{"id":472,"date":"2022-12-13T16:20:56","date_gmt":"2022-12-13T21:20:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/eng118st-fa22\/?p=472"},"modified":"2022-12-16T12:55:09","modified_gmt":"2022-12-16T17:55:09","slug":"its-been-a-long-long-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/eng118st-fa22\/its-been-a-long-long-time\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s Been A Long, Long Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1YFqViGOXYGbD5mtV2C3htkuid2FUmolT\/view?usp=sharing<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Happiness of Love: A Critique of Queer Joy in Dance<\/strong><\/p>\n

My remix project aims to show a story of queer romance through dance. In classical
\nballet, every dance is gendered. Each section is either all women, all men, or a man and a
\nwoman. There is no space for queer people. Recently, there has been a push for the
\nrepresentation of queer people, both in new works about them and for a space in classical works.
\nHowever, even the works by queer people about queer people are biased. They are dramatized,
\nsexualized, and often depressing. As The Queer Joy Project explains, \u201coften stories of the
\nLGBTQ+ experience center on coming out, tragedy, physical injury, or the trauma of being
\nforced to comply with heteronormativity. Even now, with more diverse stories in media, happy
\nendings are few and far between.\u201d There is a very obvious lack of soft love stories, of queer joy.<\/p>\n

I critiqued certain works that stood out to me as upsetting by juxtaposing them with the
\nromantic performance that I created. These works only show the sadness that queer people
\nexperience instead of the happiness that comes with romance. Clips of Christopher Rudd\u2019s
\n\u201cTouch\u00e9\u201d, Adriana Pierce\u2019s \u201cI Am Enough\u201d, and Alejandro Gonzalvez and Adriana Pierce\u2019s
\n\u201cPortrait d\u2019une Femme\u201d play in black and white, interspersed with clips of myself and my
\npartner dancing in full color. The critique isn’t explicit but implied in the completely different
\ntones of the overlaid clips. Where the other dancers flinch away from each other, we lean into
\neach other. Where they run from the camera, we are only looking at each other. I took these
\nworks that I felt were missing the element of queer joy and put them next to something that was
\nspecifically about queer joy to make the absence of romance more apparent.<\/p>\n

Remixing is adding your own ideology, personality, experiences, and creativity to an
\nexisting work. Critique helps us create an original remix because we can evaluate what we think
\nis missing from the work, and then recreate it with the addition of those missing elements. All
\nremixes start with critique, whether implicit or explicit. A remix comes from changing
\nsomething you dislike about a work, even if you may not realize that you dislike it.<\/p>\n

While anyone can critique any work for any reason, our personal identities let us provide
\na new perspective on something. Most critique begins by examining something using an
\nintervening discourse. An intervening discourse, or critical lens, is an outside theory used to
\ninterpret the text. It allows you to look at the text through specific eyes. Some common examples
\nare critical race theory, feminist theory, Marxist theory, and queer theory. Using a critical lens to
\nanalyze a cultural object means introducing a new ideology that wasn\u2019t explicitly present to
\ninterpret the ideas that are present. It provides a new way to engage with that object.<\/p>\n

There are only a certain number of lenses through which to look at and critique
\nsomething, but the use of personal identity as an additional lens makes that critique original.
\nEven if two people are analyzing something using an ideology that has already been applied to it,
\nthey will each have a new perspective on both the subject and the ideology because of their
\nunique identity. If one were to use a discourse that somehow relates to their personal
\nexperiences, they can use their experience as another lens to analyze through. If the discourse
\ndoes not apply to them, they can only use someone else\u2019s thoughts on it. No one has the same
\nexperiences or identity, so they can\u2019t interpret things in the same way. If you use your personality
\nto do anything, it will be original because it comes from you, and you cannot be replicated or a
\nreplication.<\/p>\n

To start my project, I looked at dance through both the lens of queer theory and my
\npersonal identity as a queer woman. Looking at classical ballet using queer theory is relatively
\nsimple: there are no queer characters, romances, or stories. I looked into newer pieces of
\nchoreography that specifically feature queer stories. Much of the analysis using my identity
\nhappened during this stage because many of the dances were focused on gay men. Not seeing
\nmyself in these works, I dug further to find dances between two women. I did find such dances,
\nbut while I found examples of my identity, I didn\u2019t find examples of my experiences. \u201cI Am
\nEnough\u201d seemed to be about the hardship that comes with a queer relationship instead of the
\nrelationship itself. The women were reaching for each other through ropes, and their bodies were
\ncontorted in a sense of anguish. In \u201cPortrait d\u2019une Femme\u201d, the relationship was focused on sex
\ninstead of love. The camera was often centered on the women\u2019s bodies, even panning over their
\ntorsos as they lay on the ground. I longed to see a simple love story without trauma or
\nhypersexuality. So, I created one.<\/p>\n

My remix functions to critique the representation of queer romance in ballet because it
\nshows what each work is missing. Viewers can see the difference in tone between my work and
\nthe work of others, and it makes the audience think more critically about the critiqued works.
\nThey may not have noticed the sexual nature of \u201cPortrait d\u2019une Femme\u201d, or truly identified the
\nsymbolism of the ropes in \u201cI Am Enough\u201d, but next to a saccharine love story it becomes
\nglaringly obvious. These stories only show one side of queer relationships, and I remixed them to
\nbe more inclusive, in the process applying my learning from the whole semester. I can
\nunderstand the difference between plagiarism and remix, knowing that I did not plagiarize
\nbecause I added pieces of myself to the works and did not try to pass them off as my own. By
\nadding pieces of myself, I understand how personal identity plays a role in critique. Finally,
\nbecause personal identity is so important in critique, I know that my critique is original because
\nmy identity is original.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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