Spectacular Suffering: Holocaust Representation in Competition Dance

Rebecca Rossen, University of Texas at Austin

Dance has played a key, yet unacknowledged, role in conveying memories of the Holocaust both in alignment with and distinct from other art forms. Over the last sixty years, choreographers have consistently grappled with the Holocaust and its continuing resonance through choreographic and bodily expression in a variety of genres including concert dance, dance on film, and site-specific performance. In this talk, Rossen focuses on a more recent trend: Holocaust routines performed on major dance competition platforms such as Dance Moms, So You Think You Can Dance, and Russia's Ice Age, as well as youth circuits throughout the US and Canada. Recycling iconography from popular Holocaust literature and film, these formulaic routines universalize the Holocaust for mass audiences and spectacularize victimhood to increase competitors’ chances of winning. At the same time, distinct national contexts and global circulation necessarily complicate the reception and potential impact of such routines.
 

Rebecca Rossen is the author of Dancing Jewish: Jewish Identity in American Modern and Postmodern Dance (Oxford University Press, 2014), winner of the Oscar G. Brockett Book Prize, and Moving Memories: Representations of the Holocaust in Dance and Performance (forthcoming with Oxford). Her work has been published in numerous journals and anthologies including Dance Research Journal, Feminist Studies, TDR, and Theatre Journal. Rossen is Associate Professor and Head of the Performance as Public Practice Program in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Texas at Austin, as well as core faculty in UT's Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies.
 

Co-sponsored by: Department of Dance