Dance and What it Means

Dance and What it Means to Be American

In order to understand American dance, it is first necessary to understand what it means to be American. What is an American, exactly? Is it a nationality, a shared cultural identity, an ethnicity, a shared history, or something else entirely? Many countries on in the world have their own unique cultures, and those cultures are represented in dances that can only be defined as belonging to their country of origin. You would not mistake a German dance for a French one, or an African dance for a Brazilian one, for example. Each is uniquely identified by its country of origin.

So how, then, do we identify Americanism and associate it with American dance? It is the position of this paper than being American means sharing a common national, not cultural, identity with the other people who live here. America is a relatively new country, compared to other countries in the world, and it has not had time to develop a strictly cultural identity, though it is moving in that direction. For now, the people who make up America are very diverse in their origins, and some still have very strong cultural ties to the countries of origin of their ancestors (be it parents, grandparents, or beyond). People in America often cling to their particular family's cultural identity while also embracing the national identity of America. In America, the national identity is shaped by our shared history as the people who make up this nation. It is almost like a class of school children who come from many different backgrounds and recognize and embrace those backgrounds, but who also have a shared identity as members of their class. They have loyalty to their classmates, their teacher, and will go head to head in competition with other classes in the school under the banner of their classroom. America is like that.

You become an American simply by being an American and embracing that shared national identity. There are perhaps outsiders in American society, just as there are in most classrooms, but the outsiders are either newcomers who have not yet integrated into American society yet (but are working on it), or who have purposefully removed themselves from the mainstream of American society and have chosen to be outsiders, even if they were born here. Throughout the 225-plus years America has been a nation, part of its national identity has been expressed through the arts, which includes paintings, plays, sculptures, music, and dance, as well as other art forms. Because America does not yet have a common cultural identity, the way it has expressed itself through dance has been as modern as America itself. The modern dance movement, in fact, is an accurate representation of America as a society….new, interesting, unique, exciting, and something most people (including the dancers) haven't quite completely figured out yet. This is different from the traditional cultural dances of other nations, which have been represented on the American stage in musicals and other artistic performances. Modern dance is thoroughly American in its identity.

One example of how a dance has presented a specific cultural, rather than national, identity on stage is in the musical, "West Side Story." This play represents the coming together….and clashing….of two societies, American and Puerto Rican. Though Puerto Rico is technically part of America, it is not a state, and it has a very Hispanic cultural identity associated with it that the states in America do not. "West Side Story" shows this clash. One of the dance numbers that uniquely identifies the Puerto Ricans in the story is the dance that accompanies the song, "America." In this song, the Puerto Rican girls are singing about Puerto Rico vs. America (with most girls favoring America and one girl standing out as favoring Puerto Rico). While individual choreographers have different interpretations of the dancing to this song, the dances almost invariably involve movements that are associated with Hispanic culture, with lots of clapping, raised arm movements, kicking, and twirling. This tendency is, in itself, rooted in the music of the song, which uses double and triple metrical configurations (known as a seis, which was a popular musical style in Puerto Rico when the song was written), and the song uses sharp, rhythmic notes throughout that are reminiscent of the huapango, which is a Mexican style of dance. While not entirely Puerto Rican, the song has distinctly Latin tones that make it kind of a generic Hispanic song. It doesn't entirely embrace Puerto Rican culture specifically, but groups the Puerto Ricans in with Mexicans and other Hispanic cultures as a whole. This was not uncommon for the 1950s, and is still not uncommon today, as American society has had a lack of interest in distinguishing between the different nuances of distinct Hispanic nationalities and cultures, and the dance in "West Side Story" reflects this.

Another example of how dance presents a cultural identity on stage in America is the musical "Fiddler on the Roof." This play focuses on a Jewish Russian community in the 19th century. The play is nothing but cultural references to the Russian Jewish people of this time period, including clothing, dialogue, and dance. The concept of the fiddler on the roof, the traditional Russian dancing during the songs "Tradition" and "To Life" are all very accurate. Rather than stereotyping the whole community under one umbrella of a generic, similar cultural heritage, such as was done with the Puerto Ricans being generalized with all Hispanics in "West Side Story," "Fiddler on the Roof" accurately and rather sensitively for its time, portrays the 19th century Russian Jewish community as far as their culture goes, and this includes the traditional dancing incorporated into the play. It is not modern dance, and can in no way be considered American; rather, it transports the viewer back in time to 19th century Russia into a community of Jewish people and shows them as they are, with their traditional dances and music (this includes the squatting, jumping, and kicking moves that are so closely identified in Russian dancing).