Summary Of Jane Desmond's Article 'Embodying Difference'

In her article, Embodying Difference, Jane Desmond argues that dance offers important insights into the ways moving bodies articulate cultural meanings and social identities. In other words, she explains the importance of studying the body’s movement as a way of understanding culture and society. She has two main arguments. First, she argues for the importance of the continually changing relational constitutions of cultural forms. Desmond further explains that the key to shedding light on the unequal distribution of power and goods that shape social relations are the concepts of cultural resistance, appropriation, and cultural imperialism (49). Second, she argues that movement needs more attention "as a primary, not a secondary, social text, one of immense importance and tremendous challenge" (49). She argued that because we tend to only rely on texts, art, sometimes music to learn about a culture. Desmond states that "we should not ignore the ways in which dance signals and enacts social identities in all their continually changing

I also believe that it is important to study the body’s movement to understand culture and society. For example, if you look at Korean Traditional Dance, viewers can understand how live was in Korea, long time ago. Korean Traditional Dance tries to portray the culture and society through their dance and music. Korean Traditional dancers also wear hanbok, Korean traditional costume, when they dance and play the instruments. Korean Traditional dancers also play the instruments, while they dance to show the audience their dance and music at the same time. The dancers do this so that they can display how what kind of instruments their music is made with. Through Korean Traditional Dance, dancers can show that the way they move their body, it displays their cultural meanings and social