This article argues that the unrealized balletCaaporá(1915), conceived for choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky, and Oscar Araiz'sLa consagración de la primavera(1966,The Rite of Spring) fundamentally shaped the establishment and reimagination of concert dance as a site of modernity in Argentina. Both works danced modernity through imagined pre-Columbian indigenous myths choreographed in Euro-American concert dance forms. In Argentina, “unmarked” ballet and modern dance forms signaled a universalized cultural advancement aligned with the West, while indigenous myths staged “marked” Latin American origins that held racial difference at a distance from the modern present.CaaporáandConsagraciónnegotiated the “marked” and the “unmarked” toward different ends. WhileCaaporástrove to “Argentinize” European ballet at the turn of the century,Consagraciónmarked the move to claim concert dance as Argentine at midcentury. By focusing on the role of indigenism in these two works, this article contributes to scholarship on the modernist negotiation of the marked and unmarked in Latin American concert dance as a strategy for staging—and transcending—the nation.

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Moving Otherwise examines how contemporary dance practices in Buenos Aires, Argentina, enacted politics within climates of political and economic violence from the mid-1960s to the mid-2010s. From the repression of military dictatorships to the precarity of economic crises, contemporary dancers and audiences consistently responded to and reimagined the everyday choreographies that have accompanied Argentina’s volatile political history. The central concept, “moving otherwise,” names how concert dance—and its offstage practice and consumption—offers alternatives to, and sometimes critiques, the patterns of movement and bodily comportment that shape everyday life in contexts marked by violence. Drawing on archival research, interviews, and the author’s embodied experiences as a collaborator and performer, the book analyzes a wide range of practices including concert works, community dance initiatives, and the everyday labor that animates dance. It demonstrates how these diverse practices represent, resist, and remember violence, and engender social mobilization on and off the theatrical stage. As the first book-length critical study of Argentine contemporary dance, it introduces a breadth of choreographers to an English speaking audience, including Ana Kamien, Susana Zimmermann, Estela Maris, Alejandro Cervera, Renate Schottelius, Susana Tambutti, Silvia Hodgers, and Silvia Vladimivsky. It considers previously undocumented aspects of Argentine dance history, including interactions among contemporary dancers and 1970s leftist political militancy, Argentine dance labor movements, political protest, and the prominence of tango themes in contemporary dance works that address the memory of political violence. Contemporary dance, the book demonstrates, has a rich and diverse history of political engagement in Argentina.

The epilogue examines the 2011 human rights march in Buenos Aires on the National Day of Memory for Truth and Justice (Día Nacional de la Memoria por la Verdad y la Justicia), the anniversary of the start of the last military dictatorship (1976–83). It analyzes the author’s participation with Oduduwá Danza Afroamericana (Oduduwá Afro-American Dance), a group that brought together scores of volunteers to perform choreography based in Orishá dance. Orishá dance’s Yoruban origins and connection to the African diaspora made it an unexpected addition to the demonstration given the construction of Argentina as exceptionally white among Latin American nations. The group strove to connect Orishá dance’s link to the violence of the trans-Atlantic slave trade with Argentina’s history of political disappearance, as well as the country’s own violence against Afro-Argentines. Oduduwá’s project reiterates the importance of dance as both a political practice and one linked to memory.

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