Diva Stances and Racial Subversion: How Dancers Re-imagined "America" on US State Department-sponsored International Dance Tours

Clare Croft, Assistant Professor of Dance at Univ of Michigan, is a dance theorist, dance historian, and dramaturg. She is the author of the recently published book, Dancers as Diplomats: American Choreography in Cultural Exchange (Oxford 2015), and is the editor/curator of the hybrid print/Web project, Meanings and Makings of Queer Dance, which is forthcoming from Oxford in 2017.This talk will draw on more than 70 interviews with dancers who traveled on US State Department tours in the early decades of the Cold War and in the decade+ since 9/11. We will discuss how dancers¿as they negotiated questions of individual, community, and national representation¿forwarded, re-imagined, and sometimes critiqued American government agendas.This talk is also sponsored by SLIPPAGE: Performance|Culture|Technology