Salsa Crossings: Dancing Latinidad in Los Angeles

In Los Angeles, night after night, the city's salsa clubs become social arenas where hierarchies of gender, race, and class, and of nationality, citizenship, and belonging are enacted on and off the dance floor. In an ethnography filled with dramatic narratives, Cindy Garc a describes how local salseras/os gain social status by performing an exoticized L.A.-style salsa that distances them from club practices associated with Mexicanness. Many Latinos in Los Angeles try to avoid "dancing like a Mexican," attempting to rid their dancing of techniques that might suggest that they are migrants, poor, working-class, Mexican, or undocumented. In L.A. salsa clubs, social belonging and mobility depend on subtleties of technique and movement. With a well-timed dance-floor exit or the lift of a properly tweezed eyebrow, a dancer signals affiliation not only with a distinctive salsa style but also with a particular conceptualization of latinidad.

Author: Cindy García
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 06/18/2013
Pages: 208
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.80lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.10w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9780822354819

Review Citation(s):
Choice 01/01/2014

About the Author

Cindy García is Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre Arts and Dance at the University of Minnesota.