Solidarities of the Marginalized as Anti-racist Dance Pedagogy: Reflections on Collaborative Advocacy from Dance Educators with Connective Marginalities

ABSTRACT

The comprehensive implementation of anti-racist dance pedagogy requires recognition that the prevailing dominance of Anglo-European cannons of teaching, creating, performing, researching, and learning dance has continued to disempower, subjugate, and inhibit knowledge and practices of communities on the margins. As dance practitioners writing from the margins, we draw on our duoethnographic stories as testimonio and the theories of South-South connection and plática to critically examine how we have engaged ideas, experiences, and practices of people we share connective marginalities with to build critical consciousness and solidarities as a step toward anti-racist collaborative advocacy in dance education. The authors use their writing, choreography, pedagogic, and community engagement experiences to reimagine marginality. The article reveals how critical action around anti-racist dance pedagogy can circumvent institutional and academic rigidities. The discussion ushers the reader into a world where dance practitioners on the margins activate agency to achieve self-empowerment and meaningful connections for, by, and with themselves.

KEYWORDS:

• South-South connection
• duoethnography
• anti-racist pedagogy
• plática
• collaborative advocacy
• testimonio

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.