The Day the Dancers Stayed: Performing in the Filipino/American Diaspora
by Theodore Gonzalves
Copyright 2009
Published by Temple University Press, Philadelphia

Pilipino Cultural Nights at American campuses have been a rite of passage for youth culture and a source of local community pride since the 1980s. Through performances—and parodies of them —these celebrations of national identity through music, dance and theatrical narratives reemphasize what it means to be Filipino American. In "The Day the Dancers Stayed", scholar and performer Theodore Gonzalves uses interviews and participant observer techniques to consider the relationship between the invention of performance repertoire and the development of diasporic identification. Gonzalves traces a genealogy of performance repertoire from the 1930s to the present. Culture nights serve several functions as exercises in nostalgia, celebrations of rigid community entertainment, and occasionally forums for political intervention. Taking up more recent parodies of Pilipino Cultural Nights, Gonzalves discusses how the rebellious spirit that enlivened the original seditious performances has been stifled.

(Excerpt from Publisher's Release)

OOV Bookshelf 2009

DECEMBER 2009 FEATURE Filipino Pride by Dale Dennis David, Julie Tañada, Edna Co, Lucio Pitlo III, Ones Cuyco, Lloyd Bautista, Rudy Brul Ating Kalagayan: The Social and Economic Profile of U.S. Filipinios by Peter Chua The Day the Dancers Stayed: Performing in the Filipino/American Diaspora by Theodore Gonzalves Nota Bene Eiswein by Eileen R. Tabios Footnotes To Algebra: Uncollected Poems 1995-2009 by Eileen R. Tabios Growing Up Filipino II: More Stories for Young Adults edited by Cecilia Brainard Towards Filipino Self-Determination by E. San Juan, Jr. AUGUST 2009 FEATURE Butete: The Story of a Remarkable Fish / The Song of Tampopo by Asela Hazel Z. Gundaya Give Your English the Winning Edge by Jose Carillo America's Second-Class Veterans by Rick Rocamora and Rene P. Ciria-Cruz Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath by Michael Norman and Elizabeth M. Norman The Long Lost Startle Poems by Joel Toledo