Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T05:22:25.417Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Cautionary Contours: Joann Kealiinohomoku's Silhougraphs® and Dance Analysis in Black and White

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2021

Judith Hamera
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Joann Kealiinohomoku's Silhougraphs®, traces of the silhouettes of dancers, were her attempt to operationalize her cultural relativist commitments and create a new method of dance analysis. Silhougraphs illuminate underexamined scholarly presumptions, methods, and tools that both contributed to and paralleled the emergence of dance studies as a discipline. Silhougraphs are also a cautionary tale demonstrating the ways culturally sensitive research commitments and methods can unintentionally yet decisively reiterate tools and logics of racist typologies.

Keywords

cultural relativismMelville HerskovitsJoann KealiinohomokusilhouetteSilhougraphs®
Type
Article
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , April 2021 , pp. 23 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Dance Studies Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Alberro, Alexander. 1996. “Kara Walker.” Index Magazine. Accessed February 10, 2021. http://www.indexmagazine.com/interviews/kara_walker.shtml.Google Scholar
Anderson, Mark. 2019. From Boas to Black Power: Racism, Liberalism and American Anthropology. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Baker, Lee D. 2010. Anthropology and the Racial Politics of Culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Banerji, Anurima, and Mitra, Royona, eds. 2020. “Decolonizing Dance Discourses.” Conversations Across the Field of Dance Studies XL. Accessed February 10, 2021. https://d1z6eg75w3adwx.cloudfront.net/images/DSA_2020_Conversations_v8.pdf.Google Scholar
Bartenieff, Irmgard. n.d. “Choreometrics Project.” University of Maryland Libraries Special Collections Exhibit. Accessed July 19, 2019. https://www.lib.umd.edu/bartenieff/choreometrics.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Ruha. 2019. Race after Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. New York, USA: Polity.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. 1977. The Origin of German Tragic Drama. Translated by Osborne, John. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Bevilacqua, Frédéric, Schnell, Norbert, and Alaoui, Sarah Fdili. 2011. “Gesture Capture: Paradigms in Interactive Music/Dance Systems.” In Emerging Bodies: The Performance of Worldmaking in Dance and Choreography, edited by Klein, Gabriele and Noeth, Sandra, 183–194. Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript Verlag.Google Scholar
Bindman, David. 2011. “Frog to Apollo: A French Print after Lavater and Pre-Darwinian Theories of Evolution.” Print Quarterly 28 (4): 392–395.Google Scholar
Brown, Michael F. 2008. “Cultural Relativism 2.0.” Current Anthropology 49 (3): 363–383.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Wendy. 1999. “Resisting Left Melancholy.” Boundary 2 26 (3): 19–27.Google Scholar
Buckland, Theresa J., ed. 1999. Dance in the Field: Theory, Method, and Issues in Dance Ethnography. Houndmills, UK: Macmillan Press Ltd.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buckland, Theresa J. 2010. “Shifting Perspectives on Dance Ethnography.” In The Routledge Dance Studies Reader, edited by Carter, Alexandra and O'Shea, Janet, 335–343. 2nd ed. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Celichowska, Renata. 2008. Seven Statements of Survival: Conversations with Dance Professionals. New York: Dance Movement Press/Rosen Book Works, LLC.Google Scholar
Cheng, Anne Anlin. 2001. The Melancholy of Race: Psychoanalysis, Assimilation, and Hidden Grief. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cheng, Anne Anlin. 2019. Ornamentalism. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Creating New Futures Phase 1 Working Group. 2020. “Creating New Futures: Phase 1—Working Guidelines for Ethics and Equity in Presenting Dance & Performance.” Accessed February 1, 2021. https://creatingnewfutures.tumblr.com/.Google Scholar
