The Day the Dancers Stayed: Performing in the Filipino/American Diaspora
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Pilipino Cultural Nights at American campuses have been a rite of passage for youth culture and a source of local community pride since the 1980s. Through performances-and parodies of them-these celebrations of national identity through music, dance, and theatrical narratives reemphasize what it means to be Filipino American. In The Day the Dancers Stayed, scholar and performer Theodore Gonzalves uses interviews and participant observer techniques to consider the relationship between the invention of performance repertoire and the development of diasporic identification. Gonzalves traces a genealogy of performance repertoire from the 1930s to the present. Culture nights serve several functions: as exercises in nostalgia, celebrations of rigid community entertainment, and occasionally forums for political intervention. Taking up more recent parodies of Pilipino Cultural Nights, Gonzalves discusses how the rebellious spirit that enlivened the original seditious performances has been stifled.
Acknowledgments ixPrologue 1Introduction 91 The Art of the State: Inventing Philippine Folkloric Forms (Manila, 1934) 292 "Take It from the People": Dancing Diplomats and Cultural Authenticity (Brussels, 1958) 623 Dancing into Oblivion: The Filipino Cultural Night (Los Angeles, 1983) 894 Repetitive Motion: The Mechanics of Reverse Exile (San Francisco, 1993) 1125 Making a Mockery of Everything We Hold True and Dear: Exploring Parody with Tongue in a Mood's PCN Salute (San Francisco, 1997) 127Conclusion 141Epilogue: Memoria 148Notes 151Bibliography 185Index 211
