ABSTRACT

Fire Under My Feet seeks to expose the diverse, significant, and often under-researched historical and developmental phenomena revealed by studies in the dance systems of the African Diaspora.

In the book, written documentation and diverse methodologies are buttressed by the experiences of those whose lives are built around the practice of African diaspora dance. Replete with original perspectives, this book makes a significant contribution to dance and African diaspora scholarship simultaneously. Most important, it highlights the work of researchers from Ecuador, India, Puerto Rico, the United States, and the United Kingdom, and it exposes under-researched and omitted voices of the African diaspora dance world of the aforesaid locations and Puerto Rico, Columbia, and Trinidad as well.

This study showcases a blend of scholars, dance practitioners, and interdisciplinarity, and engages the relationship between African diaspora dance and the fields of history, performance studies, critical race theory, religion, identity, and black agency.

chapter |10 pages

Introduction

History, invisible avalanches, and ripple effects

part I|34 pages

Politicizing Black bodies and the appropriation of identity

chapter 121|32 pages

The gaze of power, rebel bodies, and the specter of savagery

African and African descents dances in the narrative eye of the beholders in Puerto Rico during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

part II|60 pages

Choreographing the African Diaspora in the public space

chapter 462|19 pages

Rooting across generations

Establishing British Caribbean Diasporic identity through dance

chapter 4|12 pages

The ruses of memory in the cinematic choreographies of Delia Zapata Olivella

Dancing to build gender in the public sphere

part III|59 pages

Dance, spirituality, and the embodiment of cultural continuity

chapter 1065|16 pages

Dance, rhythm, and ritual

Afro-Venezuelans in resistance

chapter 6|22 pages

Dancing African-ness

The transnational identity of the Siddi Dammal

chapter 7|19 pages

Dance

A catalyst for spiritual transcendence