Dr. Eugenia Cadús, dance scholar based in Argentina. Her research interests include Latin American concert dance and politics, representations of identity and nation, and decolonial studies. She directs the GEDAL (Argentine and Latin-American Dance Studies Working Group) based at the University of Buenos Aires

This presentation is part of a larger research effort that explores Argentine notions of national identity represented and created through classical ballets in the first half of the twentieth century (1926-1955). In this seminar, I will focus on the early nationalist ballets choreographed by members of the Ballets Russes company (including Bronislava Nijinska, Boris Romanov, and Richard Nemanoff). I examine the role these ballets played in the performance of Argentine identity and the circulation of stereotypes about Argentine culture. In all of the nationalist choreographies created during these years, a proto-ethnographic task was performed that both documented and created a national identity as an imagined community vis-à-vis the mixing of folklore with modern ballet. From a 'fractured' modernity standpoint, I argue that this performance was possible because of the role that ballet had as a representative of modernism, able to adapt and stage popular folkloric elements while subjecting them to modernization. In this process, choreography —which itself emerged from the project of Western modernity— also served to stage certain legacies and traditions. It also served as a process of coloniality, and a whitening device for Argentine identity. I will thus analyze the complexity of the translation of an idea of national identity that was embodied in these ballets.