Broken windows and dancing bodies: Politics of movement in New York City’s salsa scene
Blefko, Sydney
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/104848
Description
Title
Broken windows and dancing bodies: Politics of movement in New York City’s salsa scene
Author(s)
Blefko, Sydney
Issue Date
2019-04-22
Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
Silvers, Michael B.
Committee Member(s)
Buchanan, Donna
Department of Study
Music
Discipline
Music
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
M.Mus.
Degree Level
Thesis
Keyword(s)
salsa
dance
New York City
Rudy Giuliani
quality of life
policing
1990s
cabaret law
nightlife
Abstract
Within this thesis, I explore various facets of New York City’s salsa scene. I first examine the political history of cabaret laws in New York City throughout the 20th and into the 21st century, and demonstrate that these laws had drastic impacts on marginalized populations within the city. Although I include other genres within my exploration of these laws, I give particular focus to salsa music and dance, which I contend were silent casualties of Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s enforcement of the cabaret law in the late 1990s and early 2000s. I then move to discuss my own experiences learning to salsa dance within contemporary spaces in New York City and the context-specific meanings that accrue on the site of the dancing body. While utilizing a phenomenological approach and contextualizing my own movements within the complex, highly contested history of nightlife within New York City, I assert that the processes of learning to dance can engender spatial and interpersonal transformation.
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