Embodying Mallorquinness through Performativity and Narration of Mallorquin Dance

Abstract

The Mallorcan dancers' sense of embodying Mallorquiness as stylistic qualities of their stage performances, produces in them a sense of representing a double identity: one for themselves in social contexts performing improvised dances as a contemporary image to each other, and another that is more ancient and projects the romantic nationalism associated with the dances' origins in stage presentations for tourists. It is the stage presentations that are a focus of this paper, where an ancient identity is created in the visual imagery of the Mallorcan dancers’ performances as a reconstruction of their past. This paper explores the relationship between the embodied agency of the dancers and the influences of tourism as part of the cultural production of historical representation of the island's cultural traditions. Embodiment is in this sense construed through the influences of tourism, which is concomitant with the Mallorcan dancers' performative identities and embodying Mallorquinness.