2025/02/06 by Ruxandra Ana · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Cuban History and Society #Diversity and Impact of Dance #Theater, Performance, and Music History
paper · doi:10.1080/1070289x.2025.2463767
openalex publication_date 2025/02/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25
This article discusses Afro-Cuban dance and its agentive powers in the global dance business. Following the professional trajectories of Cuban dancers in Europe, it advances an understanding of dance as a type of educational work that is aimed at challenging dominant power structures and reclaiming the knowledge and the spiritual experiences embedded in dance. Cuban dancers formulate understandings of dance-as-labour and dance-as-education, as counterpoints to the dominant frame of dance-as-entertainment functioning in the European countries where they live and work. As they reimagine Afro-Cuban dance in diasporic contexts, they challenge Eurocentric pedagogical models, exercising their agency vis-à-vis aesthetic shifts and codification patterns, while centring African roots of music and dance as a response to daily experiences of racism.