Cross-Cultural Dance Resources, Inc. and Kealiinohomoku, Joann. 1989. “Introduction to Silhougraphs®.” CCDR Newsletter 8 (Summer): 1–2. Accessed February 3, 2021. https://79c295e1-a534-4dee-8b68-e135ef174454.filesusr.com/ugd/c33df9_9f204bdd8e2f41a3b052b40c3138e0c5.pdf.Google Scholar
Cross-Cultural Dance Resources, Inc. and Kealiinohomoku, Joann. 2004. “Introduction to Silhougraphs®,” June 8, 2004, accessed October 23, 2018, http://www.ccdr.org/silhougraphs.html (site discontinued).Google Scholar
Dance Studies Association. 2020. “Anti-racist Dance Pedagogy: A Growing Resource.” July 29. Accessed February 10, 2021. https://dancestudiesassociation.org/news/2020/anti-racist-dance-pedagogy-a-growing-resource.Google Scholar
Davis, Crystal U., and McCarthy-Brown, Nyama. 2020. “Black Women Respond to a Double Pandemic: ‘The Emotional W(ait)eight.’” Conversations across the Field of Dance Studies: Decolonizing Dance Discourses XL: 10 - 12. Accessed February 10, 2021. https://d1z6eg75w3adwx.cloudfront.net/images/DSA_2020_Conversations_v8.pdfGoogle Scholar
Dee Das, Joanna. 2017. Katherine Dunham: Dance and the African Diaspora. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
di Leonardo, Micaela. 1998. Exotics at Home: Anthropologies, Others, American Modernity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Donato, Clorinda. 2001. “Reading the Face: Lavater in the Twenty-First Century.” Lumen 20:83–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fernandez, James W. 1990. “Tolerance in a Repugnant World and Other Dilemmas in the Cultural Relativism of Melville J. Herskovits.” Ethos 18 (2): 140–164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
George-Graves, Nadine. 2020. “Discussing the Undiscussable, Part 2; or, This Might Hurt Your Feelings*.” Conversations across the Field of Dance Studies: Decolonizing Dance Discourses XL: 20 - 21. Accessed February 10, 2021. https://d1z6eg75w3adwx.cloudfront.net/images/DSA_2020_Conversations_v8.pdf.Google Scholar
Gershenhorn, Jerry. 2004. Melville J. Herskovits and the Racial Politics of Knowledge. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Gjerdingen, Robert O. 1988. “Shape and Motion in the Microstructure of Song.” Music Perception 6 (1): 35–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Golshani, Forouzan, Vissicaro, Pegge, and Park, Youngchoon. 2004. “A Multimedia Information Repository for Cross Cultural Dance Studies.” Multimedia Tools and Applications 24:89–103. doi: https://doi.org/10.1023/B:MTAP.0000036838.87602.71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanna, Judith Lynne. 1973. “Anthropology and the Study of Dance: A Report.” Dance Research Journal 6 (1): 37–41. doi: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1477573.Google Scholar
Herskovits, Melville. 1948. Man and His Works: The Science of Cultural Anthropology. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar
Jewett, Andrew. 2012. Science, Democracy, and the American University: From the Civil War to the Cold War. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaeppler, Adrienne L. 1972. “Method and Theory in Analyzing Dance Structure with an Analysis of Tongan Dance.” Ethnomusicology 16 (2): 173–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaeppler, Adrienne L. 2000. “Dance Ethnology and the Anthropology of Dance.” Dance Research Journal 32 (1): 116–125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karpenko, Lara. 2019. “‘The Inanimate Becomes Animate’: Loie Fuller, Speculative Feminist Aesthetics, and Posthuman Embodiment.” Nineteenth-Century Contexts 41 (5): 565–584. doi: 10.1080/08905495.2019.1669370.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kealiinohomoku, Joann Wheeler. 1967. “Typologies Based on Diagnostic Features of Dance Silhouettes.” Unpublished manuscript. Series 1, subseries 5. Joann W. Kealiinohomoku Collection. Cross-Cultural Dance Resources Collections. Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ. Accessed October 23, 2018.Google Scholar
