Dance in US Popular Culture

Jennifer Atkins is an associate professor of dance at Florida State University.

Introduction

Jennifer Atkins and Carlee Sachs-Krook

PART I: Popular Dance as Primary Source

1. Locating Popular Dance and Dance in Popular Culture

Jessica Ray Herzogenrath and Bhumi B. Patel

Chapter 1 Case Studies:

The Invented Choreographies of the Tomahawk Chop

Kellen Hoxworth

Popular Dance Cultural Masters

Ariyan Johnson

Do the Hustle: A Saturday Night Reclamation

Abdiel Jacobsen

Bestowing Blessings and Cultivating Community: Lion Dancing in Boston’s Chinatown

Casey Avaunt

~POP CULTURE CONVERSATION~

Watching from Another Place: Outside Perceptions of American Popular Culture

Elena Benthaus and Dara Milovanović

Chapter 1: Next Steps and Your Move!

2. Describing Dance, Writing Moving Worlds

Dahlia Li

Chapter 2 Case Studies:

In the Interest of Health and Cooperation: Women Dancing "The Most Important College Interests"

Jessica Ray Herzogenrath

Dammn Baby! Janet Jackson Dances Pop Feminism

Elizabeth Bergman

Resistance in Rhythm: The Shim Sham Shimmy

Kat Echevarría Richter

Queerness, Closure, and the Finale Dance in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Miya Shaffer

Chapter 2: Next Steps and Your Move!

PART II: Stereotypes and Spectatorship

3. Interpreting (Multi)racial Movements in Popular Dance

Miya Shaffer

Chapter 3 Case Studies:

From a Black Cinderella and Filipino Prince to a Career in Commercial Dance

Beverly Bautista

Plasticity in Lexus’s Black Panther Commercial: Choreographing Blackness as Other through Visual Echoing

Kelly Bowker

Riverdance: Remaking Race Natasha Casey

~POP CULTURE CONVERSATION~

The Law of the Jungle: A Conversation with Philip Ancheta about Performing for Walt Disney World

Chapter 3: Next Steps and Your Move!

4. Male Bodies and Masculinity in Popular Dance

Brandon Calleja Shaw

Chapter 4 Case Studies:

Macho Sensibilities: A Dancer’s Autoethnographic Journey

Yebel Gallegos

The Nicholas Brothers: Dancing Masculinity in Down Argentine Way (1940)

Pamela Krayenbuhl

Manning the Pit: Techniques of White Masculinity in Hardcore Punk Moshing

Emily Kaniuka

Bey-Boy: Channing Tatum, Mimesis, and a Test of Masculinity

Nicholas Richardson

Chapter 4: Next Steps and Your Move!

5. Femininity and Female Empowerment in Commercial Dance: Shakira and J. Lo at Super Bowl LIV

Juliet McMains

Chapter 5 Case Studies:

Subverting Body Ideals: Abject, Tactile Film Style in John Waters’s Hairspray

Roxanne Hearn

Dancing Girls and Dance Moms: Performing Femininity on the Dance Competition Stage

Karen Schupp

#Burberry and the Utility of Black Femininity

Ronya-Lee Anderson

Toying with Chauvinism: Parody in Anna Nikki’s Pole Classique Routine

Carlee Sachs-Krook

Chapter 5: Next Steps and Your Move!

6. Spectacle, the Gaze, and Agency in Popular Dance

Colleen T. Dunagan

Chapter 6 Case Studies:

"Fosse Meets Fetish": When Fosse Goes (Really) Kinky

Dara Milovanović

Spectacular Choreographies of Epic Proportions: Ricki Starr the Ballet-Dancing Wrestler

Laura Katz Rizzo

Sparkling Subversion

Catherine Cabeen

Belly Dance as Restaurant Entertainment

Somya Jatwani

~POP CULTURE CONVERSATION~

"Far Across the Distance": A Competition Judge’s Perspective from behind the Table

Madeline Kurtz

Chapter 6: Next Steps and Your Move!

PART III: Recognitions and Revisions

7. Popular Dance and Intersectionality

Jeremy Guyton and Celeste Landeros

Chapter 7 Case Studies:

Naomi Osaka’s Hafuness and Polycultural Dance Moves

Maïko Le Lay

"Como La Flor": Selena’s Animation of Intersectional Identity

Anabel Bordelon

Gender Is a Drag: Performing Hybridity on RuPaul’s Drag Race’s Maxi Challenge "Prancing with the Queens"

Bhumi B. Patel

~POP CULTURE CONVERSATION~

Resistance, Resilience, Overcoming a Lot: Talking with NaTonia Monét about Performing in the Broadway Musical Tina

Chapter 7: Next Steps and Your Move!

8. Mass Media and Social Circulations of Popular Dance

Laura H. C. Robinson

Chapter 8 Case Studies:

"They’re the Same Picture": Repetition as Political Critique in Instagram Dance Memes

Miya Shaffer

Legitimization and Circulation of Hip-Hop Dance in "Real Talk: Hip-Hop Education for Social Justice"

Maïko Le Lay

"Just Stick to the Flamenco": Flamenco on NBC’s World of Dance

Amy Schofield

Dancing Doctors and TikTok Meme-ography: Pointing Toward Female Health Access

Amanda Gabaldon

~POP CULTURE CONVERSATION~

Everybody has a Dream: Talking with Taz Loft about Filming In the Heights (2021).

Chapter 8: Next Steps and Your Move!

9. Close Up: Step-Touch in New Orleans Popular Dance

Rachel Carrico and Latanya D. Tigner

Chapter 9 Case Studies:

Is He… You Know…

Aaron C. Thomas

Meghan Trainor’s "All About That Bass": A White Girl’s Booty Anthem

Colleen T. Dunagan

B-Girl Sunny and the Performativity of the Gaze

Sherril Dodds

Varsity Spirit’s Propertied, White Settler Femininity

Sammy Roth

Chapter 9: Next Steps and Your Move!

10. The Politics of Popular Movements

Irvin Manuel Gonzalez

Chapter 10 Case Studies:

New Deal Rhythm

: Hollywood Chorus Girls Get Political

Anna Waller

"To Exist is to Survive Unfair Choices": The OA and Queer Acts of Protest

Bhumi B. Patel

Orderly Chaos: Moshing in SLC Punk!
Adrian S. A. Manning

Asserting Indigenous Agency Beyond Colonial Spatialities through RainbowGlitz’s Burlesque Love Medicine

Evangelina Macias

Chapter 10: Next Steps and Your Move!

11. Popularizing "American-ness"

Tria Blu Wakpa

Chapter 11 Case Studies:

Ballet at the Movies or Dancing on the Limits of American-ness: Thalia Zanou

Anna Leon

Romanticizing the Old South in the Confederate Pageant

Teresa Simone

Experimenting with Lady J: A Trans Take on Drag

J. Davenport, PhD

Welcome to America: Reassigning Appropriation through Choreography in Soft Power

Laura London Waringer

~POP CULTURE CONVERSATION~

closet disco: a meditation

Jeremy Guyton

Chapter 11: Next Steps and Your Move!