This thesis explores dance beyond entertainment, psychological, behavioural or cognitive theory; beyond conventional interpretations of performance, and beyond the disciplinary categories that tend to separate practices in contemporary Western culture. This is a study of "Daggering," the Jamaican style of dancing marked by violence and raw sexual licentiousness inna di dancehall (in the dancehall) -- a male-dominated dance space in Jamaica. The problem of daggering analyzed stems from the so-called "causes" of violence. Cultural theorists argue the violent situation in the dancehall and throughout Jamaica is related to the history of colonialism and slavery, poverty, the polarization of the country's political parties, and politicians who first issued guns. Some philosophers argue the myth of 'poverty' is an illusion and world-historical logico-mathematical thinking is delusional. Primary texts studied are: The Birth of Tragedy by Nietzsche, and the Concluding Unscientific Postscript by Kierkegaard. I am interested in the inseparability, the embeddedness of Dionysus in all the phenomena of life. The myth of Dionysus contains statements about society and the individual not easily accessible by purely objective techniques. Nietzsche writes: the invisible forces of nature, "through whose gestures and eyes all the joy and wisdom of 'illusion,' together with its beauty, speak to us." Kierkegaard's aesthetic philosophy of subjectivity challenges the myth of poverty. Thus, this thesis marks a connection between daggering, the myth of Dionysus, and subjectivity. The essential question asked: 'what' knowledge is of the most worth to transform the individual and a society in crisis? A philosophical methodology is used to analyze texts in relation to social issues and dance. I conclude 'how' to transform the individual and a society in crisis "an apolitical and passionately responsible subjectivity" is necessary.

This book focuses on how in/security works in and through Jamaican dancehall, and on the insights that Jamaican dancehall offers for the global study of in/security. This collection draws together a multi-disciplinary range of key scholars in in/security and dancehall. Scholars from the University of the West Indies' Institute of Caribbean Studies and Reggae Studies Unit, as well as independent dancehall and dance practitioners from Kingston, and writers from the UK, US and continental Europe offer their differently situated perspectives on dancehall, its histories, spatial patterning, professional status and aesthetics. The study brings together critical security studies with dancehall studies and will be of great interest to students, scholars and practitioners in theatre, dance and performance studies, sociology, cultural geography, anthropology, postcolonial studies, diaspora studies, musicology and gender studies.

This book examines sexual power dynamics, long-held patriarchal values, and other harmful attitudes toward women in The Bahamas and Caribbean through the lens of media and law. Though gender politics is pushing these societies toward inclusivity, Storr, adopting a phenomenological framework, argues that, as sites of both reinforcement and resistance to misogynistic norms, future progress must focus on deconstructing the inequitable social institutions underlying unhealthy gender relations.

This book explores Black British dance from a number of previously-untold perspectives. Bringing together the voices of dance-artists, scholars, teachers and choreographers, it looks at a range of performing arts from dancehall to ballet, providing valuable insights into dance theory, performance, pedagogy, identity and culture. It challenges the presumption that Blackness, Britishness or dance are monolithic entities, instead arguing that all three are living networks created by rich histories, diverse faces and infinite future possibilities. Through a variety of critical and creative essays, this book suggests a widening of our conceptions of what British dance looks like, where it appears, and who is involved in its creation.

This book explores the genealogy of Jamaican dancehall while questioning whether dancehall has a spiritual underscoring, foregrounding dance, and cultural expression. This study identifies the performance and performative (behavioural actions) that may be considered as representing spiritual ritual practices within the reggae/dancehall dance phenomenon. It does so by juxtaposing reggae/dancehall against Jamaican African/neo-African spiritual practices such as Jonkonnu masquerade, Revivalism and Kumina, alongside Christianity and post-modern holistic spiritual approaches. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars in performance studies, popular culture, music, theology, cultural studies, Jamaican/Caribbean culture, and dance specialists.

