Sounding moves: flamenco, gender, and meaning in Tokyo

This paper addresses the complex interactions between gender and localization of a world dance by focusing on the signification strategies of flamenco dance in Tokyo, Japan. Key in understanding these strategies are the senses. Sensory structures are the cultural incentive; embedded in local cultural aesthetics as well as leading to a reenactment of particular local practices. However, flamenco as a non-Japanese, south Spanish genre, offers women a bodily framework to revolt against local practices, particularly to those which define femininity in Japan, despite the rapid social changes the country has been facing during the past decades. By replacing the dominant sensory model for both transmission and proper female behavior, favoring sight and silence, flamenco’s characteristic footwork offers Japanese women a localized stage on which they can make themselves heard, as modern, cosmopolitan, and passionate.