Political Economics and Dance (Notes on Research Methods 11/7)

Early Dance Studies

More overtly political?

Discourse around whether abstracted dance is apolitical

This idea has been heavily critiqued

Only recently (post crash) has dance studies seriously considered the relationship between dance, politics AND economics

Political Economy

Goes back to Marx and says "economics and politics are one"

Franko article

Aesthetics

Society IS a political structure

Marx

Base

Superstructure

By this logic, a community of practice IS political (power dynamics)

Franko is saying that dance cannot be apolitical, and that culture, politics, dance, and economics are all informing each other

Articulation

Politics vs. the Political

Politics: structural, organization, governance

Political: arises/actions that come about because of a political system

Dual meaning: dance in "articulation" with a political moment

Dance articulating a particular moment, but at a different political moment the same dance will articulate a different political

"Hegemony" coming out of Gramsci as a "near-Marxist" or neo-Marxist

Hegemony: dominant structures that hold together a social order. The taken-for-granted/invisiblized norm

Three Tropes