Gorgeous Girlies in Glittering Gyrations! Capital érotique et danse jazz dans l’entre-deux-guerres québécois

Type of resource
Author/collaborator
Title
Gorgeous Girlies in Glittering Gyrations! Capital érotique et danse jazz dans l’entre-deux-guerres québécois
Abstract
The author notes that in historical writings about jazz and exotic dance, Black women variety-stage dancers appear either as the eroticized, exoticized, and primitivized victims of the entertainment business, or as the critically compelling and artfully subversive parodies of the "primitive-exotic" stereotype they embodied on stag. She points out that there is no room for the displays of breasts, legs, and bums to be presented as a comfortable expression of bodily delight rather than as a reality to be resisted, masked, or signified upon. The author draws on a collection of interviews conducted with variety-stage dancers (Tina Baines Brereton, Bernice Jordan Whims, Marie-Claire Germain, Mary Brown, Natalie Ramirez) who participated in the "golden age" of jazz in Montreal (1925-1955). The author concludes that the narratives articulated in these oral histories allow us to move beyond questions of representation in scholarship on exotic dance to consider alternatives that allow for the reclaiming of Black women’s artistic agency without distancing the artistic work performed by their bodies from its erotic capital.
Publication
Recherches féministes
Volume
Vol. 32
Issue
no. 1
Pages
89-109
Date
2019
Language
fr
URL
Citation
Blais-Tremblay, Vanessa. “Gorgeous Girlies in Glittering Gyrations! Capital érotique et danse jazz dans l’entre-deux-guerres québécois.” Recherches féministes Vol. 32, no. 1 (2019): 89–109. https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/rf/2019-v32-n1-rf04777/1062226ar/.
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