The Social Life of Dances

Chapter 3 pursues the thesis that commodity and gift forms of exchange are interconnected and inseparable. It does this through an examination of three case studies: hip-hop, private dance studio instruction, and powwow. The recent histories of these three examples is examined alongside some of their antecedents at the beginning of the twentieth century. Hip-hop is located along a continuum with the early twentieth-century African American social dances that fueled a dance craze taking place in the urban United States. Private studio instruction is traced back to the social and modern dance instruction offered by entrepreneurial teachers who codified and sold those dances. Powwows are connected to the Wild West shows and other exhibitions of Native dances that brought Native peoples into greater contact with one another and with white audiences. Analyzing the development of these dance practices over time enables a more focused inquiry into the values and belief systems that infuse dance in a given historical moment and the ways that these connect to larger systems of shared values. Each example also calls attention to the way that commodification yields values that collude with forms of social and political domination including racialization and racist ideologies, Orientalism and exoticism, and colonial settler logics.

An Examination of Methods Used to Teach Practice Strategies in the College Voice Studio

This study investigated collegiate voice instructors’ approaches for teaching practice strategies to their students. Voice instructors ( N = 46) from accredited institutions in three Midwestern states participated in a researcher-designed survey, which described (a) the types of practice strategies addressed in lessons, (b) the methods used for assessment, and (c) the value instructors placed on specific practice strategies. Respondents typically used logs and journals to keep track of students’ progress. Score study was valued and used as a practice strategy most often by respondents, but other strategies such as repetition to improve accuracy and focusing on the most difficult sections of the music were also rated highly. Findings suggest that although these collegiate voice instructors seemed to be incorporating a variety of assessment and teaching strategies into their studio instruction, no consistent, formulaic method for teaching college singers to practice could be identified.