Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival Case Study

The Krewe of Cleopatra is an all women crew that represents strength, beauty, and femininity. Earlier this month, I got to see the Cleopatra crew performed and it was an astonishing experience. I lived here in New Orleans for nine years, but I have never participated in a parade before. Even though it was a popular culture, I was always too lazy to go. This year I wanted to do something more than just staying home and play game, I wanted to go out and experience the atmosphere, but more specifically I wanted to experience the Mardi Gras atmosphere. It was a unique atmosphere that I certainly love to go again.

Why is being a fancy dancer such a big deal? This is the dance of the Native American Fancy Shawl. This dance interests a lot of people because many people do not believe that Natives exist, never have seen one dance, or even a fancy dancer dance before. “ This style of dance is the newest style of Native American dance there is.” In the early 1920’s,  Native American women started to dance the Fancy Shawl dance which was very uncommon. In the 1950’s, women became more aware of the Fancy Shawl dance and started to dance the dance more in the Southern Tribes (“The Evolving Beauty of the Fancy Shawl Dance”). Most of the dances that the Natives Americans dances started from the men, due to the women wanting to dance like the men did. When started

The buzzing of razors and the clipping of scissors filled the basement of the Iowa Memorial Union. A few girls are wiping away tears as their golden locks fall to the ground. Our friends are taking photos and videos of our reactions. Other girls are chatting about how much they want to cut off, while others are complaining about how much their feet hurt. It is four in the morning, we are only nine hours in, we still have fifteen hours left.

Despite this being an art program, the women were also being challenged to write about themselves and create works that expressed their feelings and experiences as women. Some of the bold statements that the program was known for are the “cunt cheerleading” where some of the women would dress as cheerleaders and have the letters on their uniforms collectively spell out “CUNT.” Most of the artwork the program featured had to do with the female body and the misguided perceptions of it. They created bold, sometimes crude works of art that received a lot of attention, which I assume was the purpose in order to bring awareness to this movement. These kinds of radical and audacious works fueled a lot of conversations between women and men, but were

Indian tribes, hurt and facing a time of poverty, hunger and disease, sought a means of salvation to bring hope to their traditional culture. The evolution of a new religion, the Ghost Dance, was a reaction to the Indians being forced to submit to white men government and reservation life. The Ghost Dance religion promised salvation in the coming years during which time the earth would be destroyed, only to be recreated with the Indians as the inheritors of the new earth. The ghost dance outcome

“Go within everyday and find the inner strength so that the world will not blow your candle out” (A Quote by Katherine Dunham 1). Once one of the most successful dancers in both American and European theater, Katherine Dunham, a dancer, anthropologist,social activist,and educator, continues to inspire people throughout the world. Named America’s irreplaceable Dance Treasure in 2000. Dunham remains a name heard regularly in dance schools across the world (“Katherine Dunham Biography” 4). She is known for always trying to make a difference and in the process she has become of the world’s greatest humanitarians (Osumare 5). Katherine Dunham’s work in African American rights in the dance world and her creation of new styles of dance makes her an important figure in American dance History.

On April 14, 2017, my friend and I visited for the first time Salt Lake City Community College dance company’s annual performance. The show was presented at the Grand Theater at the South City Campus of the college. The performance’s name “Moving Words” imply what the audience was about to experience. “Moving Words” consists of 18 different dances and each of those dances brought a unique feeling to the overall performance. I thought that the dancers and choreographers have done an amazing job. However, after seeing all the different dances there were two that stuck together with me, because of the ideas and the morals these dances introduced.

