UC Riverside

This dissertation examines how some Chicana/o/x dancers in San Antonio, Texas have engaged with the mix of Mexican folklórico, Spanish flamenco, and popular American dance techniques to create unique dance works in different historical times. My work introduces the term Chicana/o/x protean dance aesthetic to analyze this distinctive way of creating dance performances that emphasizes the combination of different aesthetic and cultural elements. I maintain that a Chicana/o/x protean dance aesthetic influences how a show includes different dance forms, how a dance can include movement vocabularies from different dance and movement practices, and how dancers can use different cultural elements to reify or challenge expectation. Through an analysis of this aesthetic and the bodily codeswitching involved, I show the resonances that can be traced in the bodies of ethnic Mexicandancers in San Antonio and their staged dance works across different moments in history. Thus, this dissertation shows that people have used a Chicana/o/x protean dance aesthetic to adapt to emerging new ways of life in San Antonio over time.

Throughout this dissertation, I also consider the use of a Chicana/o/x protean dance aesthetic as a source for Chicana/o/x identity and its various transformations. Each chapter provides an analysis of how a Chicana/o/x protean dance aesthetic forges and shapes Texas Mexican culture and its multiple identities within the ever changing sociopolitical, cultural, and economic landscapes of the city and the region. I also see the aesthetic as integral to understanding how dynamic layers of Chicana/o/x corporeality are embedded in the dancing. Thus, I discuss the Chicana/o/x protean dance aesthetic in relation to the experiences that have shaped the lives of ethnic Mexicans in San Antonio, a city that has changed many times in its history. My work shows that utilizing the aesthetic creates flexible bodies that can move back and forth and shift in and out of various dance techniques and cultures that make up the region. I argue that performing at the margins of the Texas-Mexico border, dancers have used a Chicana/o/x protean dance aesthetic to actively create and make visible a Mexican American subjectivity through dance.