Dancing through Anthropological Boundaries: Female Artist-ethnographers in the 20th Century

DOI: 10.33876/2311-0546/2025-1/72-90

Abstract

This article examines the lives and works of five women who contributed to the field of anthropology in the mid-20th century, especially to the sub-discipline, anthropology of dance. It is about the African-American artist-anthropologists Katherine Dunham (1909–2006), Pearl Primus (1919–1994), Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960), the Jewish-Ukrainian experimental filmmaker Maya Deren (1917–1961), and the American dancer and dance therapist Franziska Boas (1902–1988). Even though not all had formal anthropological training, they stood out for their creative achievements and theoretical approaches to accomplish an intersection between cultures, dance, education, social justice, and racial equality. As a female researcher in the anthropology of dance and the body, I find it particularly interesting to reconsider their innovative forms of ethnographic research and applied methodologies, including actively incorporating their bodies, creative ethnographic writing, and producing visual material challenging the anthropological canon. The aim is to delimit each ethnographer's key contributions and propose a strategy to provide a valuable base to develop post-colonial approaches for dance research, particularly on popular dance practice. I emphasize the innovative proposals regarding ethnographic fieldwork, documentation, visual anthropology, and a highly reflexive perspective combined with auto-ethnographic methodologies, which, at that time, were not considered in science or had yet to be developed. This contribution reinforces that these female anthropologists were visionary and their approaches should be revalued. The article is published in English.