Event Write Up: The MIO Show

I attended the MIO Cultural Show on Nov 15th at 9 pm in the Campus Center. The show is described in the arts and events calendar as " a performing art show that includes dances, singing performances and skits from all over the world. It is a way of celebrating our cultural diversity." Many student cultural organizations choreograph and perform dances and there are some domestic students (both white students and domestic students of color) who perform alongside international students as well.
I'm going to preface my analysis of the MIO Cultural Show by locating myself and acknowledging that while I am critical of how the show represents culture, I am by no means devaluing the hard work on the part of the students who choreograph and perform dances and songs. I also recognize that as a domestic student, I do not have the cultural contexts necessary for understanding fully the performances of dances from other countries and regions of the world.
My questions and critiques are coming from my perspective as a white, middle-class, straight woman who lived in the Northeastern United States until coming to Macalester. My reading of the show has everything to do with who I am and my own cultural context. So with that said, here is my understanding of the context, content, and form of the MIO Cultural Show.
I view the MIO Show in the context of a college that often commodifies and uses the experiences and presence of international students for profit and image. Macalester's commitment to "internationalism" and "global citizenship" often serves to ignore domestic issues and limit the number of domestic students of color on its campus. The discourse on this campus about global citizenship and the Institute of Global Citizenship promotes a discussion of global relationships where considerations of race, power, and privilege are markedly absent. The audience of the MIO Cultural Show is always very large, and includes domestic students, local families/community members, international students, and faculty and staff of the College.
The content of the MIO Show this year consisted of an initial poetry performance of "Africa, My Africa" and dances by a variety of groups and student cultural organizations, as well as a circus acrobatics performance by two domestic students. The event was emceed by two domestic students who had a running skit throughout the whole show. The skit was about two people on a plane, one a Hawaiian "surfer dude" stereotype and the other a stuffy Englishman stereotype. As the two interacted for comedic effect, the jokes revolved around the blandness and stuffiness of the white man as contrasted with the loud goofiness of the Hawaiian man. There were also sections done where the white man dressed in drag and pretended to be a female flight attendant, and jokes about romantic attraction between the two men. The dances in the show were executed with skill and talent, and kept the audience engaged and entertained. Two pieces seemed more political: the dance about Israel which was done in a more abstract/modern dance style, and the hip-hop performance by E-Dash and Chantee Rosado, where he rapped about racism and capitalism.
A lot of the dance performances were done in clothing traditional to the country or region, while others used more hip-hop style clothing. I think the MIO show offers us a chance to have an interesting discussion about agency and self-representation. Many of the dances feature female students performing highly sexualized dance moves to the cheers of the audience, and some employ racialized sexual stereotypes. Are these engagements with stereotypes purposeful? Are they meant to be ironic or critical? Are they simply performing in ways they know the audience wants to view them? How are they received by audience members? During the chair dance by Asian female students, which featured highly sexual dance moves and seemed to reinforce stereotypes of the sexy and "exotic" Asian woman, a girl sitting behind me commented to her friend, "It wouldn't be the MIO Show if there wasn't at least one slutty dance!"
One dance in particular provides an interesting example. At one point in the show, a group of women performed a belly dance. Towards the end of their dance, a male student began to throw napkins on the stage. To my eyes, this resembled cash being tossed at strippers, and was an offensive, disrespectful act. The people sitting around me, a few of whom were female international students, groaned and rolled their eyes at this. We later talked about how this act of throwing napkins seemed to cheapen the dance and take power away from the dancers.
When I brought this incident up in class, Krasi spoke about the different cultural context from which he viewed the dance. He raised the point that in Turkey, Greece, and the Middle East, the throwing of flowers and napkins at belly dancers is seen as a sign of respect and appreciation. This was an interesting point and caused me to think about my own critique and cultural context. I feel that the issue is deeper than simply "It's offensive" or "It's not offensive." This raised several questions for me: Given that sexism and the performance of gender manifest in different ways in different cultures, how do we have a conversation about the reading of a dance that takes into account both its origins and its translation to a new audience? What do the women in the dance think about all this? How do we teach each other about our cultures in a meaningful way that addresses or attempts to transcend stereotypes? How do I, as a white American woman, critique what I see as sexism in a culture different from my own, without falling into the discourse of "colonial feminism", i.e., trying to save brown women from brown men?
The MIO show offers us a chance to think about the representation of culture here at Macalester and in a larger context of global relationships and the workings of systems of power. It gives us the opportunity to think about what it means to employ a feminist lens cross-culturally.