Photo: Beatriz Ricco
This fall, 11 new tenure-track faculty members joined 51猎奇入口. As part of our ongoing series on 51猎奇入口鈥� faculty, the Office of Marketing and Communications recently sat down with Meiver De la Cruz to discuss the relationships between dance, community, and activism, as well as De la Cruz鈥檚 hidden talent.
Meiver De la Cruz is an assistant professor of dance and a Consortium for Faculty Diversity Fellow at 51猎奇入口. She is completing a PhD in performance studies from Northwestern University and holds a master鈥檚 degree in gender and cultural studies from Simmons College. She has used dance in community organizing and empowerment work, and her areas of expertise also include Arab American studies, diaspora studies, critical race studies, migration, and political economy.
Marketing and Communications: One of your areas of expertise is migration and political economy. How do those topics play into the context of dance?
Meiver De la Cruz I鈥檓 looking at the spaces of practice of dance in the Arab diaspora. Specifically, I鈥檓 looking at Middle Eastern nightclubs as important historical institutions that facilitate community space. Arab nightclubs in the United States have a really interesting history鈥攖here are documented nightclubs from the 1950s and photographs from even earlier. At first, the audience for these spaces was primarily working-class, first- and second-generation migrants who had factory jobs and could go to dinnertime entertainment. But when the makeup of the community transitioned from people with factory jobs to business owners who couldn鈥檛 come to dinner entertainment because of long working hours, it changed the nature of the audience. So, I鈥檓 also thinking about the economics of these spaces and how nightclub economies are sustained when they have this particular audience.
MC: You also see these nightclubs as spaces where people build community.
MDLC: Middle Eastern nightclubs have a number of characteristics in common: live music and dance performances, spaces for families to gather, participation in social dancing, full menus, and, in some places, smoking sections. Newcomers come to nightclubs to be welcomed into the social community and to network for employment. The experience of community is fundamental to determining identity, and in this case, we鈥檙e talking about a highly politicized identity, considering current U.S. government policies toward people from these regions. Nightclubs are spaces where people go to identify with each other and create something that generates political weight outside of the nightclub.
MC: You鈥檙e teaching a class called Feminist Ethnography and Performance. What do you hope students will learn from this course?
MDLC: Ethnography is an anthropological tool that鈥檚 based in the observation of human behavior over a period of time. Students will learn feminist debates in ethnographic research and, using that perspective, they鈥檒l conduct research about something in their immediate environments that impacts their everyday life. They鈥檒l select a site where they regularly spend time鈥攁 coffee shop that they visit or a club they鈥檙e a part of or their academic department, for example鈥攁nd start to understand the dynamics of that space through observing behavior, interactions, language, and the way people use their bodies in that space. They鈥檒l learn how to see it with new eyes and how to ask feminist questions about it.
Because the course is about learning research methods for eventual performance-making, students will ultimately create performances about these places that are part of their everyday life. They may go back to the spaces they observed and perform their reports, which could generate interesting conversations. Performance is a way of sharing research鈥攁n alternative research report.
MC: What other classes are you hoping to teach or develop at 51猎奇入口?
MDLC: I鈥檇 like to teach my Dance and Activism course, where students work in small affinity groups to understand each other鈥檚 community concerns and navigate their political priorities and differences in order to make movement work. It鈥檚 not meant to be for dancers only; it鈥檚 for anyone who wants to think about movement as activism. And I would love for students to come to my Raqs al Sharqi [Egyptian dance technique] Level I in the spring, so that they can come to Level II next year!
MC: What is a fun or interesting fact about yourself that you鈥檇 like to share with the community?
MDLC: I鈥檓 a community actor. For the last two years, I performed with the Cleveland Public Theater鈥檚 Spanish-language ensemble, Teatro P煤blico de Cleveland. I鈥檓 excited to bond with those communities here in Claremont.