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The Choreographic Interface: Dancing Facial Expression in Hip-Hop and Neo-Burlesque Striptease

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2014

Sherril Dodds
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Abstract

Although the face possesses potent social and symbolic meaning, the “dancing face” is rarely addressed in dance scholarship. In spite of its neglect, the face participates choreographically in the realization of aesthetic codes and embodied conventions that pertain to different dance styles and genres. I therefore turn to Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's (1987) theory of “faciality” to understand the semiotic coding of the face in relation to the Busby Berkeley chorus girl. Although their work offers an important critique of universalist theorizations of facial expression, I argue that “facial choreography” offers scope to dismantle the legibility of the face that is produced through the overcoded “abstract machine of faciality.” To do so, I introduce the concept of a “choreographic interface” to explore how facial expression enters into a choreographic relationship with other faces and bodily territories. With this in mind, I explore two dancing bodies that engage the face in ways that complicate existing modalities of facial expression. I analyze a hip-hop battle and a neo-burlesque striptease number to show how the mobility and ambiguity of facial choreography opens a dialogic space through which meaning is generated and social and political critique take place.

Keywords

Busby Berkeleychoreographic interfaceDeleuze and Guattarifacial expressionfacialityhip-hopneo-burlesque striptease
Type
Articles
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 46 , Issue 2: Body Parts: Pelvis, Feet, Face, Hips, Legs, Toes, and Teeth , August 2014 , pp. 39 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © Congress on Research in Dance 2014 

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