Kealiinohomoku, Joann Wheeler. 1974. “Caveat on Causes and Correlations.” CORD News 6 (2): 20–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kealiinohomoku, Joann Wheeler. 1975. “Shaping Space: A Study of Dance Silhouettes.” Unpublished manuscript. Series 1, subseries 5. Joann W. Kealiinohomoku Collection. Cross-Cultural Dance Resources Collections. Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ. Accessed October 23, 2018.Google Scholar
Kealiinohomoku, Joann Wheeler. 1976. “Theory and Methods for an Anthropological Study of Dance.” PhD diss., Indiana University: Bloomington.Google Scholar
Kealiinohomoku, Joann Wheeler. 1979. “You Dance What You Wear, and You Wear Your Cultural Values.” In The Fabrics of Culture, edited by Cordwell, J. M. and Schwarz, R. A., 77–83. The Hague: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kealiinohomoku, Joann Wheeler. 1985. “Hula Space and Its Transmutations.” In Dance as Cultural Heritage, edited by Jones, Betty True, 11–21. Vol. 2. Dance Research Annual 16. New York: Council on Research in Dance.Google Scholar
Kealiinohomoku, Joann Wheeler. 1986. Preface to Half a Century of Dance Research: Essays by Gertrude Prokosch Kurath, by Kurath, Gertrude Prokosch, iii–iv. Flagstaff, AZ: Cross-Cultural Dance Resources, Inc.Google Scholar
Kealiinohomoku, Joann Wheeler. 1988. “Silhougraph Project.” Unpublished manuscript. Series 1, subseries 5. Joann W. Kealiinohomoku Collection. Cross-Cultural Dance Resources Collections. Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ. Accessed October 23, 2018.Google Scholar
Kealiinohomoku, Joann Wheeler. 1993. “The Silhougraph Project: ‘Reading’ Dance Silhouettes.” John Simon Guggenheim Foundation grant application. Series 1, subseries 5. Joann W. Kealiinohomoku Collection. Cross-Cultural Dance Resources Collections. Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ. Accessed October 23, 2018.Google Scholar
Kealiinohomoku, Joann Wheeler. 1995. “Conditioners of Silhougraph© [sic] Contours—Diagnostic Features for Fixed Frame Analyses.” Series 1, subseries 5. Joann W. Kealiinohomoku Collection. Cross-Cultural Dance Resources Collections. Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ. Accessed October 22, 2018.Google Scholar
Kealiinohomoku, Joann Wheeler. 2001. “An Anthropologist Looks at Ballet as a Form of Ethnic Dance.” In Moving History/Dancing Cultures, edited by Dils, Ann and Albright, Ann Cooper, 33–43. Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Kealiinohomoku, Joann Wheeler. 2012. Interviewed by Susan J. McGlothlin, September 8, 2011, Flagstaff, AZ. Interview Transcript, Part Two, p. 13. Cline Library Digital Collections. Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ.Google Scholar
Kesiman, Made Windu Antara, Maysanjaya, Made Dendi, Pradnyana, Made Ardwi, Sunarya, Made Gede, and Suputra, Putu Hendra. 2020. “Profiling Balinese Dances with Silhouette Sequence Pattern Analysis.” 2020 International Conference on Computer Engineering, Network, and Intelligent Multimedia (CENIM). Surabaya, Indonesia, pp. 423–428. doi: 10.1109/CENIM51130.2020.9297893.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knox, Cynthia Gail. 1984. “Dance at the Interface of Biology and Culture.” MA thesis, Northern Arizona University: Flagstaff.Google Scholar
Kolcio, Katja. 2010. Movable Pillars: Organizing Dance, 1956–1978. Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Kowal, Rebekah J. 2020. Dancing the World Smaller: Staging Globalism in Mid-Century America. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kurath, Gertrude Prokosch. 1986a. “Panorama of Dance Ethnology.” In Half a Century of Dance Research: Essays by Gertrude Prokosch Kurath, 15–36. Flagstaff, AZ: Cross-Cultural Dance Resources, Inc.Google Scholar
Kurath, Gertrude Prokosch. 1986b. “Research Methods and Background of Gertrude Kurath.” In Half a Century of Dance Research: Essays by Gertrude Prokosch Kurath, 407–415. Flagstaff, AZ: Cross-Cultural Dance Resources, Inc.Google Scholar
