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Liberation on the Dance Floor

Popular Music and the Promise of Plurality

Expected online publication date:  05 September 2025

Craig Jennex
Affiliation:
Toronto Metropolitan University

Summary

Lesbian and gay liberation movements of the twentieth century were made possible through heterogeneous dance music cultures that flourished in urban spaces. In an era of profound political challenges, collective dance enabled lesbian and gay individuals to connect with their bodies and the bodies of others, experience a sense of communal belonging, explore non-normative gender and sexual desires, and perceive individual and collective power in a heteronormative reality that regularly suppressed both. For lesbians and gays, collective dance introduced them to difference as a dynamic catalyst of political change, allowing them to experience the promise of liberation. This Element combines ethnographic research, archival materials, and popular music histories to analyze the role of popular music participation in lesbian and gay liberation in US cities and demonstrate how collective dance served as a transformative site of political contestation and imagination. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

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Type
Element
Information
Online ISBN: 9781009351812
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NC
This content is Open Access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence CC-BY-NC 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/cclicenses/

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Liberation on the Dance Floor
  • Craig Jennex, Toronto Metropolitan University
  • Online ISBN: 9781009351812
Available formats No formats are currently available for this content.
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Liberation on the Dance Floor
  • Craig Jennex, Toronto Metropolitan University
  • Online ISBN: 9781009351812
Available formats No formats are currently available for this content.
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Save element to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Liberation on the Dance Floor
  • Craig Jennex, Toronto Metropolitan University
  • Online ISBN: 9781009351812
Available formats No formats are currently available for this content.
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