“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.”

Deonne N. Minto - Trinity University

Deonne N. Minto is an Assistant Professor in the English department at Trinity University in Washington, D.C. Her research and teaching interests include literature of the Afro-Americas, gender and diaspora, and transnational cultural studies. In addition to presenting papers at a multitude of international conferences, she has published articles and book reviews in journals such as Dutch Crossing, The Explicator, Callaloo, Contours, and Sargasso. Her most recent work engages literary critiques of Canadian multiculturalism. She is currently revising a manuscript that examines twentieth century black women’s literature of the Americas in a comparative context.