ABSTRACT
In other cases, these interdisciplinary tendencies demonstrate deliberate attempts by groups or individuals across international divides to explore personal or cultural identity, or to look for ways in which cultural borrowing can enrich the dance of the home state. Schechner (2002: 226) suggests that many artists intentionally create post-colonial, postmodern work, respectful, ironic or parodic, to overturn or subvert the colonial horror of ‘mixing’ or ‘impurity’. More recently, both performers and scholars have gone beyond the deconstruction of dance traditions or the tendency to focus on cultural difference, in favour of encompassing commonality (Shapiro 2008: viii). Significant artist collaborations have been set up by choice to provide cross-cultural dialogue and allow choreographers to ‘embrace positively the problems and advantages inherent in the unpredictable interplay between different sets of experiences’ (Sanders 2005:1). Arguably, scholarship focusing on representation of
culture, identity, gender and race in choreography, and on ways in which dance has been analysed and interpreted, elicits new understanding and provides impetus to the creation of new choreography.
