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Performing Power: A Case Study of Jordan’s National Dance Representations
Abstract
This paper examines the politics and power of performance in branding specific images of Jordan and its women - at home and abroad. It does so by analyzing the official national dance representations of HM King Abdulla II's regime at the turn of the 21st century. Methodologically, I treat the national repertoire as a cultural text open to multi-leveled interpretations that requires "thick description (Geertz 1973)" and combine choreographic analysis with my own experience as a dancer in Jordan's official dance repertoire. Inspired by Foucault's notion of power (1982), governmentality (1979), and the technology of the body (1975, 1976), this paper aims to show how dance and the female dancing body is used not for the sake of dance itself but in the service of a national politics that is practiced in cultural and corporeal terms. National dance and the images of Jordanian womanhood it portrays becomes a medium through which the Hashemite rule simultaneously links itself to tradition and modernity, satisfying the expectations of diverse audiences (international, national, and local) as means of securing its sovereign status and legitimatizing its rule.
Discipline
Anthropology
Geographic Area
Jordan
Sub Area
Dance