“Transnationalizing the Rhythm/Remastering the National Beat: The Politics of Performance in Contemporary Caribbean Cinema”

Deonne N. Minto (Trinity University)
panel with Delores B. Phillips, Schuyler K. Esprit, Natalie King-Pedroso

This paper is a comparative study of the intersections of dance performance and racial, cultural, and gender representations in two films, Octavio Cortazar’s The Last Rumba of Papa Montero (1992) and Rick Elgood’s Dancehall Queen (1997). This speaker argues that contemporary filmmakers in the Caribbean are using the medium of cinema as a means of recording the evolution of national dances in the region. The scenes of dance may be interpreted as visual polemics that encourage viewers to interrogate, revise, and expand discourses of belonging and citizenship through a focus on dance performance by specifically black bodies. Focusing on the spaces of rumba and dancehall in Cuba and Jamaica, respectively, this paper ultimately argues that late twentieth century dance on film in these national contexts reflects a concomitant awareness of how race and gender may be re-imagined in terms of an anti-colonial positioning and the transnationalization of “national steps.”