Miriam G Giguere

What inspires us to dance? There are almost as many answers to this question as there are dance styles. This chapter looks at the history of how dance practices have been created, modified, appropriated, and developed throughout the 20th and 21st centuries in the USA, and the sources and trends which guide that invention and reinvention. The creativity of choreographers in the USA involves appreciating the emergence of global communication in the beginning of the 20th century. White mainstream dancers, choreographers, and audiences were just beginning to be exposed to world views different from the Western White mainstream which had dominated American and European culture in prior centuries. This chapter examines the results of that cultural intermingling which lead to borrowing and imitating, an unequal force, which often resulted in cultural appropriation and stereotyping. The concept of creating hybrid forms of dance will be scrutinized alongside issues of ownership and authenticity.

This chapter looks at the impact of community engagement through dance on adolescent and young adult dancers, particularly in relation to self-esteem, empathy, artistic understanding, and career aspirations of the participants, and whether dance differs from other kinds of civic engagement for them. The research investigates dancers ages 16–21, including both private studio trained dancers and dancers in an undergraduate dance program that volunteer on an ongoing basis in these types of community settings. The specific projects include teaching dance and developing choreography with low-income teens in an urban community center and a wheelchair dance class at a residential school for 16–21 year olds with cerebral palsy, both in Philadelphia. In this mixed method study, quantitative results from self-esteem and empathy surveys were triangulated with qualitative data collected through interviews. While statistical results were insignificant, three areas of impact were illuminated through qualitative analysis: (1) definitions of dance, (2) differences between dance based and other volunteer or community work, and (3) career aspirations.

Neighbors can be geographically close, but socially quite separated. Such was the case with two groups, the HMS School for Children with Cerebral Palsy and the Dance Program at Drexel University, both located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, until a dance collaborative was established in the fall of 2008; it is still ongoing at the time of writing. Located only blocks away from each other, the two groups of dancers—half in wheelchairs as residents of the HMS School and half from a dance major program at a private four-year ­university—would have no way of meeting if it weren’t for the collaborative weekly class. The residential students at the HMS School are typically middle school aged to twenty-one and dance in wheelchairs. Their partners are able-bodied dancers from Drexel University’s Dance Program who volunteer to be a part of the project.