Published in 2002 by Wesleyan University Press.
New Dance Group improvisation, early thirties.page 2
Work is conventionally thought of as a productive activity, whereas labor is the force that accomplishes it. Let us recall Hannah Arendt's useful distinction between labor and work: "The word 'labor,' understood as a noun, never designates the finished product, the result of laboring, but remains a verbal noun to be classed with the gerund, whereas the product itself is invariably derived from the word for work." Labor, in Arendt's terms, is more like dance than work: it is an action, a process. Because of the ancient intellectual tradition linking dance with play, the movements of dance were the least likely set of movements to become definable as wage earning, and the dance itself was the artwork least suggestive of itself as a stable object or product. The circumstances immediately joining dance to the labor force in the 1930s constitute, therefore, a historically unique moment in which dance contributed to political struggle. The ostensibly ludic qualities of dance were there and then transformed into social energy. My larger thesis is that dance produced ideology but that this "product" was not a commodity inasmuch as it constituted sensuous experience, which is precisely what made it ideologically effective.
page 3
It is thus not surprising that dance became a central cultural practice of the radical decade. A variety of dance forms with ideological positions on labor crystallized in thirties culture. I contend that these dance forms were in dialogue with each other as well as with their audiences. They set ideologies into motion. As Terry Eagleton reminds us, "Ideology is a realm of contestation and negotiation, in which there is a constant busy traffic: meanings and values are stolen, transformed, appropriated across the frontiers of different classes and groups, surrendered, repossessed, reinflected." Dance culture of the 1930s reveals the instrumentality and value of emotional embodiment itself in the process of being contested and negotiated, appropriated and transformed. This movement occurred at a visceral, visual, and experiential level.
page 14
I shall argue that as its substantive ideological struggle, thirties dance culture opposed left-wing modern dance to the chorus line. As a high modernist, [Marta] Graham masks that authentic tension. The publicized ideological divides generating a false consciousness sufficient to ensure the effective operation of ideology occurred between high modern dance and ballet on the one hand and between high modern dance and chorus dance on the other. The actual ideological divide of consequence was between radical modern dance and chorus dance.
This raises the question of ideology itself as a frequently impugned methodological tool. A few words to plead its usefulness are in order. Ideology is a term germane to the thirties, and its use can thus be justified on these grounds alone. Ideology referred to the organization of social, political, and economic life under the regimes of capitalism, communism, or fascism. These led to particular formations of the relationship between individuals and the social order. This is a simple use of the term justified by the historical context.
page 25
The pedagogical goal of the class, as dancer Ruth Allerhand explains it, was the personal experience of group dynamics:
“The group experience is a practical school which teaches something that can never be forgotten, nor taught as eloquently through any other medium. Through union with others, in adjusting himself to the group, he comes to an active discovery of real solidarity. From the individual to the mass! The individual no longer feels that he is the whole, he now sees that he represents the substance. He is not so much a link in a chain, a cog in a machine, as a very alive, very productive cell within a body.”
page 28
According to the Program and Constitution, mass action should result in the experience of union and the spark of "new tactics and a new ideology." Mass action is followed, as in the dance class, by group discussion and questions. Action itself, however, is not only the Program and Constitution's telos, but also its blind spot. One cannot predict what may catalyze action, nor which new ideologies will be set in motion. The desired result of spontaneous action is a new collective identity in which the individual is subsumed but not submerged. The spontaneous experience of this union discovered in movement was the educational goal of mass dance in movement culture, a lesson that cannot be explained, taught, or inculcated. Each individual discovered it in his or her particular experience of movement with the group. The role of the class was' to render that experience conscious. "No doubt;' notes Segal, "it is easier and simpler to dictate each movement and see it executed immediately, but there is a danger in cutting the group off entirely from the creative process. There must be a give-and-take attitude on the part of the director and the group, with the final word in the hands of the director."
page 59
“Ideology must figure as an organizing social force which actively constitutes human subjects at the roots of their lived experience.” Terry Eagleton
How do individuals apprehend their identification with a nation, class, or ethnic group as "lived experience" in the sense intended by Eagleton? How do organization and expression-to use the most general terms employed thus far-produce ideological effects? Given that the ideological effects are lived, what is the relationship of ideology to authenticity? Since bodies are at the root of lived experience, it can be shown that dance works with the same materials from which the organizing social force of ideology must be drawn.
