“Auto-Body Stories: Blondell
Cummings and Autobiography in
Dance”
by Ann Cooper Albright
Prepared by Kristen Acuña
Edited by: Dr. Picart and Donna
Gallagher
Aims
To examine, through Albright’s article, the
ways in which dance conveys / creates
meaning for the autobiographical-self,
specifically through the works of Isadora
Duncan and Blondell Cummings.
To summarize Albright’s article concerning
autobiography in dance and relate the
theories in the articles to both film and
personal experience.
Key Terms
• Autobiography:
• Intratext:
• Cultural Moorings:
Key Terms
• Subjectivity:
Albright’s Aims
• “… I want to look at the ways in which the
performing body physicalizes the
autobiographical voice to produce a
representation of subjectivity which is at once
whole and fragmented” (182).
• Albright specifically examines “the
representation of the performing body within
the context of gender and race” (180).
Exploring Blondell Cummings
• “Cummings is interested in
finding a way to universalize or,
at least, extend her particular
concerns in order to allow many
people to identify and engage
personally with her work” (189).
• “Doubly inscribed (by the
culture) as black and as a
woman, Cummings must confront
these multiple identities as she
places her self-representation on
the public stage” (195).
© Beatriz Schiller, Community
Arts Network, 2004
Exploring Blondell Cummings
• Important
performance pieces:
© www.omroep.nl,2004
Concluding Remarks
• Dance conveys and creates meaning for the
autobiographical self.
• “…There are inevitable contradictions within a
representation of any self” (202).
• Through Cummings’s solo performances there
are “resulting portraits of women [who]
represent a struggling identity which can only be
pieced together through the negotiation
between the inner voices of memory, bodily
experience, and public representation” (202).
Works Cited
Albright, Ann Cooper. “Auto-Body Stories: Blondell Cummings
and Autobiography in Dance.” Rpt. in Meaning in Motion.
Ed. Jane C. Desmond. Duke University Press, 1997.
Big Fish. DVD. Wrt. John August. Dir. Tim Burton.
Columbia/Tri-Star Studios, 2004.
Fuery, Patrick and Nick Mansfield. Cultural Studies and Critical
Theory. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Goler, Veta. “Living with the Doors Open: An Interview with
Blondell Cummings.” Rpt. in High Performance #69, Spring,
1995. 12 June 2004.
<http://www.communityarts.net/readingroom/archive/cu
mmings69.php>
Sugar Cane Alley. Videocassette. Dir. Euzhan Palcy. Prod.
François Truffaut. New Yorker Films, 1983.