Presenting Ethnic Dance on the Stage Robyn C. Friend, Ph.D.
Originally presented at a UCLA Dance Conference, 1992
First published in this form in Habibi , June 1999 Rights statement : This material is the intellectual property of the author. We encourage hyperlinks to be made directly to
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As a choreographer and dancer who also does field research, I find myself wanting to bring to the stage the beauty and excitement of the dancing I have experienced in the field. I realize, of course, that a great part of the fascination with ethnic dance comes from its context  the village, tribe, or family home. To bring to an audience the thrill of Âbeing there is my hope as I plan my choreographies. In presenting ethnic dance, we must somehow balance the competing demands of authenticity (in the form of an accurate re-creation of the tribe or village setting), and a presentation that is both entertaining and aesthetically pleasing. Over the years, I have developed a two-step process for transferring ethnic dance from its original context to the concert stage; the purpose of this article is to describe this process. | |
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