Ballroom Dance as an Indicator of Immigrant Identity in the Filipino Community

Filipinos now constitute the largest Asian ethnic group in California and like many immigrant groups, they face the problem of living a hybrid identity within a dominant culture (Bonus 1). This essay offers a brief report on the significance of ballroom dance to the Filipino community, provides evidence of distinct Filipino social conduct on the ballroom dance floor, and will then focus on the incorporation of what are considered traditional movements from indigenous dances into ballroom-based line dances as examples of Filipinos' efforts to negotiate their identity in the world. Thomas Turino offers a compelling reason for ballroom dance's popularity within this particular immigrant group. His research into cosmopolitanism and popular music in Zimbabwe examines ballroom dance in Zimbabwe's Salisbury townships where ballroom dancing has been practiced since the 1930's. Considering it the dance of middle class whites, Africans began taking up the dance because it was a prestige activity of "a better class of people." Photos in African Parade of competitions during the 1970's show large crowds of participants and spectators suggesting that the "colonial mentality" remained largely intact even during the height of the nationalist movements (Turino 147-48). Given 400 years of colonization, the "colonial mentality" of Filipinos has also been explained by varying theories of colonial influence. Nilda Rimonte notes that, Filipinos were victimized on several fronts: by the assumptions and presumptions of colonial ideology, by the very act of cultural invasion itself, by coercive cultural transformations and by the complicit collaboration of leaders and elders who perpetuated the violence of historical distortions.... Denial of this past has been the source of crippling confusion about Filipino identity and obligations to the West. (41) I believe Filipino Ballroom dancers practice ballroom dance because they also consider it a prestige activity "of a better class of people," but also as an imagined American activity. Just as the West has its imaginations of the East, the Philippines has its imagination of the United States. Indeed U.S. colonialism in the Philippines was rhetorically driven by what President McKinley had referred to as "benevolent assimilation," whereby the "earnest and paramount aim" of the colonizer was that of "win[ning] the confidence, respect and affection" of the colonized. Colonization as assimilation was deemed a moral imperative, as wayward native children cut off from their Spanish fathers and desired by other European powers would now be adopted and protected by the compassionate embrace of the United States. As a father is bound to guide his son, the United States was charged with the development of native others. Neither exploitative nor enslaving, colonization entailed the cultivation of "the felicity and perfection of the Philippine people" through the "uninterrupted devotion" to those "noble ideals which constitute the higher civilization of mankind." Because colonization is about civilizing love and the love of civilization, it must be absolutely distinct from the disruptive criminality of conquest. The allegory of benevolent assimilation effaces the violence of conquest by construing colonial rule as the most precious gift that "the most civilized people" can render to those still caught in a state of barbarous disorder. (Rafael 21) I see Filipino Ballroom Dance as a product of the United States' benevolent colonization of the Philippines but at the same time see signs of Filipino American immigrants' desire to maintain a link to their homeland and attempts to gather and identify themselves as separate from the mainstream. I begin with the popularity of ballroom dance within Filipino diaspora. Filipino ballroom clubs, schools and studios can be found all over the world. Within these spaces, Filipinos find safety from outside forces and room for sub-communities to develop inside the dominant culture. …