Dancing from the heart : movement, gender and sociality in the Cook Islands

Abstract

This thesis explores dance through the lens of performance, globalization, gender and postcolonialism. It also relies on contemporary Pacific scholarship to argue about the centrality of active agency in cultural production. Cook Islands dancing is not simply a reflection past and present gendered cultural politics. Throughout, I argue that the mediational power of expressive practices actively produces the modalities through which regional and local identities engage with broader global processes. Dance, I suggest, is a generative process which occupies the hearts, minds and bodies of many Cook Islanders.