Meri, La [Russell Meriwether Hughes]. 1977. Total Education in Ethnic Dance. New York: M. Dekker.Google Scholar
Lomax, Alan, Bartenieff, Irmgard, and Paulay, Forrestine. 1968. “Dance Style and Culture.” In Folk Song Style and Culture, edited by Lomax, Alan, 222–247. Washington, DC: American Association for the Advancement of Science.Google Scholar
Mandradjieff, Mara. 2016. “Ballerina-Pointe Shoe Becoming, Fluid Multiplicities, and The Red Shoes.” Text and Performance Quarterly 36 (4): 265–278.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McLearn, Ida, Morant, G. M., and Pearson, Karl. 1928. “On the Importance of the Type Silhouette for Racial Characterisation in Anthropology.” Biometrika 20B (3/4): 389–400. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2332000.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mehring, Frank. 2017. “How Silhouettes Became ‘Black’: The Visual Rhetoric of the Harlem Renaissance.” In Circulation, edited by Brunet, François, 180–216. Chicago: Terra Foundation for American Art.Google Scholar
Miller, Raphael F., and Wood, Jessica. 1996. “Congress on Research in Dance Conference: Dance, Myth, and Ritual in the Americas.” Dance Research Journal 28 (1): 110–114. doi:10.1017/S0149767700016302.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Naeem, Asma. 2018. Black Out: Silhouettes Then and Now. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
National Gallery of Art. 2015. “Met Museum and National Gallery of Art, Washington, Each Acquire Significant Work by Leading Harlem Renaissance Artist Aaron Douglas.” Accessed February 1, 2021. https://www.nga.gov/press/2015/acquisition-douglas.html.Google Scholar
Oliver, Andrew. 1977. Auguste Edouart's Silhouettes of Eminent Americans, 1839–1844. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.Google Scholar
Orr, Jessica. 1996–1998. Gertrude Prokosch Kurath Collection [finding guide]. Tempe, AZ: Cross-Cultural Dance Resources Collections at Arizona State University.Google Scholar
Primus, Pearl Eileene. 1978. “An Anthropological Study of Masks as Teaching Aids in the Enculturation of Mano Children.” PhD diss., New York University: New York.Google Scholar
Raengo, Alessandra. 2013. On the Sleeve of the Visual: Race as Face Value. Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Press.Google Scholar
Rosa, Jonathan, and Díaz, Vanessa. 2019. “Raciontologies: Rethinking Anthropological Accounts of Institutional Racism and Enactments of White Supremacy in the United States.” American Anthropologist 122 (1): 120–132. https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13353.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rutherford, Emma. 2009. Silhouette: The Art of Shadow. New York: Rizzoli.Google Scholar
Savage, Patrick E. 2018. “Alan Lomax's Cantometric Project: A Comprehensive Review.” Music & Science 1:1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwartz, Peggy, and Schwartz, Murray. 2011. The Dance Claimed Me: A Biography of Pearl Primus. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
“Sex and the Fat Wife.” 1972. Newsweek, August 21. n.p. Clipping contained in Series 1, subseries 5, Joann W. Kealiinohomoku Collection, Cross-Cultural Dance Resources Collections, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ. Accessed October 23, 2018.Google Scholar
Srinivasan, Priya. 2011. Sweating Saris: Indian Dance as Transnational Labor. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Stemmler, Joan K. 1993. “The Physiognomical Portraits of Johann Caspar Lavater.” The Art Bulletin 75 (1): 151–168.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vissicaro, Pegge. 2004. Studying Dance Cultures around the World: An Introduction to Multicultural Dance Education. 2nd ed. Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Visweswaran, Kamala. 1998. “Race and the Culture of Anthropology.” The American Anthropologist 100 (1): 70–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar