Early Modern Depictions of Dancing Others and What We Can Infer of Their Viewers’ Emotional Response, Associate Professor Alessandro Arcangeli (The University of Verona)
Date: Monday 10 October, 2016
Time: 6:15pm‒7:45pm
Venue: Lecture Theatre C, Old Arts Building, The University of Melbourne
Registrations: Online here
In a forthcoming article and book project, ‘The savage, the peasant and the witch’, Alessandro Arcangeli takes these three figures as examples of meaningful ‘dancing others’ in the European tradition. He analyses the extent and way in which dance has been a contributing component of cultural stereotypes ‒ in particular hetero-stereotypes, depicting (by words and images) a variety of ‘others’ as significantly characterised by dancing. Dancing can project judgementally charged connotations on the represented groups and on dance itself as their specific attribute. The emotional aspect is a significant part of the story, for such images contribute to the definition of cultural identities. Dancing is able to give bodily and visible expression to felt emotions and thereby assists perceptions of inclusion in ‒ and exclusion from ‒ complex and multiple communities, through feelings of attraction and repulsion, as well as a mix of aesthetic judgements concerning the value and function of dancing habits and performances.
Alessandro Arcangeli is Associate Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Verona and the current Chair of the International Society for Cultural History (http://www.culthist.org). He is the author of Cultural History: A Concise Introduction (Routledge, 2012) and has published widely on dance (Davide o Salomè? Il dibattito europeo sulla danza nella prima età moderna (FBSR-Viella, 2000)) and leisure (Recreation in the Renaissance: Attitudes towards Leisure and Pastimes in European Culture, 1425‒1675 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). In a forthcoming article in the Rivista Storica Italiana he discusses how cultural history and the history of emotions have been mutually redefining each other over the past generation, to such an extent that the one has become inseparable from the other.
