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Batty Moves' power
lies in its choreographic and idiomatic structures.
An imprisoning stereotype about the black female body, the butt in particular--a
stereotype often internalized to the extent that natural movement and
sensuality were consciously curbed in an attempt to live it down--is confronted
and irreverently laughed/danced off. The movement highlights
the beauty of the bodies on stage: the large range of movements available
when the body is freed from constraints makes for surprises in the
choreography. The piece recasts the black dancing
body as beautiful, sensual, powerful, and swinging with hidden subversives.
Zollar imbues resistance with insurgence. She evokes the stereotypical image of the
black body through isolated hip and back movements and, though she eschews
the spinal alignment of Western dance training, intercuts
the dance with movements from a strict modern vocabulary
in which the butt is kept in line with the spine. This implies
that the dancers are capable of adhering to a given body image, but reject it
for another. The activity is richly creative--the butt and
hips swing, not just to laugh at the lines of ballet, but because
their movement is perceived as beautiful, if according to another register
of beauty. Zollar has said, "I
think its a beautiful thing to move the hips. I believe we have
to honor the energy that is there in the hips" (Zollar, 1995,
pers. comm.). Another aesthetic is in place here--as a matter of choice,
with full knowledge of other possibilities.
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