ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to provide new dialog around dance as a form of cultural, political, and economic exchange through a consideration of its potential for being sold or given. All the dancers might take pride in and remain unalienated from their performances of the moves they are nonetheless selling. Teachers can sell or give facility at dancing to their students; choreographers can sell or give dances to dancers; dancers can sell or give the performance of dance to the audience. In order to sell dance or facility at dancing, the dance movement must be standardized and also spectacularized. Commodity exchange establishes relationships between objects in terms of their relative price, whereas gift exchange constructs relationships between people. The pilot episode of The Get Down opens with a 1996 concert in which Zeke, by then a highly successful rap artist, details his early years in the Bronx.
