up with everybody. […] So, I really tic choices in time with the rhythm, Smith was off beat. I wasn’t really—I felt unortho- choreographs her own carefully crafted foot- dox. So I started going on the regular […] work style in the moment that she performs

Rachel Carrico 31 it.23 She does so with such precision, speed, what I’m doing. It’s all in my system. [ … ] and fluidity that she might appear to be When I hear the music, I’m going to get in simply doing what comes natural. the groove. That’s just me. I was raised with While stealing and styling, second liners that second line.” Washington’s last also occasionally find mentors. Tyree Smith comment can be read as a claim to his recalls that an older friend would give him natural ability. However, given his descrip- advice: “You’re moving too fast. Pick your tions of group practice, at home and with his feet up. Slow down.” Roderick Davis, a club, we can conclude that Washington member of Sudan SAPC, received similar knows what he is doing due to a lifetime of advice from his uncles as a child. “They practice within his system of family, friend, would tell me, just pace myself sometimes, I and club networks. don’t have to always go fast. Stuff like that. I From backyards to sidewalks to kitchen got all that told to me at a real early age.” floors, second liners constantly practice, Davis was hungry for the information. “I prepare, and perfect their dancing. Their artis- wanted to learn. [ … ] I was looking to see tic labor challenges essentializing notions of what I needed to do to make everything look second lining as a natural expression of black- like the moves were perfect.”24 His dance ness and questions the do-watcha-wanna training began with mentors at a young age, definition of second lining as an uncompli- and he now mentors the next generation cated form that anyone can access effortlessly himself. Davis’ decades of study were recog- and spontaneously. Through stealing, styling, nized when he was crowned champion of mentoring, and battling, each generation the Annual Big Easy Footwork Competitions shares with the next the steps, gestures, and in 2014 and 2015. rhythms that have enabled them to maneuver As Davis’ anecdote implies, many second through centuries of struggle. liners’ dance education begins at home. Kenneth Washington recalls, “I used to Un/Natural Discourses of Dance and come up in the Magnolia [Housing] Project. Disaster My mom and them, on a Friday night, they’d get a couple of friends by the house. They’d To commemorate the ten-year anniversary of

Downloaded by [Rachel Carrico] at 10:19 04 February 2016 pay us, [they’d say], ‘Come on inside and Hurricane Katrina, Lower Ninth Ward resi- second line.’ And yeah, we’d go against dents welcomed President Obama to their each other. We’d get on the middle of the neighborhood. The president delivered a tele- floor, and we’d jump, we’d jump! And vised speech, stating that the disaster was they’d give the winner twenty, twenty-five caused by infrastructural failures with dollars.” Such kitchen-floor battles reveal the uneven effects determined by the legacies of importance of competition, which pushes racism and related structural inequalities.25 second liners to improve their skills and His comments reflect an increased awareness refine their personal styles. Describing his of how natural disasters are unnatural, and footwork style, Washington said, “I do what- how natural disaster rhetoric veils the insti- ever I feel,” but “when I parade, I know tutional workings of racism.

32 TBS • Volume 46 • Number 1 • Spring 2016 As is now widely understood, Hurricane every step leading to the destruction was, in Katrina may have been unpredictable, but the words of political scientist Cedric the fact that black and poor residents suffered Johnson, “a conscious step toward the more losses than white and wealthier resi- valuing of the investor class over all life.”28 dents was not. The federal, state, and local Katrina’s aftermath cracked open the façade governments’ systematic neglect of flood of natural disaster logic, and for the first time protection systems and coastal wetlands dis- in US history, public opinion began to proportionately jeopardized the Gulf Coast’s acknowledge that natural disasters are actu- poor and working-class African Americans. ally manmade. This was not new. Since the beginning of Although ideologies of the natural and New Orleans’ history, black residents have their connections to racism have been been forced to live on marginal land: flood- openly debated in public discourse about prone areas with low property values, sub- disaster, they remain relatively unexamined standard public services, and limited job in the realm of dance. Maxine Leeds Craig opportunities.26 When the Mississippi suggests that dance often escapes critical River’s levees breached in 1927, the “Great inquiry due to widespread perceptions of its Flood” disproportionately affected the poor, harmlessness, so that associations between mostly African American laborers in the blackness and natural rhythm continue to poorer parishes surrounding New “naturalize broader structures of inequality, Orleans.27 With Hurricanes Katrina and anchoring chains of signifiers between racia- Rita made landfall almost eighty years later, lized bodies and moral, emotional, and intel- African American residents still lived on lectual capacities.”29 Thus, it is important for more precarious land than white residents. antiracist work to continue deconstructing Many had far fewer resources to prepare the myth of natural rhythm. If mainstream for, evacuate from, and recover after the dis- discourses about second lining are to honor aster due to longstanding neoliberal policies the tradition’s history of resistance, they of economic disinvestment in urban commu- must recognize the labor, relationships, and nities, including governmental withdrawals histories that crystallize in each footwork from public housing, inequitable public step.

