Content area
Abstract
In my investigation of dance curricula in higher education, black American dance techniques have yet to reach a level of study comparable to existing ballet and Eurocentric modern dance techniques in both studio and history classes. Although components of black aesthetic dance techniques, such as Dunham, Umfundalai, and Jazz, as well as Hip Hop and African derived styles, are being offered, they are typically not a central part of the curriculum, existing rather as electives. The dance discipline’s primary pedagogical concentrations in classical ballet and Eurocentric modern dance techniques implicitly signal their centrality to the development of any academically trained dancer. This focus, in turn, generalizes and essentializes other cultural and innovative approaches that could also be considered vital to the foundation of the well-trained 21st century dancer and undergraduate dance studies major.
This dissertation argues for a greater understanding for developing and implementing a revisionist history of the discipline via the black dancing body within the context of “enterculturalism” for a complete curricular overhauling to ensure students’ receive a more comprehensive cultural literacy in higher education dance. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the problem underlying this research study by investigating the current state of dance in higher education that, I argue, reflects the cultural biases inherent in the development of dance as an academic discipline in the United States and its ongoing superficial inclusion of black dance histories. Chapter 2 provides a review of the literature I utilize to validate my argument and expose the long history of the problem this study investigates. Chapter 3 provides empirical evidence of the problem via my fieldwork, which took place in four regions of the United States. Chapter 4 provides a blueprint for an alternative curricular model, which I argue is necessary for implementing a new generative pedagogical praxis. This study attempts to provide what I am proposing is the necessary approach to curricular overhauling. I offer an alternative “entercultural engaged pedagogy” that I argue can rectify that which is currently lacking in higher education dance departments. Subsequently this study’s approach to a paradigm shift away from the historical Eurocentric paradigm is not only the introduction of an entercultural approach to dance education, but also the undoing of the monocultural epistemology in higher education dance studies.
