On one hand, the popularity of hip hop has \u201cmade a global impact,\u201d says Byrd-McPhee. \u201cIt\u2019s provided a voice for so many people around the world.\u201d The downside is \u201cit\u2019s used globally in ways that the people who made the culture don\u2019t benefit from it.\u201d<\/p>\n
That includes marketing to sell products, music videos to sell personalities and dance classes to sell an attitude. In these commercial spaces, hip hop is distilled to its energy and aesthetics, stripped of its history and significance in black communities as an art of protest. It\u2019s then sprinkled on everything from Broadway shows to fashion campaigns like an exotic spice.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople think that all you have to do is have certain postures, wear certain clothes, dance to certain music\u201d to make it hip hop, Byrd-McPhee says, pointing out that simply donning toe shoes and tutus and dancing to Tchaikovsky does not a ballerina make. \u201cIt\u2019s that kind of disconnect from the origins of the culture and the people who created it that\u2019s problematic.\u201d<\/p>\n
That shallow aesthetic borrowing and disconnect is cultural appropriation. It has a long history in dance, from 19th-century \u201cexotic\u201d ballets like La Bayad\u00e8re<\/em> and Le Corsaire<\/em>, to the tap used in vaudeville, to American modern dance pioneer Ruth St. Denis, who found inspiration in the trendy histories, rituals and aesthetics of cultures like those of India and Egypt.<\/p>\n In popular culture, more recent accusations of cultural appropriation have been aimed at Madonna\u2019s use of voguing in her famous \u201cVogue\u201d<\/a> video, Miley Cyrus\u2019 adoption of twerking as a way to rebrand herself, and the New Zealand choreographer Parris Goebel\u2019s use of Jamaican dancehall in Justin Bieber\u2019s \u201cSorry\u201d<\/a> video.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Michelle Hefner Hayes performing at the Kennedy Center. Andy White, Courtesy of Hefner Hayes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Cultural appropriation is \u201ctaking the external trappings of cultural traditions and using them as decorations on your own history without developing mutually supporting relationships in the community that you\u2019re taking from,\u201d says Michelle Heffner Hayes<\/a>, a professor at the University of Kansas\u2019 Department of Theatre & Dance, who has studied the legacy of cultural appropriation in dance as part of her work.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not a question about \u201cethnic\u201d dances, Hayes points out, because \u201cevery dance form is an ethnic form,\u201d including ballet and modern dance. \u201cThe power dynamic matters. It\u2019s very different for someone who is in a position of privilege to borrow from a dance form from a marginalized community.\u201d<\/p>\n Hayes\u2019 interest in these issues stems in part from thinking about her own role as a white, queer American woman who was drawn to practice and write academically about flamenco, African diaspora and Latin popular dances. Throughout her career, she has asked: \u201cHow do you enter into a tradition that isn\u2019t a part of your various cultural identities in a respectful way?\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s something Nic Gareiss<\/a> has had to learn as an American from Michigan who works with traditional music and dance from across the North Atlantic, including Ireland and Scotland. \u201cThere\u2019s been a history of America taking up space and appropriating cultural forms and enacting cultural imperialism,\u201d he says. In an effort to grapple with that, he moved to Ireland to study at the University of Limerick to learn \u201cnot only the movement but also the culture around the movement, and to build relationships with movers in that culture.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Nic Gareiss in Ireland. Darragh Kane. Courtesy of Gareiss.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Even if you can\u2019t move abroad, visiting a dance form\u2019s country of origin is something that contemporary bharata-natyam dancer and choreographer Preeti Vasudevan<\/a> encourages of her students. \u201cGo experience the country first,\u201d she says, and learn from different teachers there. Indian dance, she says, \u201cneeds to be put in context so you understand what modern India is about.\u201d<\/p>\n Korie Genius<\/a>, who was born in Jamaica, teaches dancehall at a number of studios around New York City, and invites his students to attend local dancehall spaces and parties to gain firsthand exposure to the culture. Equally important, he says, is the continuous recognition of the form\u2019s pioneers and the teachers who have guided you.<\/p>\n \u201cGive a shout-out to the dances you\u2019re doing,\u201d Genius says, \u201cwhere they come from, where you learned it.\u201d Crediting teachers and trailblazers in social media posts, in program notes and in interviews is an easy and critical way to acknowledge an art form\u2019s lineage and your place in it with gratitude and humility. That recognition, Hayes says, \u201cis a step people skip, and it leads to conflict that people don\u2019t intend.