The Black Dancing Body, cont.

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. . . we are told that humans have far fewer genes than was imagined--only about 30,000, whereas the roundworm has 19,000 and the fruitfly 13,000. (The human genome is “the set of DNA-encoded instructions that specify a person.”) (note 2) It had been believed—hoped, imagined—that the differential would be far greater, proving and substantiating our complexity and ascendance over “lower” forms of life. Shouldn’t such a finding lead us to conclude that genes are not as fully responsible for who we are as we might have believed? Doesn’t the evidence point to all our systems and structures, all the stuff we call culture—civilization—as central determinants? Couldn’t all this evidence be used to dismantle the twin structures of race and racism? (Invariably, the one predicates the existence of the other.) Since there is comparatively so little genomic difference between us and other forms of life can we accept the fact that there is even less difference—genetic, biological difference—between us and the next person? Can we accept that we all carry both Hitler and Buddha within us?

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. . . we need to study the human genome. . . not only for medicine and science to heal the body/mind but also for cultural role models to heal the soul/spirit of our species and to transcend the boundaries we have set for one another. We deserve better.

Brenda Dixon Gottschild (Ph.D. New York University) is the Philadelphia correspondent for Dance Magazine. She is the author of The Black Dancing Body – A Geography From Coon to Cool (Palgrave, 2003), Waltzing in the Dark: African American Vaudeville and Race Politics in the Swing Era (St. Martin’s, 2000) (winner of the 2001 CORD award for Outstanding Scholarly Dance Publication), and Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance: Dance and Other Contexts (Greenwood, 1996). Dixon Gottschild’s scholarly writings also appear in Caribbean Dance From Abakua to Zouk (U Press of Florida, 2002), EmBODYing Liberation: The Black Body in American Dance (Verlag, 2001), International Encyclopedia of Dance (Oxford, 1999), Meaning in Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance (Duke U Press, 1997), Looking Out: Perspectives on Dance and Criticism in a Multicultural World (Schirmer, 1995), The Encyclopedia of New York City (Yale U Press, 1995), The History of Dance in Art and Education (Prentice-Hall, 1991), Black Dance From 1619 to Today (Princeton Book Co., 1988); and in the journals American Studies International, TDR, Dance Research Journal, and Black American Literature Forum, among others. Dixon Gottschild’s numerous awards include fellowships and grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and Temple University. She was the Wilson Visiting Minority Scholar at Lincoln University and at Prairie View A & M University, and has served as Distinguished Scholar in Residence in the dance or dance/theater departments of the University of Minnesota, the University of Colorado, Smith College, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of California at Irvine, and others. As a performer, Dixon Gottschild was a member of the Mary Anthony Dance Theater, Open Theater Ensemble, and the Frank Silvera Writers’ Workshop. Recently, she and her husband, choreographer Hellmut Gottschild, created and performed Stick it Out (1993), Frogs (1996), and Tongue Smell Color (2000). Dixon Gottschild retired as Professor of Dance Studies at Temple University in 1999.