Dance, Sexuality, and Utopian Subversion Under the Argentine Dictatorship of the 1960s: The Case of Oscar Aráiz’s The Rite of Spring and Ana Itelman’s Phaedra

This article is part of a larger investigation into the relationship between dance and politics in Argentina during the 1960s and 1970s. As Victoria Fortuna (2013, 68–69) points out, most of the historical studies of modern and contemporary dance in Argentina have focussed on describing the process of modernizing artistic practices.¹ Accordingly, certain studies have organized their historical discourse by taking as their starting point a description of the influence that given foreign artists exerted on the aesthetic development of stage dance. The following study aims to give an account of the specific character of the Argentine case by viewing its relationship with cultural metropolises as an important variable, but not as its main angle of study.

To be more specific, I believe that a feature that defines how dance practices evolved in Argentina in this period was the fact that “actors” in the field were constantly compelled to deal with the political. Dance practices had to adapt to a context of institutional instability that was linked to a fragile democratic order and successive coups d’état. They were also subject to control: the two works I intend to study suffered attempts by the dictatorial government to censor them. Nevertheless, dance played an active role in the political space. By studying the impact caused between 1968 and 1970 by two contemporary dance works presented by the San Martín Theater Ballet, Oscar Aráiz’s The Rite of Spring and Ana Itelman’s Phaedra, I shall attempt to analyze the position these practices occupied in a context of widespread social contestation. Ultimately, this article will seek to reflect on the politicality of these works (Vujanovic 2013), that is to say, on their capacity to act politically in a specific historical context.

Dictatorship and Utopian Subversion

On June 28 1966, a coup led by General Juan Carlos Onganía overthrew the democratically elected president Arturo Illia. This was the fourth coup against a constitutional government since 1930. The new dictatorship called itself Revolución Argentina (Argentine Revolution) and aimed to install itself in power for a prolonged period in order to fundamentally modify economic, social, and cultural conditions. The coup arose under the influence of what is known as the “Doctrine of National Security” linked to various US foreign policy actions aimed at preventing the advance of communism in Latin America in the context of the Cold War and after the Cuban revolution. Accordingly, the new dictatorship was characterized by a strongly anticommunist ideology.²

The control and repression practiced by the Onganía dictatorship were resisted from various spaces, by the workers’ movement and political militants as well as by the universities and the cultural sector. Three years after the coup, in May 1969, there was a popular uprising in the city of Córdoba, known as the Cordobazo, which weakened Onganía’s leadership within the military elite. In the course of the following years a progressive radicalization of political militants took place; in other words, some militants started to view armed struggle as the only option for achieving a return to democracy and profoundly changing society. A triumphalist atmosphere reigned among wide sectors of militants, who claimed that a revolution was imminent or genuinely close to happening, something that represented at the time the sensation of living through “an abrupt and imminent change in all fields of life” (Longoni 2014, 22). In 1970 the guerrilla organizations started to act openly, throwing the authoritarian government into crisis. In June of that year, Onganía was replaced by Roberto Marcelo Levingston, another military man. The early years of the 1970s constitute one of the most politically explosive phases in the whole of Argentine history. Sociologically speaking, this historical moment tends to be defined as one of widespread social contestation that produces a situation of social ungovernability. In response to this extreme situation, the authoritarian government decided to call a democratic election, and the decision was taken to lift the ban on Peronism.^3...