xi, 192 pages, 4 unnumbered pages of plates : color illustrations; 24 cm.
Summary
"Migration makes a profound impression on identity (gender and sexuality, culture, class, status), its expressions, and performance. Research in this field has demonstrated that migrant communities often cast women as bearers of cultural reproduction. This is especially the case when women choose to become representatives of their community through cultural dance performances. Such performances are also a means to express the migrant life of movement and a way to maintain their sense of well-being. Dancing the Feminine is a compelling vision of expressions of gender and identity at the heart of the Asian women's experience. For the Indonesian female migrants, performing 'femininity' is frequently negotiated in a cross-cultural context. The performances that author Monika Winarnita analyses are dramas of human interaction brought up through fissures and resolutions between the performers and their various audiences. The book provides analysis of these cultural performances as rituals of belonging, which demonstrate that in the diaspora meanings of the ritual are always open to being contested"--
Series Statement
The Sussex library of Asian and Asian American studies
Includes bibliographical references (pages 164-180) and index.
Processing Action (note)
committed to retain
Contents
Introducing Indonesian migrant women performance -- Methodology -- Intersection of literature: marriage migration and migrants' cultural performance -- Perth, Western Australia: fieldwork location among the migrant community -- Research on Indonesian-Australians and their intercultural relationships -- Catcalling older dancers who are performing a feminine dance -- Ethnomusicology of Indonesians in Australia and Indonesian women performers -- Chapter outline -- Politics and poetics of authenticity in cultural representation -- Meeting the housewives' dance group at the Indonesian community event -- Literature on authenticity in the cultural performance of dance -- Unity in diversity: an inauthentic "created" Indonesian national dance -- Gaining status through photos with the Premier of Western Australia -- From embarrassing to empowering performance, femininity negotiated in a duel for recognition -- The Indonesian bazaar -- Losing face (malu) with an "amateur" performance --^ The state as status -- Markers of status through valued criteria of performance -- Ageing dancers, diminished sexuality and masculine performance -- Exploring transnational sexualities -- Devaluing feminine performances as transnational politics of culture -- Masculine roles: shaking up transnational gender and sexuality ideals -- Negotiating transnational sexuality and rejecting the negative bar girl image -- Performing Chinese-Indonesian belonging in the diaspora, transnationally and translocally -- Performing belonging as a Chinese-Indonesian -- Diasporic belonging -- Transnational belonging -- Translocal belonging -- Gendered forms of belonging -- Why belong to a nation as a persecuted minority? -- Ritual or modern spectacle? How to represent exotic Bali to potential tourists -- Ramayana as national ritual celebrating Indonesian Independence Day -- Ramayana as ritual out of place in Australian multicultural festivals --^ The three dancers' individual narratives in creating the modern Ramayana -- Conclusion: moving together, audience participation and reception at the end of the show -- Revelations in the disjunctures as told through ethnographic stories -- Discourses of femininity, relation to "authenticity" and audience expectations -- Locating the findings in the broader literature.