Dance Commons^™

Josephine Baker & Me: Black Femme Identity In Performance, Meghan Gwinn

Scripps Senior Theses

The paper explores the complicated intersection between Black womanhood and performance by considering Josephine Baker as a site to engage the concept of “performing identity.” It discuss both the development of burlesque and the history of Josephine Baker to provide a foundation for the investigation of her early-career movement and visual practices. Then, the paper explore these hallmarks through Sherril Dodds’ “critical components of neo-burlesque striptease” writ into her book, Dancing on the Canon: Embodiments of Value in Popular Dance. The second half of this document includes a script of CATHARSIS, a self-devised solo show created to process one’s personal …