Throughout the United States and Canada people go to Native American intertribal powwows. At powwows women, men, and children execute rhythmic movement, drumming, and song as they experience and express sensory stimuli. The aroma of sage incense pervades as Indians and non-Indians socialize, share fry bread, and sell, buy, or “window shop” at concession stands. Vendors display T-shirts, fur, turquoise, silver, and beaded jewelry as well as artwork, CDs, and Ecuadorian and Peruvian items. All participants enjoy storytelling, comedy skits, Indian rap and country music performances, and Mexican “Aztec” dance presentations alongside rituals such as giveaways, the Eagle ceremony, or the Veterans dance. These social and spiritual celebrations occur in increasing numbers across North America. In the tristate region of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut alone, from 1995 to 2001, the number of powwow events has tripled.

On a table placed in the center of the stage squats a woman dressed in a rust-colored dress. The focus of the lighting on her, which keeps the rest of the performance space darkened, underscores her presence in isolation. Her arms are stretched out in front, parallel to each other, reaching to no one. The palms are rigid, the separated fingers are taut with tension. Her voice reaches out in a deep undertone, the mouth opens wide to enunciate each word by itself, reinforcing the strange disconnectedness between the relaxation of her lower back and pelvis, and the tension of her upper body, the emphasized separation between her fingers. Her eyebrows are raised, furrowing multiple lines of puzzled anguish across her forehead. Almost motionless, her eyes wide open and unflickering in the trembling light of the candle that is placed in front of her on the table, she speaks in near-choked baritones:

The spectacular popularity of Riverdance in 1994, in Ireland and abroad, prompted critical reflection on notions of cultural authenticity, ethnicity, and identity. The attention focused on step dance led to increased discussions of national characteristics. This essay argues that the perceptions of Irish step dance, at first local, then nationalized and globally exported, reflect larger issues of relevance to the Irish state. Although these perceptions have influenced the development of Irish step dance locally, nationally, and globally, the dance practices themselves have assisted in molding and maintaining these same perceptions. I will illustrate how the commodification of Irish step dance practice, particularly during the past five years, has acted as a major catalyst for the emergence of marginal dance practices and has reenergized the Irish step dance tradition. Throughout this essay, I use the expression “marginal dance practice” to contrast with competition dance culture, which I interpret as the mainstream, accepted canon.

Although no one grand theory of globalization exists, considerable thinking on the subject has emerged over the past several decades among theorists from both the humanities and the social sciences. The term “globalization” appeared in the mid-1980s to replace others such as “internationalization” and “transnationalization” as a description for our ever shrinking world and the perceived process of “cultural homogenization on a global scale” (Hoogvelt 1997, 114; King 1991, viii). Different paradigms exist in the literature and, for the most part, they fall within two areas: international relations and world-system-theory.

Almost since the inception of moving pictures, those pictures have often featured dance. The obvious reason for this is that the natural subject of moving pictures is movement. And dances—along with hurtling locomotives, car chases, cattle stampedes, tennis matches, intergalactic dog-fights, and the like—move. Thus, a significant portion of the history of moving pictures involves dance movement. Many moving-picture makers have devoted admirable amounts of effort and imagination to portraying dance in or through media as diverse as film, video, and computer animation. The purpose of this essay is to attempt to offer a philosophical characterization of this field of activity; that is, I will try to define moving-picture dance.

Many readers, learning of my intention, are apt to groan “labeling again, how boring.” To a certain extent I can sympathize with that sentiment. It is far more interesting to talk about work than it is to set about classifying it. The concrete achievements of the field are more important than abstractions about it. Nevertheless, despite my ready acknowledgment of this, I will persist for several reasons.

First, whenever festivals of this sort of work are held, it is very likely that at one time or another almost everyone present will be tempted to say of some work that it doesn't really belong on the program. Everyone complains about labeling, but sooner or later most people feel compelled to invoke some favorite definition of their own. For human beings, categorizations are unavoidable, even if we like to pretend indifference to them. And most of us can feign indifference only for so long; most of us have a breaking point. Thus, it seems to me a good idea to get this issue out in the open and to discuss it abstractly—to compare and contrast the various categorizations in play and to develop dialectically from them a comprehensive framework that makes sense of our practices and that resonates with our intuitions about its compass.

In writing this paper, we—Jill Crosby and Ann Dils—render into text six years of sporadic dialogues. Through our explanation and examination of the 1994 movement analysis and description project that began our exchanges and discussion of subsequent readings, we hope to explore important aspects of dance studies research. Our use and understanding of Laban-based movement analysis as a tool for understanding movement as it is felt and observed, awareness of concepts of dialogue and the dialogical process as potential frameworks, critical lenses, and theoretical bases for dance studies research, and adaptation of the interpretive paradigm to suit dance research are especially important to this exploration. Little of our text is written in dialogue form (Crosby:, Dils:); rather, we hope, by drawing examples from our project, Crosby's dissertation, and the works of other researchers, to capture the bubbling-up of understanding that stems from the cooperative and confrontational exchanges of dance studies research.

Over a three-month period in 1994, we conducted a movement analysis and description project as part of Crosby's work for her doctoral dissertation, “Will the Real Jazz Dance Please Stand Up? A Critical Examination of the Roots and Essence of Jazz Dance with Implications for Education.” Crosby investigated the aesthetic shapings of jazz expression inclusive of its West African roots from a cross-disciplinary perspective, using ethnographic methods as tools for understanding artistic form (Crosby 1995). An arts educator and dancer, Crosby wanted to establish a pool of descriptive and potentially inherent characteristics for music-based jazz dance. These characteristics would comprise a personal definition for the form and provide Crosby with a point of departure for a discussion of jazz as a movement tradition.