Wesleyan University Press Baring Unbearable Sensualities: Hip Hop Dance, Bodies, Race, and Power

"Hip hop dance transmission embodies historical and contemporary oppression and resistance, as dancing Black and Brown bodies bear the responsibility of negotiating social, economic and political conditions and ultimately assert and challenge power through performance"-- Theorizing the experiences of black and brown bodies in hip hop danceBaring Unbearable Sensualities brings together a bold methodology, an interdisciplinary perspective and a rich array of primary sources to deepen and complicate mainstream understandings of Hip Hop Dance, an Afro-diasporic dance form, which have generally reduced the style to a set of techniques divorced from social contexts. Drawing on close observation and interviews with Hip Hop pioneers and their students, Rosemarie A. Roberts proposes that Hip Hop Dance is a collective and sentient process of resisting oppressive manifestations of race and power. Roberts argues that the experiences of marginalized black and brown bodies materialize in and through Hip Hop Dance from the streets of urban centers to contemporary worldwide expressions. A companion web site contains over 30 video clips referenced in the text. Autorid: Rosemarie A Roberts