François (Féral) Benga as Le Mercure Noire

Choreographing Proximity and Difference: Vassos Kanellos's Performance of Greekness as an Embodied Negotiation with Western Dance Modernity

“…New modernist studies constitute a methodological framework for approaching modernism that was initiated in the field of literature, notably through Douglas Mao and Rebecca Walkowitz's 2008 article, “The New Modernist Studies.” Mao and Walkowitz (2008, 737–738) urged a move toward a “spatial” expansion of the analysis of modernism, to avoid its Western/European bias; and a “vertical” expansion opening toward the modernity enacted by groups excluded from the canon. This is consistent with dance studies’ increasing focus on hitherto unacknowledged practices, agents, and contexts (e.g., Wittrock 2020, 2021; Haitzinger 2020). It is also consistent with the field's ongoing interrogations of the binary and hierarchy of center/periphery, for instance through the notion of decentering (e.g., Collective 2021).…”