Describing Dance, Writing Moving Worlds

Abstract

This chapter models how description allows writers to render the social worlds that make dance more than just a series of steps. Drawing on the world the Latin phrase "vox populi" from which "popular" etymologically descends, this chapter focuses on ways that popular dance embodies collective voice. Using accounts of the author's own dance history and description and analysis of FKA Twigs' music video "Home With You," this chapter focuses on how interactions between modes of address and the kinds of felt spaces they create for dance forge conditions of collective voice for racial and gendered minorities. This chapter ends by situating a discussion of popular dance in the 21st century in the socio-cultural context of the racial uprisings of 2020 and the politicized collective voice that emerge from that moment of mass cultural performance.