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Korie Genius teaching class. Grainne Images, Courtesy of Genius.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But immersion and recognition aren\u2019t always enough. As Byrd-McPhee points out, it\u2019s often the entertainment companies, cultural institutions, private dance studios and the artists with a foot in those doors\u2014still overwhelmingly white\u2014that benefit financially from the appropriation of cultural dances due to existing economic structures.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t benefit from all the money that people make from it,\u201d she says of hip hop\u2019s mainstream presence. \u201cIt\u2019s sad.\u201d<\/p>\n If you receive a job involving a cultural art form that isn\u2019t your own, Byrd-McPhee advises, find ways to use your platform to give opportunities to artists who do come from that culture, perhaps as performers and consultants. \u201cThat\u2019s under your control,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Preeti Vasudevan performing her Stories by Hand. Maria Baranova, Courtesy of Vasudevan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Broader awareness also requires recognizing the politics and power dynamics that affect cultures, historically and today. B-girl Ephrat \u201cBounce\u201d Asherie<\/a> fell in love with hip hop as a young immigrant to the U.S. from Israel and Italy, and she credits her mentor Richard Santiago with helping to open her eyes to the painful history that spawned that art form.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t be about these forms that come from the African diaspora and the trauma of slavery and not participate in the fight for equality,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n She also acknowledges that her platform to tour and present her art is one that is not afforded to many in the hip-hop community, and that comes with responsibility. \u201cWhen you are creating with forms from a culture outside of your own, you do have a responsibility to call out issues,\u201d she says, noting house\u2019s LGBTQ roots and how breaking was born from the African-American and Latin communities.<\/p>\n She not only includes the history of street and club styles in her classes and in postshow Q&As, but also supports the struggles that others in the community face. In this way, she\u2019s consciously working to ensure her art is a gesture of appreciation by redirecting the spotlight toward the elders of her chosen dance form. \u201cIt\u2019s part of my responsibility to make people care,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Ephrat Asherie. Robert Altman, Courtesy of Asherie.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n While engaging with dances from other cultures comes with responsibility, it can lead to profound personal and artistic growth. Vasudevan says she loves introducing non-Indian dancers to her art form and sees benefits to any artist willing to put in the time for thoughtful, respectful dialogue.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re actually engaging with an artist of another culture and figuring out together the building blocks of each other\u2019s cultural language,\u201d she says, \u201cit should shed light on your own questions, your own self-reflection, so that you can go deeper into what you\u2019ve grown up with and you can come up with something that\u2019s authentically yours.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n The post At What Point Does Appreciation Become Cultural Appropriation?<\/a> appeared first on Dance Magazine<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Michele Byrd-McPhee\u2019s uncle was a DJ for the local black radio station in Philadelphia, where she was born. As a kid she was always dancing to the latest music, including a new form of powerful poetry laid over pulsing beats that was the beginning of what we now call hip hop. Byrd-McPhee became enamored of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":326,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/supplychainstrategynow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/supplychainstrategynow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/supplychainstrategynow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/supplychainstrategynow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/supplychainstrategynow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/supplychainstrategynow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":350,"href":"https:\/\/supplychainstrategynow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324\/revisions\/350"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/supplychainstrategynow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/supplychainstrategynow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/supplychainstrategynow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/supplychainstrategynow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/supplychainstrategynow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/img-90.png\")
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