Original scientific paper
GENDER PERFORMANCE IN A FINNISH DANCE RESTAURANT: REFLECTIONS ON A MULTICULTURAL FIELDWORK EXPERIMENT
Pirkko Moisala
; Department of Musicology, Abo Akademi University, Turku, Finland
Abstract
The article contributes to reflexive ethnomusicology, gender studies
of music, and performance studies. It is a report of a fieldwork
experiment, which set out to study gender performance in a Finnish
dance restaurant. The particular aim of the fieldwork was to examine
the impact of scholars' gender identities and previous experiences on
the observations made in the field. The experiment was made by ten
members of the Music and Gender Study Group of the International
Council for Traditional Music, in 1999.
The analysis reveals how past experiences and histories as well
as the current identity factors — such as age, ethnicity, race, world
view and feminism — affected each of the visitors' observations and
how they negotiated their gender in the dance restaurant. The article
concludes that while performing ourselves, we construct multiple
performance events. That is how we imaginatively create the world
and its events. In this process, the boundaries between insiders and
outsiders are blurred: we relate to the events through our identities
and past experiences and create our own, different readings of an
event.
Keywords
gender; performance; music; dance
Hrčak ID:
33356
URI
Publication date:
4.6.2001.
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