What Is The Thesis Of Dancing Skeletons By Detwyler

All Indians must dance, everywhere, keep on dancing. Pretty soon in next spring Great Spirit come. He bring back all game of every kind…all dead Indians come back and live again. They all be strong just like young men, be young again. Old blind Indian see again and get young and have fine time. When Great Spirit comes this way, than all the Indians go to mountains, high up away from whites. Whites can't hurt Indians then. Then while Indians way up high, big flood like water and all white people die, get drowned! After that, water go way and then nobody but Indians everywhere and game all kinds thick… (Wovoka, The Paiute Messiah qtd. In Brown 416).

Katherine Dettwyler’s work in the field while she was in West Africa was exciting, filled with humor and even terrifying at times. She dealt with seeing various life-threatening diseases that affected the lives of children her daughter’s age, as well as adults. Dettwyler found that almost all of the people she came in contact with were completely oblivious and uninformed of the ways to prevent diseases such as malaria, Schistosomiasis, malnutrition and other infectious diseases unique to their region of the world. In her book, Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death in West Africa (1994), Dettwyler discusses tons of the health problems she comes across, in

Dancing Skeletons by Katherine Dettwyler is an ethnography that focuses on how infant feeding practices and childhood malnourishment leads to life threatening disease like measles, diarrhea, tetanus, malaria, and diphtheria. On the other hand, the author also experiences how Malian people perceive illness, society structure, and cultural norms of how men are viewed toward a women’s sexuality. However, cultural relativism has controversial cultural practices in Dancing Skeletons which has horrifying traditions and require us to take into account before we form a bias opinion (Lavenda, 2009, pp. 222-223).

Response: I found Katherine A. Dettwyler’s, Dancing Skeletons; Life and Death in West Africa very interesting though I did not like the way in which it was written. To me it was written in a very scattered brain way, similar to how a hyperactive childs diary would look like. At times when Dettwyler was trying to explain something, she would go into tangents, mostly about her own personal opinions of the topic, which ruined the mood of the book, lessened the impact of whatever she was talking about at the time and frankly, it just annoyed me. I found it difficult to understand what was trying to be said and it made it difficult to read. I think if she didn’t try to cover so much in such a small book- malnutrition, female circumcision and other random topics- I would have enjoyed it more. One thing that I did like was how she wasn’t political on her trips to Mali, she just talked to people. She didn’t preach just talk and I think that’s what helped improve these people’s lives. It was interesting but I wouldn’t read it again or recommend it like I did for the Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down.

Kyle Abraham’s “Absent Matter” is the newest dance performed by the Abraham In. Motion company and the Joyce Theater located on 175 8th Avenue in New York, NY was debuted on November 10, 2015. This is another racially driven performance by Pittsburgh born Kyle Abraham dancer and choreographer (Kourlas). The dance is broken down into three separate sections including “The Quiet Dance”, “Absent Matter”, and “The Getting”. All three sections are performed with a sense of spontaneity and sincerity which is inspired from both Jazz and Hip-hop music and dances (Kourlas). It is believed this most recent production is inspired by the police brutality around the United States, and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Ghost Dance was a Gathering of tribes to trade things and tell people about their religion, how to hunt, beliefs, and to exchange stuff. Some of the Natives Gathered at Wounded Knee Creek where about 300 Natives were shot down by the Seventh Cavalry. How the Ghost Dance started was by a man named Wovoka who had a vision that “the the earth would be covered with tons of new dirt, which would bury all the white people and get rid of them forever.¹” and the “fears were realized years earlier when the Arapahoes, Cheyennes and Sioux came together to defeat Custer.1” And Wovoka “preached peaceful coexistence and a strong work ethic and taught ceremonial songs and dances to resurrect dead Indians.1”

The Ghost Dance was a religious circle dance that’s meant “to bring hope” for the Indigenous people. They needed something to believe in because of the horrible conditions they were living in (poverty, hunger, and diseases) so they put their trust into Ghost dancing. It was said that performing the Ghost Dance ceremony would bring back their dead ancestors, return their plentiful buffalo herds and most importantly, eliminate the European settlers (Kerstetter, n.d.). The feeling of desolation spreading throughout the Native camps in the west made them grasp for any message of hope (Lesser, 2009).

In the ethnography, “Dancing Skeletons, the author Katherine Dettwyler describes many reasons for her research in Mali. The main focus of her research was too attack the problem of malnourished children and to figure out what diseases they were struggling with. This ethnography detailed Dettwyler’s second trip to Mali, and she wanted to relocate many of the children she had previously measured, as well as add more children to her study. Throughout the ethnography, Dettwyler makes it very clear that the malnutrition of these children is a major problem in Mali. She describes many of the children she measures and the picture she paints in one’s mind is horrifying. One of the many diseases she comes across is Kwashiorkor,

The Ghost Dance was a tradition that originated in the late 1800’s, this dance was a spiritual movement performed by Native Americans on reservations who were in search of hope in a time of need; however the results weren’t what they expected.

This is a great way to think. Everyone has their skeletons; no one is perfect. Some individuals have done worse than others, of course, but the worst of them also have qualities that really make them stand out. To me, thinking of one’s positive qualities really helps to not be so judgmental on the negative qualities. It’s interesting because when I look back on the memoir, this quote reminds me of how Jeannette looked at her dad. He was an alcoholic, he would take their money just to buy cigarettes and alcohol, and did let her and her siblings down a lot. However, she always seemed to look up to him because he was this person that always thought outside the box. In the book, we see how much he believes in her, and how he, for the most part,

If it is in the power of a human being to achieve something for the good of the whole, or rather, to prevent something bad from occurring without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, then it should be done. All in all his essay depicts one true conclusion: the only way to prevent famine within a society or community without sacrificing anything of comparable moral

The music played a large role in determining the style of the pieces in the show by Koresh Dance Company. It set the theme and mood for the dances. Also, the choreography was dependent on the beats and variations in the music. This basis added to the themes of the dances as well.

The Noongar and the colonists’ have varying conceptions about life, and how to operate on a daily basis. For example, the Noongar believe in sharing possessions and property where as the colonists’ believe in just one person possessing something or owning land. In terms of class the Noongar and the colonists’ also have varying positions on the topic, the Noongar don’t believe necessarily in having social class where the colonists’ prefer to separate the people into class by wealth, possessions, gender etc. While these differences between the Noongar and the colonists’ can be beneficial to both parties, as they are introduced to many new concepts, it can also lead to issues between them. The barrier of

Dance has been a natural movement form since the beginning of time. The origin of dance is unknown, just as the knowledge of the benefits of dance are unknown to many in our society. Many people do not enjoy dancing and also do not fully understand the positive benefits that come from dancing. Researchers such as Edwards, Duberg, and many more have found countless mental and emotional benefits of dance that originate from movement patterns, brain connections, and even expressions of emotion. Many are aware of the physical benefits of dance, but beyond the physical benefits of dance, there are also emotional and mental benefits that come from dance as well.

Born in Austro-Hungary in 1879, Rudolf Laban developed a theory that provided a means to exploring and expanding one’s movement vocabulary. Although frequently used in choreographic processes, this toolset helps one explore different aspects of dance improvisation. Worldwide, his theory of analyzing movement has helped dancers grow more creative in their improvisation. When improvising, dancers often use varying levels of structure to control the direction of improvisation, and this particular structure based in Europe is used in almost every setting of dance in academia.