“Body”: Gender Performativity and Dance as a Performative Art

Abstract

In Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, they discuss how gender performativity dictates an individual's actions and identity in society since the repetition of expectations of a person’s presenting gender influences how their identity is crafted throughout their lives. Dance is a performative art in which creative self-expression of identity manipulates gender by freeing the body from its established gendered restraints.

In this video essay, Swann Tsai discusses how dancers demonstrate the skin's permeability through the transgression of gender limitations amongst all identities despite their expected gender performance. They manipulate their bodies based on the emotions they are trying to express, highlighting how the manifestation of gender performance in the real world is malleable.

This essay was a co-winner of the 2023 Intersectional Social Justice Essay Prize (2nd/3rd year category)