“¿Y ahora qué vas a hacer, mulata?”: Hip choreographies in the Mexican cabaretera film Mulata (1954)Posted in Articles, Caribbean/Latin America, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Women on 2012-03-29 22:47Z by Steven |
“¿Y ahora qué vas a hacer, mulata?”: Hip choreographies in the Mexican cabaretera film Mulata (1954)
Women and Performance: a journal of feminist theory
Volume 18, Issue 3, November 2008
Special Issue: Sensualidades: Sounds and Movement in Latina/o Culture
pages 215-233
DOI: 10.1080/07407700802495951
Melissa Blanco Borelli, Lecturer of Dance Studies
University of Surrey
This essay examines the film Mulata (Martínez Solares 1954) starring Cuban vedette Ninón Sevilla through the various performances of mulata identity featured in the film. By introducing the theory of hip(g)nosis and the sentience corpo-mulata, these theoretical models demonstrate how a body racialized as mulata choreographs identity through gestures, bodily articulations, and socio-historically inscribed movement repertoires associated with this particular corporeality. The development of these terms intends to show the complexities that bodies add to history, as well as their impact on cultural production and notions of territoriality, nationalism and citizenship. These terms also highlight the pleasure, sensuality and affect involved in identity construction. Finally, by providing examples of these theories through a close reading of Ninón Sevilla’s performances of the title character in the film Mulata, the essay provides a way to rethink the mulata as something other than “tragic.”