Embodiments of Class and the Folk in Eliticizing the Popular and constructing the modern: Anna Pavlova in Mexico City (1919)
12pm Kaufman room 160
Nine years after the start of the armed Mexican revolution, Anna Pavlova visited Mexico
City in 1919 already established as a universalized referent of high culture. While engaging in processes of selective re-choreographing through which “low brow” cultural practices are “elevated” to the realm of high art, Pavlova revolutionized concert dance in Mexico City by dancing a popular Mexican folk dance. As a dancing swan representative
of the presumably universal human spirit, Pavlova danced el Jarabe Tapatio on pointe
dressed as a Mexican china poblana. This confluence of the “universal” and the local in
the same body –a body endowed with “artistic genius”- represented the embodiment of
the conundrum that elites in primarily non-white, third-world countries confront as they
engaged in an endless quest to catch up with modernity –technological and scientific- as
they also construct a local identity while trying to gain universal appeal to and resonance
with the civilized first-world. In this paper I will show how Pavlova’s performances of
her Europeanized ballet repertoire and of her “refined” Jarabe Tapatio produced a social
space, a homotopic space, in which a class of similars among Mexican elites re-affirmed
their identities as cultured, civilized moderns –distinctively Mexican, yet with universal
appeal.
Jose Luis Reynoso holds a B.A. (Magna Cum Laude) and a M.A. both in Psychology
from California State University Los Angeles and a M.F.A. in Choreography from
UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures / Dance where he is currently a Ph.D.
candidate in Culture and Performance Studies. As a choreographer and performer,
Jose has collaborated with performance art and dance artists and his own academic and
choreographic work has been presented nationally and internationally.
12pm Kaufman room 160
Nine years after the start of the armed Mexican revolution, Anna Pavlova visited Mexico
City in 1919 already established as a universalized referent of high culture. While engaging in processes of selective re-choreographing through which “low brow” cultural practices are “elevated” to the realm of high art, Pavlova revolutionized concert dance in Mexico City by dancing a popular Mexican folk dance. As a dancing swan representative
of the presumably universal human spirit, Pavlova danced el Jarabe Tapatio on pointe
dressed as a Mexican china poblana. This confluence of the “universal” and the local in
the same body –a body endowed with “artistic genius”- represented the embodiment of
the conundrum that elites in primarily non-white, third-world countries confront as they
engaged in an endless quest to catch up with modernity –technological and scientific- as
they also construct a local identity while trying to gain universal appeal to and resonance
with the civilized first-world. In this paper I will show how Pavlova’s performances of
her Europeanized ballet repertoire and of her “refined” Jarabe Tapatio produced a social
space, a homotopic space, in which a class of similars among Mexican elites re-affirmed
their identities as cultured, civilized moderns –distinctively Mexican, yet with universal
appeal.
Jose Luis Reynoso holds a B.A. (Magna Cum Laude) and a M.A. both in Psychology
from California State University Los Angeles and a M.F.A. in Choreography from
UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures / Dance where he is currently a Ph.D.
candidate in Culture and Performance Studies. As a choreographer and performer,
Jose has collaborated with performance art and dance artists and his own academic and
choreographic work has been presented nationally and internationally.
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