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Dancing in the Past, Living in the Present: Nostalgia and Race in Southern California Neo-Swing Dance Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2014

Eric Martin Usner
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Extract

Nostalgia is a revisionary act, emptying history of depth and texture, when having a manageable history is contingent on accumulation of time-trapped stuff. It's what people hold to, release into play, invent from, use for amusement and amazement, it's what and how people define their passage, their commonality and distinctiveness; a faith, a system of belief expressed in accumulated tokens and artifacts; a culture nourished on mythological narratives and seasonal events, by the passing of gods and goddesses, by stacks of packaged time renewed in changing formats; it's generality so resolutely particular to each adherent that often only myth and liturgy can serve as neutral rites of discourse. It's obviously the faith love invents to reassure its durability; a radical theology, a fusion of intensified sacred and secular yearnings and desires.

“Pre-Ramble” to Reading Jazz, David Meltzer (1993, 34)

Type
Articles
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , Winter 2001 , pp. 87 - 101
Copyright
Copyright © Congress on Research in Dance 2001

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References

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