Dancing from the Heart: Movement, Gender, and Sociality in the Cook Islands - Hardcover

Alexeyeff, Kalissa

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0824832442 ISBN 13: 9780824832445

Publisher: University of Hawai'i Press, 2009

Synopsis

Dancing from the Heart is the first study of gender, globalization, and expressive culture in the Cook Islands. It demonstrates how dance in particular plays a key role in articulating the overlapping local, regional, and transnational agendas of Cook Islanders. Kalissa Alexeyeff reconfigures conventional views of globalization's impact on indigenous communities, moving beyond diagnoses of cultural erosion and contamination to a grounded exploration of creative agency and vital cultural production. Central to the study is a rich and textured ethnographic account of contemporary Cook Islands dance practice. Based on fieldwork, in-depth interviews, and archival research, it offers an engrossing analysis of how Cook Islands social life is generated through expressive practices. Dance is explored in a variety of settings, including beauty pageants, tourist venues, nightclubs, and community celebrations at home and within Cook Islands communities abroad. Contemporary Cook Islands dance practices are also shaped by competing ideas about the past. Debates about precolonial traditions, missionization, and colonialism pervade discussions about dance and expressive culture. Alexeyeff shows how the politics of tradition reflect the competing moral, political, personal, and economic practices of postcolonial Cook Islanders.

About this title

About the Author

Kalissa Alexeyeff is a McArthur Fellow in the Gender Studies Program at the University of Melbourne.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Hawai'i Press
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0824832442
• ISBN 13: 9780824832445
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240