Downloaded by [Rachel Carrico] at 10:19 04 February 2016 schools, lack of affordable health care, a prison industrial complex targeting black Do-Watcha-Wanna as Opacity and brown residents, and privatized social safety nets. This is not to suggest that second liners them- Discourses of the natural mask the social selves discard do-watcha-wanna approaches and structural reasons that disaster struck the to their practice. As hegemonic assumptions Gulf Coast in 2005. Labeling Katrina a about “African instincts” can reinscribe natural disaster, as federal agencies continue racist oppression, dancers’ self-identifications to do, suggests that disasters inflict equal as “natural” can resist oppression. Tamara damage upon communities without consider- Jackson, president of the VIP Ladies and Kids ation of class or race. It denies the fact that SAPC, recalls “getting her footwork” as

Rachel Carrico 33 Natural. It was just natural. It was natural. It classes. By espousing do-watcha-wanna, kind of goes back to that Rebirth [Brass second liners ground the practice in black Band] song, “Do Watcha Wanna.” You just social-ritual spaces, maintain ownership of basically do what you want do, do what cultural knowledge within the community, you feel. You know, second line—there’s and reinforce the importance of informal set- no particular way to second line. It’s all tings, from kitchen floors to neighborhood about the individual’s expression, and just streets, where embodied knowledge is trans- following and keeping up with the rhythm mitted. As ethnomusicologist Kyra D. Gaunt and the beat. [ … ] And everything is OK. reminds us, repudiating the notion of natural Whatever style you choose, it’s dance ability does not require the denial of acceptable.30 black identity, but recognizes “the way black identity has been specifically consti- ’ Do-watcha-wanna descriptions like Jackson s tuted through experience.”32 As illustrated ’ do more than describe second lining saes- by the stories above, the experiences that con- thetic and social values: they also hold a struct second liners’ identities extend well ’ glimpse of resistance. Second liners insistence beyond each Sunday second line, and grow —“ ”— on inclusivity everything is OK means from connections with family, friends, and that dancers of any age and physical capacity neighbors. can participate in the ritual. In this aspect, Do-watcha-wanna is a potent strategy to do-watcha-wanna prioritizes the why over wield in the smaller, whiter, and wealthier ’ the what, valuing the dance s historic function post-Katrina city, when more tourists and as a tactic for maneuvering through struggle white and/or new residents than ever are — and celebrating life collectively. Do- joining weekly second-line parades. watcha-wanna is a refusal to reduce second Although it is relatively easy to locate and lining to what it is, and could be viewed as join a parade, learning to perform the specific “ ”— an expression of opacity a term developed repertoire of footwork and buck-jumping by the postcolonial philosopher, Édouard Glis- moves is much more opaque. When asking sant. To understand something in the Western for tips, a newcomer might be told, “Just do sense (i.e., transparently and clearly) can what you wanna”—a powerful response. operate as an act of aggression by constructing Downloaded by [Rachel Carrico] at 10:19 04 February 2016 While there is political power in critiquing the Other as an object of knowledge. In turn, discourses of the natural in hegemonic refusing to be known transparently and domains, there is political power, too, in 31 clearly can be a resistive tactic. claiming natural dance ability and thereby a Refusing to define bodily expression as a right to opacity. clear object of knowledge, do-watcha- wanna adherents keep second lining out of the realm of Western understanding. Acknowledgments Without a codified technique, it is difficult to funnel second lining into formalized systems This work was supported by University of of knowledge transmission, like dance California, Riverside’s Graduate Research

