Abstract:

This essay explores the intersections and conflicts between the antiracist projects of West Indian decolonization and dance anthropology in 1930s Jamaica through an analysis of the Afro-Caribbean social dance spaces at Edelweiss Park. Edelweiss Amusement Park was a multimedia entertainment venue and nightclub in the heart of Kingston that Pan-Africanist leader Marcus Garvey opened in 1929. The Black fad dances, or "shay-shays," executed on the dancefloor made visible working-class ideas of citizenship as control over leisure and work hours and generated a form of embodied Black internationalist politics. Still, shay-shays' cosmopolitan optics are understudied because they disrupted African American notions of the Black Caribbean culture's pure Africanist "authenticity." To understand further shay-shays and the impact of the ethnographic gaze on their legacy, the essay turns to African American concert dance-maker Katherine Dunham's 1935 films and ethnographic descriptions of social dance in Kingston. Shifting from a US-centered history of West Indian dance that forefronts foreign researchers' experience and methodology, this historical ethnography reimagines how the politics of Garveyism informed how West Indians moved and communicated local visions of freedom.

摘要：

本文通过分析雪绒花公园的非洲裔加勒比社交舞蹈空间，探讨 1930 年代牙买加的西印度非殖民化反种族主义项目与舞蹈人类学之间的交叉和冲突。雪绒花游乐园是泛非主义领袖马库斯·加维（Marcus Garvey）于 1929 年在金斯敦市中心开设的多媒体娱乐场所和夜总会。作为对休闲和工作时间的控制，并产生了一种体现黑人国际主义政治的形式。尽管如此，shay-shays 的世界主义观点仍没有得到充分研究，因为它们破坏了非裔美国人对黑人加勒比文化纯属非洲主义“真实性”的看法。为了进一步了解 shay-shays 以及民族志凝视对其遗产的影响，本文转向非裔美国人音乐会舞蹈制作人凯瑟琳邓纳姆 1935 年的电影和对金斯敦社交舞的民族志描述。从以美国为中心的以美国为中心的西印度舞蹈历史转变为最前沿的外国研究人员的经验和方法，这种历史民族志重新想象加维主义的政治如何影响西印度人如何移动和传达当地的自由愿景。