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8 Identity Is Also Danced (Cali, Colombia) Alejandro Ulloa Sanmiguel (Translated by Sydney Hutchinson) Bailar es escribir con el cuerpo en el espacio representar el tiempo sin nombrarlo marcar con el gesto un sólo instante soñar que uno no es uno sino el ritmo sentir que es la vida la que baila Dancing is writing with the body in space representing time without naming it marking a single instant with a gesture dreaming that one is not oneself, but rhythm feeling that it is life itself that is dancing Identity as Story: A Constructed Discourse I consider identity to be a story constructed by a social actor about that actor to differentiate him- or herself from others. Participants in a construction may include “different historical actors, like schools, governments, intellectuals, [and] cultural researchers,” or mass media (Melo 2006: 87). Once the story is defined, community members latch onto it to identify themselves inside and outside the community as having particular characteristics and as being linked to a group, a territory, a tradition. The narrative about identity that is constructed presents certain arbitrary features, since some characteristics are discarded and others are selected as those that the subjects must accept to represent themselves and to be represented . The identity constructed in this way attributes the selected properties to an entire community, as if everyone were equal, homogenous, and culturally uniform. The homogenizing discourse of identity denies tensions and differences that may exist within the group at the same time that it ignores other, equally constructed identity stories. Social agents identify with some stories more than others insofar as those stories have common referents within the group that adopts them. This identification is a form of recognition that is generally interpreted as identity. In recent decades, the identity story of Santiago de Cali has unavoidably intersected with the image created around salsa and its dance, as expressed in the slogan, “Cali, world capital of salsa.” In my book Salsa in Cali (1992), Identity Is Also Danced (Cali, Colombia) 141 I discuss this and speak of the social process through which this music gains meaning for the “popular” sectors of the city.1 Here I discuss the dance to argue that identity is also danced. This means that through salsa dancing, identity is constructed and expressed from the performativity of the body and not from a rational or political discourse. Dance, as a kinesic and proxemic configuration, makes the body a site for the enunciation of identity. It is not through verbal language but through movement and body language that this new identity attached to the city of Cali and its sectors is defined. Dances and Dancers If we define dance as a system of nonverbal communication and as an act through which social relations are projected, we may now establish a distinction between studio dancers and social dancers. I use the term “bailadores”2 for those who enjoy dance as a recreational practice—“social dance”—linked to leisure and spare time, undertaken for the pleasure it provokes, for desire, or for other motivating factors. Bailadores have no pretensions to professionalism or participation in the spectacle of show business, although they do have an underlying interest in transcending the functional routines of daily life. I use the term “bailarines”3 for the type of dancer who takes up dance not only for pleasure but also as a profession, engaging in formalized exercises of teaching or apprenticeship such as rehearsals and workshops. Bailarines perform in public or private shows, either as soloists or as members of a school, group, or artistic company, and they obtain economic and symbolic capital from their profession. Bailarines thus insert themselves into the show business market and into a field of practices where they share the opportunities and tensions of that environment with peers (companions and rivals) and also compete for available resources within small or large cultural industries. A bailarín begins as a bailador, becoming a bailarín if he or she has the intention and the necessary conditions to do so. On the other hand, a bailarín is a bailarín insofar as he or she achieves competence—creative capacity, not only technical ability—and exhibits it to peers and audiences who endorse and recognize it. In addition, however, the bailarín becomes more of a bailador when participating in a festivity (rumba), detached from his or her mercantile or corporate function. Another difference between the two is that bailarines dance for an...

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