34 TBS • Volume 46 • Number 1 • Spring 2016 Mentorship Fellowship; UC Center for New 11. Thompson, Flash of the Spirit: African and Racial Studies and New Orleans Center for Afro-American Art & Philosophy (New York: the Gulf South’s Global South Fellowship. Random House, Inc., 1983), 6. 12. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, quoted in James A. Snead, “Repetition in Black Culture,” Black American Literature Forum 15, no. 4 (1981): 148. Notes 13. Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (Chapel 1. Rachel Breunlin and Ronald W. Lewis, The Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000 House of Dance and Feathers: A Museum by [1983]), 81. Ronald W. Lewis (New Orleans: Neighborhood 14. Cable, “Dance in Place Congo,” Century Story Project, 2009), 131. Magazine 31, no. 4 (New York: Century, 1886): 2. Ibid, 131. 523; “Creole Slave Songs,” Century Magazine 31, 3. George W. Bush, “Rebuidling After Hurri- no. 6 (New York: Century, 1886): 815–8. cane Katrina,” Presidential Rhetoric, September 15. Gordon, “‘Midnight Scenes and Orgies’: 15, 2005, http://www.presidentialrhetoric.com/ Public Narratives of Voodoo in New Orleans and speeches/09.15.05.html. Nineteenth-Century Discourses of White 4. Jacqui Malone, Steppin’ On the Blues: Supremacy,” American Quarterly 64, no. 4 The Visible Rhythms of African American (2012): 773. Dance (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 16. McQuirter, “Awkward Moves: Dance 1996), 167–86. Lessons from the 1940s,” in Dancing Many 5. Thomas Brothers, Louis Armstrong’s Drums: Excavations in African American Dance, New Orleans (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006), ed. Thomas F. DeFrantz (Madison, WI: University 18–22. of Wisconsin Press, 2002), 87–9. 6. Helen A. Regis, “Second Lines, Minstrelsy, 17. Jane C. Desmond, “Embodying Difference: and the Contested Landscapes of New Orleans Issues in Dance and Cultural Studies,” in Meaning Afro-Creole Festivals,” Cultural Anthropology 14, in Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance, ed. Jane no. 4 (1999): 472–504. C. Desmond (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 7. Doratha Smith-Simmons, interview with 1997), 43. the author, November 8, 2013. 18. McQuirter, “Awkward Moves,” 90–91. “ ” 19. Kenneth Washington, interview with the

Downloaded by [Rachel Carrico] at 10:19 04 February 2016 8. Rebirth Brass Band, Do Watcha Wanna, Do Watcha Wanna, Mardi Gras Records, 1995, author, May 22, 2014. compact disc. 20. Linda Porter, interview with the author, 9. Ronald Radano, “Hot Fantasies: American August 12, 2014. Modernism and the Idea of Black Rhythm,” in 21. Tyree Smith, interview with the author, Music and the Racial Imagination, eds. Ronald February 18, 2014. Radano and Philip V. Bohlman (Chicago: 22. Terrinika Smith, interview with the author, University of Chicago Press), 459. August 8, 2014. 10. Paul Berliner, Thinking Jazz: The Infinite 23. Jonathon David Jackson, “Improvisation in Art of Improvisation (Chicago: University of African-American Vernacular Dance,” Dance Chicago Press, 1994), 16. Research Journal 33, no. 2 (2001): 40–53.

Rachel Carrico 35 24. Roderick Davis, interview with the author, Remaking of New Orleans, ed. Cedric Johnson January 16, 2014. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 25. Jeff Adelson, “Obama Addresses Struggles, 2011), xix. Triumphs During Visit Marking Katrina’s10thAnni- 29. Craig, Sorry I Don’t Dance: Why Men versary,” The New Orleans Advocate,August29, Refuse to Move (New York: Oxford University 2015, http://www.theneworleansadvo cate.com. Press, 2014), 170. 26. Rachel Breunlin and Helen A. Regis, 30. Tamara Jackson, interview with the author, “Putting the Ninth Ward on the Map: Race, Place, April 21, 2014. and Transformation in Desire, New Orleans,” Amer- 31. Glissant, Poétique de la Relation (Paris: ican Anthropologist 108, no. 4 (2006): 746. Gallimard, 1990), 204, in Cecilia M. Britton, 27. Richard M. Mizelle, Jr., Backwater Blues: Édouard Glissant and Postcolonial Theory: Strat- The Mississippi Flood of 1927 in the African egies of Language and Resistance (Charlottesville: American Imagination (Minneapolis: University of University Press of Virginia, 1999), 19–20. Minnesota Press, 2014). 32. Gaunt, The Games Black Girls Play: Learn- 28. Johnson, “Preface,” The Neoliberal Deluge: ing the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip-Hop Hurricane Katrina, Late Capitalism, and the (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 48.

Rachel Carrico holds a PhD in Critical Dance Studies from the University of California–Riverside, where the research for this article was conducted, and an MA in Performance Studies from New York University. Currently a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Dance Studies and the Humanities at Stanford University, she teaches courses on the theories and politics of improvisation and social dance. Her scholarship has been published in TDR/The Drama Review, and she parades annually with the Ice Divas Social and Pleasure Club. Downloaded by [Rachel Carrico] at 10:19 04 February 2016

36 TBS • Volume 46 • Number 1 • Spring 2016