These dances are harmful but threatening to the white man. They are told to tolerate only for a little, soon the whites will fall off the earth. This frightens the whites, they take action. Troops are brought into the reservation. Many are obliterated. The first accused is sitting bull. When the last offer came he spoke along with red cloud. “You teach our children the words of your God, "Be fruitful and multiply." But it seems these words are not meant for the Indian. For what kind of man would take a wife and have children he cannot feed? No Indian man. Not a Lakota, not an Arikara, not a Crow. You would have us cut off our balls and end our race right here on a patch of land on which nothing can live, and that will not happen! I have spoken. Then Henry Dawes, commander of the reservation says We did not put you on this land. Red Cloud surrendered - he made peace with the government. Have you forgotten the bloodshed that came before? Red clouds respond with, Sitting Bull is a great leader. I believe this, no matter that the whites see us men all as the same. But he did not sit with us in the council those many snows ago when our reservation was made. He did not sit with us in the next council when these borders that we were told were like marks in stone were moved. And the Black Hills and our hunting lands were taken from us. Sitting Bull might have had his say, but such

We’ve all heard of the festival being a scene with women flashing for beads and I totally expected the streets (especially Bourbon Street) to be filled with half-naked drunk people. What I found instead, were elaborately dressed festival-goers of all ages celebrating, laughing and expressing themselves through music, art, and dance. While many costumes and signs were humorous and outrageous, I never once felt anything other than love and positivity around

This group was quickly recognized as the radical counterparts of NOW, focusing primarily on trying to make the world a better place by completely burning the patriarchal society rigged against them. One of the group's most popular forms of protest was bra burning, a symbol of their independence from men. This form of symbolism was most popularly used at the Miss America Protest in 1968 in Atlantic City. Women came from all over America to show their resentment of the beauty standards put into place by beauty pageants. As women resisted being paraded around like cattle, they through many objects of femininity into trashcans, including bras, curlers, and high

Since I was a little girl I’ve always been part of something. But none of the activities I did really filled me. I became part of a dance academy when I was 13 years old, and it was because my sister wanted to learn to dance for her Quinceañera. It’s kind of ironic how something that would be very important to me started so simple. But I guess that’s just how the best things in life happens.

It’s somewhat curious that all of them are black or Latin. By chance? I don’t think so. I just find it difficult to believe that in ten hours of recording there were no more social groups on the streets who harassed the girl. Honestly, where are the white men? Didn’t she go through Wall Street? Didn’t she receive any comments from white brokers? What do they want to tell us, that white men don’t harass? Of course they do. Isn’t this video offering a “little” biased vision of harassment to women? What is Hollaback! is really pursuing with this campaign? I’m not sure whether they want to raise awareness about daily street sexism or if they want to make us a bit more

From Native Americans partaking in the Hopi dance, helping them to restore their personal harmony to the Zar ritual dance in the Middle East, helping women connect and share knowledge through dance - or loosing yourself - has proven to renew balance in women since the beginning of time. Why go against history?

This feminist art movement paved the way for numerous different art styles to emerge and gave women a more prominent stance within the art world. However during the 1980’s there was another shift and art dealers began showcasing more male artists again in order to revive the commercial economy of art, which marginalized female artists. This caused a new wave of feminism in art, with the emergence of the Guerilla Girls in New York and then eventually the Houston Gorilla Girls. The HGG wanted to intimidate the art galleries around Houston into exhibiting more female artists. They wanted to make them uncomfortable and show them something they probably hadn’t considered, that people do care about the representation of women and that these women in Gorilla masks would not stop until they achieved that fair representation. As stated previously, the guerilla girls not only wore the gorilla masks for the protection of their identity but also to give a feeling of unity and keep the galleries aloof to their activities while they were trying to figure out who was behind the gorilla masks. They wanted to be a faceless organization that sought to not only represents their own interests but the interests of women artists and artists of color that were not being treated as respected members within the art community. They wanted to be representative of the collective ideals and spirit of women all over the world and not just as their individual personalities. They wanted to let the world know that there was a sever lack of female representation and there needed to be a collective movement to change this. They placed blame on the art community as a whole often showcasing signs that read, “You are responsible” in bright neon colors, as not to be

The Guerilla Girls are a women’s activist art group. They are masked women who came together to make change in the world of art and women’s involvement in society. GG emerged in 1985 and still are active today in New York after 30 years of the emergence of the group. The Guerilla Girls used posters with real statistics to show awareness of sexism in the art world and the discrimination of women in politics as well as in the mass media. The Guerrilla Girls spread awareness of sexism in art, discrimination in politics and the mass media through their workshops, performances, and posters.