The Intersectionality of Feminism and Dance, by Jackie Kosoff
I am a twenty-two year old, Caucasian, working-class woman from South Central Pennsylvania who is currently studying dance in college. I introduce myself with these labels as an explanation of where I come from causing me to see the world the way I do, integral to the standpoint feminism theory. I grew up surrounded by sisters and a strong, divorced mother which was part of my early belief that I was a feminist, although now I know I had nearly no understanding of the full weight of that word. My lived experience as a dancer and woman has strengthened my understanding and role in feminism as it pertains to the vital concept of intersectionality, “the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.”
This term, created by civil rights activist and scholar Kimberle Crenshaw, is often used in tandem with feminism. Crenshaw elaborates upon the necessity of intersectionality in her work, Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity, Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color: “It highlights the need to account for multiple grounds of identity when considering how the social world is constructed.”
I have grown to realize the interconnected nature of my own social categorizations and identities through my lived experience as a dancer and feminist. I started studying dance seriously at the age of sixteen when I attended an arts high school in inner-city Harrisburg in 2011. I danced, learned, and created with students of different races, cultures, and socioeconomic standings. I began not only to understand the way people other than myself viewed the world, but also the way the world made them feel.
I entered Montclair State University as a freshman dance major in the fall of 2013. College influenced me as a student, dancer, artist, and woman as I continued to experience people who were different than myself as we got to know each other by communicating nonverbally with the art of dance. I started to understand that my feeling of my classmates’ oppressions and struggles that I did not personally face had a name: empathy. In that regard, the recent study “Engagement in dance is associated with emotional competence in interplay with others” by a team of Swedish dance scholars points out that “Dance is a fundamental form of human emotional expression … Dance activity and training seems to be involved in the body’s emotional interplay with others. There’s a more developed awareness of emotional processing and higher ability to interpret the emotions others in dancers than in non-dancers.” I also grew as a “thinking dancer,” in that I became more knowledgeable and articulate about my art.
I took part for the past three years in a highly-selective workshop seminar for dance majors, Danceaturgy, where we conceptualized what we physicalized by writing, speaking, and advocating for our art form. I began studying the Limon technique of modern dance in the 2015-2016 school year and this way of movement led me to change not only how I move but also how I approach dance on a personal and emotional level. The sensitivity of the technique allowed me to become a more open mover and person.
This deeply rooted connection was the breakthrough of intersectionality in my life. I felt a strengthening in my artistic voice as a dancer, I also felt a strengthening in my political voice. My growth was blurring lines between the different parts of my life and bringing them together. 2016 was also the first year I was eligible to vote in an election and took the opportunity to do so, as I felt that my singular voice was necessary. Pertinent to my political voice is the article “Intersectionality and Feminist Politics” by scholar Nira Yuval-Davis, who mentions Radhika Coomaraswamy, a special rapporteur of the UN Secretariat on violence against women. Coomaraswamy spoke at the World Conference Against Racism where “the term ‘intersectionality’ had become tremendously popular and was used in various UN … forums.” This subsequently led to the 58th session of the UN Commission on Human Rights, where the resolution on the human rights of women stated in its first paragraph that it ‘recognized the importance of examining the intersection of multiple forms of discrimination, including their root causes from a gender perspective. ‘(Resolution E/CN.4/2002/L.59)” I realized that, for me, intersectionality within politics allows for an evolution that crosses boundaries of social locations and identities.
During this past school year, I performed in a new work by Christian von Howard which centers on a coven of five witches, entitled to the teeth. Not only did the piece investigate the mysticism of darkness, it specifically focused on a group of powerful women. This choreography and theme allowed me to explore the power I have as a woman, even in a mystical and fictional sense while articulating it through my movement and performance.
When I look back now, as a senior, on my journey of intersectionality, one of my first memories from college was taking a freshman level writing course and tentatively raising my hand to the question “Who here is a feminist?” Very few others around me did the same. This question played an important early role in establishing the interconnectedness of dance and feminism for me. Scholar Anthea Kraut articulates the unity of dance with feminism in Choreographing Copyright: Race, Gender, and Intellectual Property Rights in American Dance: when she says, so powerfully, that “… gender never functions in isolation from other axes of difference.”
Citations
Bojner Horwitz, E., Lennartsson, A. K., Theorell, T. P., & Ullen, F. (2015) Engagement in dance is associated with emotional competence in interplay with others. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 1096.
Crenshaw, Kimberle. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review 43.6 (1991): 1241. Web.
Kraut, Anthea. Choreographing Copyright: Race, Gender, and Intellectual Property Rights in American Dance. Oxford, UK: Oxford UP, 2016. Print.
Yuval-Davis, N. “Intersectionality and Feminist Politics.” European Journal of Women’s Studies 13.3 (2006): 193-209. Web.