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Full-Text Articles in Cultural History
Bodies As Living, Twirling Sacrifices: Performing Black Girlhood, Liturgical Dance, And The Black Church Tradition, Brianna Heath
Bodies As Living, Twirling Sacrifices: Performing Black Girlhood, Liturgical Dance, And The Black Church Tradition, Brianna Heath
Cultural Studies Capstone Papers
The purpose of this study is to investigate liturgical dance in the black church tradition as a gendered space. I argue that black girls perform their sexuality as ascribed to hetero-patriarchal ideology—as preached within the black church—through liturgical dance. This ideology akin to politics of respectability separates the sacred from the secular which causes a tension. This tension shows up in the hyper-ness of liturgical dancing. This study discusses this by contextualizing liturgical dance within a history of black concert dance and embodied practices of resistance. This study frames liturgical dance within the black dance tradition, black feminist studies, and …