Dance and Caribbean Festivals - Lesson Plan - 2012

Dance and Caribbean Festivals - Lesson Plan - 2012

Semester II / 2012 – 2013Dance and Caribbean Festivals – Lesson 1

Lecturers: Ms. Hazel Franco, Dr. Jorge Luis Morejón

Rational:
This class compiles a number of important readings to synthesize the relevance of dance practices in the Caribbean region. These dance practices are manifested through festivals, carnivals and festive events, religious or not. The emphasis on body and technique in dance leaves dance students with no time to improve on their academic reading, writing and comprehension. This course aims at developing those skills through reading the literature available in the field of dance by summarizing it, critiquing it, presenting it and discussing it in a seminar type of format. Also, the students are expected to research a festival event of their choice using secondary sources (books, journals, websites) and present it to the class.

Objectives:


The students will be able to read, summarize, and discuss an article on a dance within the frame of a Caribbean festival in class as an illustration of what is expected in the future.

In this first class, the students will be able to familiarize themselves with the mechanics of summarizing in writing, critiquing and discussing with the class the main points of the readings presented to them.

The students will access different secondary sources to be able to recognize the difference between a university press publication, a journal or internet material.

The students will be instructed on how to use citations through both MLA and APA systems.

The students will be able to understand the importance of the academic aspect of the class identifying examples of academics in the field, their scholarship trajectory and interventions.

Content:Guidelines

• You are accountable for your readings. You are asked to write a review of every assigned article. Please, read the following directions. They will help you read and discuss the articles based on what the articles say and not just your own anecdotal account or opinion in reference to the theme.

• I am sending you a synopsis of the first two articles to bring structure to the course. Pay attention to the recommendations and sample summaries we are giving you.

• In the first review (more of a summary) we comment on how Desmond's article applies to what we are trying to do in the seminar. The second, the introduction to Nettleford's book, is a true review, the kind you should model. Follow the recommendations at the end of the last paragraph. Also, read the following online article and use it as a reference to write your own review, which is not about a book, but about the articles we will be covering.. http://www.indiana.edu/~wts/pamphlets/book_reviews.pdf

• Academic work is fun if one takes it seriously. Thus, read, read and read. Expand on those terms and names you are not familiar with. At the end of the semester you will see how much you have learned about those who have turned our field into an academic jewel. The presentations will go well if the presenters focus on what the article is about, then their points of view, to then open the floor for questions and discussion.

• Also, for those of you interested in doing your MPhil., this is a good exercise to get yourself ready. See the attached document and use it as a model to write your own reviews beginning next class. A printed copy of the review should be turned in at the end of each class, beginning next Tuesday.

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Sample Summaries

February 7, 2012
Dance and Caribbean Festivals
Dr. Jorge Luis Morejón

I. Critique Sample

Desmond, Jane C. “Embodying Difference: Issues in Dance and Cultural Studies.” Cultural Critique. No 26. Winter 1993 – 1994.

This article can be found on jstor through the library system. http://www.jstor.org/pss/1354455
Jane C. Desmond in Embodying Difference: Issues in Dance and Cultural Studies states a very valid point, “dance remains a greatly undervalued and undertheorized arena of bodily discourse. Its practice and its scholarship are, with rare exceptions, marginalized within the academy” (Desmond 17). On that note, it is important that you take this course as an opportunity to familiarize yourself with the ways in which academia engages with the production of knowledge in our field, finding in these readings a model to understand and produce your own bodily discourse. Desmond brings to the discussion the field of Cultural Studies and the need for it to address kinesthetic semiotics, dance research and human movement studies. Also, she advocates for the expansion of “bodily texts” to include social dance, theatrical performance and ritualized movement. Thus, this article is opening the door for you to consider the future academic areas you may venture into when completing your masters degree with the Cultural Studies department, the only way you can do a master degree with a designated emphasis in dance at UWI.
Because the “mute dancing body” has been omitted from academic discourse, there is a lot to investigate, which means that you/we have a lot to investigate (Desmond 18). Furthermore, Desmond calls our attention to the fact that “complex effects of the commodification of movement styles, their migration, modification, quotation, adoption or rejection as part of the larger production of social identities through physical enactment,” have not been “fully theorized.” I think this is the result of not training our students in the art of theorizing about dance. This course is an attempt for you to get engaged in such important enterprise. Do not take it for granted.
There are theoretic tools you must become familiar with in order to fully grasp the meaning of these articles. They are: literary theory, film theory, Marxist analysis, feminist scholarship, hierarchies (including racial, ethnic and national identities), and poststructuralism, among others.

*There are also theory gurus you most get acquainted with and know as if they were our closest uncles. In this specific article, go back to names such as Bordieu, Foucault, Deborah Jakubs, Sidney Mintz, Richard Price, C. Vann Woodward, Herskovits, Paul Gilroy, Brenda Dixon Gottschild, Barthes,

Suggested keywords: commodification, borrowing, remodeling, appropriation, ethnic absolutism, bodily bilingualism.






II. Critique Sample

Nettleford, Rex. Caribbean Cultural Identity: the case of Jamaica. Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle, 2004

The highly politicized introduction “, Identity and Creative Diversity,” to Nettleford’s book Caribbean Cultural identity: the case of Jamaica, pushes us all toward the realm of big words such as “emburgeoisement” to bring attention to a counteractive and “intensely cultural” process that has resulted in “a distinguishable and distinctive entity called Caribbean”
(Nettleford xi). Phrases such as “creative chaos,” “stable disequilibrium,” and “cultural pluralism” explain the “texture and diversity” of a culture “held together” by a “dynamic creativity” expressed through ethnic, racial and cultural mixing. An important point discussed is that despite the difference between independent and non-independent Caribbean islands, what is common to all is their understanding of the “power of cultural action” (xii). This power has facilitated cohabitation despite differences; yet, in the face of technological development and travel facilities, the introduction claims a need for solidarity despite the failed attempts to federate the Anglophone islands from 1958 to 1961.
The term “hyphenated fragmentation” emphasizes the legacy of a heritage of separation and shattered identities” (xiii). It is however through the exercise of what can be called “a Caribbean creative imagination” that the region shares a “singular process of becoming” (xiv). The term multiculturalism is contested to emphasize the need to get out of an internalized concept of “origins” to embrace that of relations.” In this sense, the tolerance of a diversity of religious believes makes these relations an easier task. Also, based on this introduction, one could understand that the term “colonization in reverse” implies that the Caribbean has turned “the dominant one third” world countries not only into recipients of Caribbean bodies, through migration, but into a recipient of a second layer of creolisation (xvi). Thus, the trends in globalization, as it happened before, during colonization in the region, will encounter the resisting force of cultural identities. At the same time, alternate bridges through the performing arts and popular festivals, escape the insidious penetration of racism, religious bigotry, xenophobia, apocalyptic rationalism, neoliberalism, among other ”obscenities” (xviii). [Here add one more paragraph where you express your personal evaluation of the article. Use the online doc. I sent you as a reference].

*The names we should be familiar with are Earl Lovelace, Jacques DeLors, Kamau Brathwaite, Edouard Glissant, Dereck Walcott, Wilson Harris and David Rudder.

Keywords: intertextualities, multiculturalism, homogeneity, creolisation, creative diversity


Possible Readings
Embodying Difference

Identity and Creative Diversity

Traditional Enactments

Access Power

The Steelband

Recapturing Heaven

Religious Cosmology

Metaphor in the Rituals of Restorative…