E. Patrick Johnson is Carlos Montezuma Professor of Performance Studies and African American Studies at Northwestern University, the coeditor of
Reggaetón’s Crossings: Black Aesthetics, Latina Nightlife, and Queer Choreography
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Published:September 2016
Ramón H. Rivera-Servera, 2016. "Reggaetón’s Crossings: Black Aesthetics, Latina Nightlife, and Queer Choreography", No Tea, No Shade: New Writings in Black Queer Studies, E. Patrick Johnson
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In this essay, Ramón H. Rivera-Servera takes on the dismissal of perreo, the doggy-style dance that anchors reggaetón choreography, in contemporary Puerto Rican feminist criticism to emphasize the feminist and queer microagencies performed by dancers who engage with this musical culture. Through examining Carolina Caycedo’s video documentary of a perreo dancing marathon in Rincón, Puerto Rico, and ethnographic data from a Latina/o queer dance club in Phoenix, Arizona, Rivera-Servera argues that the black aesthetics of reggaetón enabled queer dance practices that exceeded the heteropatriarchal politico-economic and representational frameworks of reggaetón. In offering the on-the-ground analytic of performance as an optic, the essay features the dance skills of reggaetoneras and their understanding of the racial economies of reggaetón as queer engagements, perhaps even interventions, with the gender politics of the genre.
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