Project Seeds-Melanie Waingarten

Working in my project, many questions came to my mind when researching the relationship between identity and dance:

-How can we perform identity? Is there a way of representation?
-How  ethnicity and identity can be negotiated and performed?
-Which is the intersectionality between identity and culture?
-Could we think of a compartimentalized identity? Are we made of many components combined together in a mixture that is unique to every individual?
 -How can we express identity through dance?
-How identity and survival are connected?
-How to understand another culture?
-How to be together in singularity?
-And how migration influenced cultures and history?
-Who creates the boundaries of identity?
-And how are these boundaries established both from within and without?
-What it means being caught between two cultures?
-How to embody unity and diversity simoultaneously?
-What is the impact of dance in societies? How dance represent who we are? If dance is a sociological and linguistic phenomena,  How do we explore that intersectionality?
-How do I express collective struggles through my body?
-Could dance function as an entry into the realm of identities?

I think is important to address the specificity that identity unfolds. In this case, I want to work with another cuban performer. Someone to share experiences, memories, and then get together and “ live”our own personal identity through our bodies as a way to understand who we are, where we come from, which elements define us.  This is an interesting point for me because I will be coming from United States and “representing” this country but I am actually not from here. I would like to explore ways to reveal myself and communicate that intimacy to the other person in order to share my identity and viceversa. How to embody my identity? What is intimacy in the context of identity? Which specific situations of my daily life can reveal who we are? Which situations on a cuban daily life can reveal who the other person is? I could think about food, sharing a moment of cooking together, walking on the streets, talking to neighbors in Cuba. Or me sharing ‘mate’, singing argentinian songs, but also not forgetting my new home that brings me other daily situations that I was supposed to get used to and now became part of me. These could be some situations that become encounters to define identity.

The research sources I am using now are the text “Dance, identity, and identification processes in the postcolonial world” by Andree Grau, “ Pedagogy of the oppressed” by Paulo Freire and “Dangerous Moves, politics and Performance in Cuba” by Coco Fusco.

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