Beyond Survivance: Embodying the Dance

Abstract

The driving question of this thesis is: How might American Indian dance – whether ‘traditional’ or ‘contemporary’ – be seen to make significant contributions to the cultural and historical narrative of American Indian people? That is: How might the cultural values and systems that are carried through American Indian dance practices and performance expressions be seen to construct American Indian identity – past, present, and future? Further: How might American Indian dance, as an embodied performance practice, be seen to move American Indian people beyond the current stages of survival and survivance?

This thesis explores what it means to embody American Indian dance from my perspective as an American Indian academic, artist and dancer. Embodying the dance inscribes an action that is simultaneously dramatic and social, telling a story from the center of my soul in the company of my ancestors to the people alongside me, for the people watching, and beyond toward future generations. This thesis is grounded in dance and performance studies, using Diana Taylor’s conceptualization of the ‘repertoire’ to explore the ways American Indian dance has served in the past to preserve, construct and sustain our communities against the prospect of annihilation during the long history of colonization. For this thesis, then, the ‘data’ as such will be the dances I choose to analyse using the lenses of theory, history and my own social and artistic experience. Accompanying the exegesis is a performance that will reflect the research and the outcomes as they have manifested. This approach will also reflect how the knowledge and experience of embodiment of the dance can best be produced and perform what the exegesis describes.

My background as a practitioner will frame and inform my analysis of selected examples as case studies. My first chapter will look at how American Indian dance has made a significant ongoing contribution to the survival of my people as a people. In my second chapter, I look at how, in the present day, these dances have come to be intertwined in contemporary dances that feature our traditions in non-traditional frames. In so doing, I will turn to Gerald Vizenor’s concept of ‘survivance’ and the way Chadwick Allen takes the term up to analyse other forms of creative expression. For my final chapter, I will apply the critical framework I’ve thus developed to a close reading of my own creative practice to demonstrate how such performances might be seen to go beyond survivance to assert our agency as artists and as a people going forward.

At its core, this thesis is a quest for expanding knowledge and encourage understanding. It aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of what American Indian dance is through the bridging of knowledge systems in lived cultural experience and academic dance performance scholarship. Through this work, American Indian dance is highlighted as a path for cultural knowledge and identity to move beyond survivance towards cultural renewal within the complexities of our world.