A feminist postructuralist examination around the utilisation of the body as a contested site of struggle for meaning in contemporary theatre dance in South Africa.
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Date
2000
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Abstract
Using a framework of feminism and poststructuralism, this thesis aims to
interrogate the utilisation of the body as a contested site of struggle for
meaning in contemporary theatre dance in South Africa. "Both feminism, as a
politics, and dance, as a cultural practice, share a concern for the body"
(Brown, 1983: 198). A feminist analysis of dance can offer a tool to
interrogate the dominant discourses of gender and race that surround and
permeate both the female and male body in contemporary theatre dance. The
body is not a neutral site onto which cultural codes and conventions are
inscribed, as the dancer's body is always marked in the physical sense of
gender and race. This thesis aims to decode the body and examine how the
discourses of gender and race are embodied by the moving body on stage -
specifically in the South African (KwaZulu-Natal) context.
By a feminist appropriation of the poststructural endeavour, this research will
look at how the body, as discourse, can be interrogated to examine how the
interconnected discourses of gender and race surround and permeate the
moving body. The utilisation of a poststructural paradigm will aid in the
examination of how the dominant discourses of gender and race are
hegemonically imposed onto the body. Poststructuralism also offers an
understanding that there exist counter-discourses that have the ability to
resist the dominant discourses of gender and race. This notion becomes
important to the study of contemporary theatre dance as an art form. This
thesis will examine how South African (Durban-based) contemporary theatre
dance choreographers explore the body's potential to be subversive in
performance. The thesis will focus on the body's ability to interrogate the
discourses that operate in its surroundings and permeate its lived reality.
Description
Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2000.
Keywords
Dance--South Africa--Anthropological aspects., Dance--Social aspects--South Africa., Human body--Symbolic aspects--South Africa., Sex in dance., Feminism and the arts--South Africa., Theses--Drama and performance studies.