British Dance, Black Routes is an outstanding collection of writings which re-reads the achievements of Black British dance artists, and places them within a broad historical, cultural and artistic context. Until now discussion of choreography by Black dance practitioners has been dominated by the work of African-American artists, facilitated by the civil rights movement. But the work produced by Black British artists has in part been within the context of Britain’s colonial legacy. Ramsay Burt and Christy Adair bring together an array of leading scholars and practitioners to review the singularity and distinctiveness of the work of British-based dancers who are Black and its relation to the specificity of Black British experiences. From sub-Saharan West African and Caribbean dance forms to jazz and hip-hop, British Dance, Black Routes looks afresh at over five decades of artistic production to provide an unparalleled resource for dance students and scholars. Appendix 2 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

At the third anniversary of the May 2010 Tivoli Gardens incursion, the wounds of the residents are as raw as when they were first inflicted; hate for officials like the security forces and government and opposition politicians alike runs hotly through the veins of community citizens and their relatives far and wide. As the country waits with bated breath for the Commission of Enquiry that will bring the stories to the surface, the silent rage seethes in emotional cauldrons, like a time bomb, waiting to explode. This novella is Imani Tafari-Ama’s imaginative conjuring of fiction from facts too gruesome to be believed and too horrific to remain hidden. This testimonial treatment of the Tivoli Gardens siege—as the Public Defender defines that remarkable event and the torturous road to a still unrealized recover—is the call of all concerned, to conscience and a refusal to treat silence as an option. While this novella is historically located in the context of real events surrounding the Tivoli incursion and refers to public figures that were involved in that incident, all characters represented are fictitious and unrelated to the citizens of Tivoli Gardens and the actual experiences that they went through during the security forces’ siege of their community. Any resemblance of these characters or their stories to what actually happened is therefore coincidental.

Dancehall: it's simultaneously a source of raucous energy in the streets of Kingston, Jamaica; a way of life for a group of professional artists and music professionals; and a force of stability and tension within the community. Electronically influenced, relevant to urban Jamaicans, and highly danceable, dancehall music and culture forms a core of popular entertainment in the nation. As Anne Galvin reveals in Sounds of the Citizens, the rhythms of dancehall music reverberate in complicated ways throughout the lives of countless Jamaicans. Galvin highlights the unique alliance between the dancehall industry and community development efforts. As the central role of the state in supporting communities has diminished, the rise of private efforts such as dancehall becomes all the more crucial. The tension, however, between those involved in the industry and those within the neighborhoods is palpable and often dangerous. Amidst all this, individual Jamaicans interact with the dancehall industry and its culture to find their own paths of employment, social identity, and sexual mores. As Sounds of the Citizens illustrates, the world of entertainment in Jamaica is serious business and uniquely positioned as a powerful force within the community.

At once cinematic yet intimate, Broughtupsy is an enthralling debut novel about a young Jamaican woman grappling with grief as she discovers her family, her home, is always just out of reach Tired of not having a place to land, twenty-year-old Akúa flies from Canada to her native Jamaica to reconnect with her estranged sister Tamika. Their younger brother Bryson has recently passed from sickle cell anemia—the same disease that took their mother ten years prior—and Akúa carries his remains in a small wooden box with the hope of reassembling her family. Over the span of two fateful weeks, Akúa and Tamika visit significant places from their childhood, but time spent with her sister only clarifies how different they are, and how years of living abroad have distanced Akúa from her home culture. "Am I Jamaican?" she asks herself again and again. Beneath these haunting doubts lie anger and resentment at being abandoned by her own blood. "Why didn’t you stay with me?" she wants to ask Tamika. Wandering through Kingston with her brother's ashes in tow, Akúa meets Jayda, a brash stripper who shows her a different side of the city. As the two grow closer, Akúa confronts the difficult reality of being gay in a deeply religious family, and what being a gay woman in Jamaica actually means. By turns diasporic family saga, bildungsroman, and terse sexual awakening, Broughtupsy is a profoundly moving debut novel that asks: what do we truly owe our family, and what are we willing to do to savor the feeling of home?