As I was reading through Quinn Peterson’s “Choreographer Kyle Abraham Discusses “The Watershed” and “When The Wolves Came In” I was slightly bothered when Kyle Abraham said “And when you put that Black body on stage with any other dancer, the story shifts based on the history that whoever is watching it has already experienced. Whatever your experience is – if you’re seeing a Black body and a white body, a Black man and a Black woman, and Black man and a white man – all of those things have their own kind of politic to them.” I agree with Abraham in that your interpretation of a scene can shift based on a person’s history but disagree with the idea that each race, when seen by an audience, has a “politic” to them. It might be because I my peers and I were born in a time where we can be separated from segregation by more than one generation, but I feel that we as a society have moved on from racial stereotypes as serious ideas, only using them for off-color comedy. Because Abraham is older than my classmates and I, his parents, or even he could have experienced racial injustice himself. This is where I believe the disparity in our interpretations of a scene lies. When I see two men on stage, one black and one white, I don’t immediately associate this with this nation’s past racial injustices, which is what I believe Abraham is trying to say. When I am trying to assess a scene, I look past the performers’ race and try to analyze things like the set, the tone of the music, their posture, and the clothing that they are wearing. This reminds me of my piece, “Is today’s society too sensitive when it comes to race.” from the 10/2 NY Times blog. In the blog post, I discussed how casting trends are leaning toward not casting a person of particular race, leaving the role open to actors of all races, even though having the character be a particular race would add to the impact of the story. I find it interesting that Abraham is sort-of doing the opposite here. Abraham is intentionally using actors of a particular race to try to convey a story. Another difference lies in that in Othello, the character Othello is usually casted as an actor with dark skin only because it makes him stand out from the other actors, where as in watching the video of the dance, the white male actor seems to be a racist man, possibly a past owner of slaves, so his race represents a stereotype. I’m not sure what to make of that.
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