The Colonization of Medieval Dance

This article examines medieval dance from the perspectives of colonization and otherization. As this study shows, the encounter between European Christians and foreign (i.e., non- European and non-Christian) dancers resembled an exercise of (proto)colonization with the rise of the Crusades and long-distance travel in the late Middle Ages. Representations of dance in crusader chronicles and medieval travel literature from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, I argue, entangle dancers’ skill and entertainment value with colonial violence and Christian hegemony. For instance, crusading contexts praised Muslim dancers as marvelous spectacles, yet at the same time relegated them to war booty and critiqued Islam. Europeans who traveled through Asia reframed Mongols’ vast wealth and empire with depictions of sexually available and obsequious entertainers. Artwork that accompanied travel writing represented dance as a more extreme form of otherization, in which dancers evoked subhumanity. The colonial appetite for plunder occasionally involved medieval dance, as the African ivory trade reveals. In sum, this article contributes to a larger study on the global Middle Ages and embraces a postcolonial approach to medieval studies and dance studies.