Introduction: dancing with memory
Parfitt, Clare (2021) Introduction: dancing with memory. In: Cultural memory and popular dance: dancing to remember, dancing to forget. Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies . Palgrave Macmillan Cham, pp. 1-22. ISBN 9783030710835
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Text (Parfitt, C. (2021). Introduction: Dancing with Memory. In: Parfitt, C. (eds) Cultural Memory and Popular Dance. Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71083-5_1, reproduced by permission of Palgrave)
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Abstract
This introductory chapter begins with a series of personal memories of dancing salsa, before exploring definitions of popular dance and the intimate entanglement of popular dance practices with both personal and collective dimensions of memory. The chapter then traces the role of popular dancing bodies in the development of ideas about cultural memory from the turn of the twentieth century to today. It argues that approaches to embodied memory have experienced several important shifts, including a turn towards performances as key sites of memory transmission, and the consideration of memory practices that emerged under the dehumanising conditions of colonisation, slavery and racial prejudice in the Atlantic world. The four clusters of research that structure the book are then outlined, positioning the contributors’ chapters in relation to each theme. The chapter concludes by putting the collection’s essays into dialogue with the history of theories of embodied cultural memory. Whereas Pierre Nora (Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, Volume I: Conflict and Divisions. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996) argued that embodied memory is depleted in modernity, the contributors to this collection make a strong case for popular dance as a key embodied site of cultural processes of remembering and forgetting, with the capacity to challenge hegemonic pasts and imagine new collective futures.
| Item Type: | Book Section |
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| Additional Information: | All Rights Reserved. Book - Cultural memory and popular dance: dancing to remember, dancing to forget https://theplace.repository.guildhe.ac.uk/id/eprint/34 |
| Keywords: | popular dance, cultural memory, commemoration, cultural identity, popular performance, embodied memory, performance genealogies, personal memory, |
| Depositing User: | Karen Smith |
| Date Deposited: | 01 Jul 2026 14:21 |
| Last Modified: | 01 Jul 2026 14:21 |
| URI: | https://theplace.repository.guildhe.ac.uk/id/eprint/36 |
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