Katherine Profeta defines the word hybridity in reference to Ralph’s attraction. Ralph is a choreographer Profeta uses throughout her book. Hybridity is something heterogeneous in origin or composition. In her book, Dramaturgy in Motion, Profeta refers to it as a mixture of people. She speaks of Ralph’s intercultural practice room that encompasses many different beings (169). Ralph had many dancers present, all different from each other. This difference ranged from gender, culture to race and ethnicity. This was beneficial as they were able to give feedback based on their own past experiences. This is what made him so attracted to hybridity.
Throughout the chapter, Profeta clarifies how hybridity remains a misjudged concept. Postcolonial scholars remain confused as whether hybridity is bad or good. She states that it can either fight supremacy with cultural ambiguity or show their dominance with interracial reproduction (171). Yet, hybridity is unavoidable. Using Ralph’s practice room, Profeta showcases this argument. She states how one body has to interact with many cultures and live amongst them. So, the argument was never about whether it was good or bad as it is both but of how it was used. Profeta states that Ralph’s manifestation of hybridity within his practice room stemmed from the difficult nature of the concept (171). He valued how hard it was to fuse many things together, cultural wise, and have them work well. Even his dancers were a hybrid of themselves. Them being of one race and trained in another. With all this fusion of cultures, Ralph is able to form dances that represents places he may have never visited but as dancers whom are a part of that place.
The concept of hybridity used as a way of cultural ambiguity stood out the most for me in this chapter. This stemmed from a personal question I have had for some time. This is how beneficial can cultural mixing be to a society if it erases all the differences? My argument was that while it may mitigate chances of cultural dominance, it can lead to other forms discrimination. And also, it may erase the identity of a certain group of people as there is no say in what aspects are being held. Thus, hybridity to me was never a great answer. Yet, in this sense I can see the beauty in hybrid cultures. As having more than one culture represented ensures that the dance distorts none.
Merriam-Webster "Definiton of hybrid." Accessed 8 Jan 2018. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hybridity. Profeta, Katherine. "Interculturalism" Dramaturgy in Motion: At Work on Dance and Movement Performance. 168-209. USA: The University of Wisconsin, 2015.
Hi Tyeece.
A few writing rules. When you first introduce a person in an essay, you write their first and last name. So: Katherine Profeta. Ralph Lemon. Think about the naive reader who doesn’t know the person you’re referencing. Plus, it’s proper etiquette.
In your essay, you write that Profeta introduces the term “in reference to Ralph’s attraction.” I’m really confused what you mean by this and you don’t then unpack this statement ; instead you continue on to define the term hybridity. You explain hybridity as “difference” but Profeta is more specific than that. Before you write about why hybridity has been discounted or embraced, it is worthwhile thinking about it as a crossing of differences that result in an admixture. You note that this is “fusion” which is closer to the way in which the term operates in art. But Profeta is careful in her Intercultural chapter to talk about how power operates and what can overwhelm something else — that the field is not an equal playing field and that has to be taken into account when cultural practices are fused. But then you write that the dances are a “hybrid of themselves.” Here I think you mean that Lemon had to recognize that he (African-American) was already a hybrid identity and those identity affiliates could be applied to his West African dance collaborators. Does Profeta insist that difference is fully eradicated in hybridity? It seems to me that she was careful to parse out different influences that could be read in the fusion, and she knows that bodies will be read in particular ways no matter what, in different cultural contexts.