74
“some additive combination of them” (Soja 33), or thesis/antithesis/ synthesis. Instead, intercultural dancers are in a “creative process of restructuring that draws selectively and strategically from the two opposing categories to open new alternatives…” Intercultural dancers re-evaluate the fringes by invigorating them with agency and choice. Fringes exist no longer as places of banishment, passivity, opposition, or rejected attributes but as positive spaces of freedom. In the fringes, intercultural dancers produce agencies that are not determined or regulated by all of centre’s concepts and rules. In turn, they develop fringe spaces in order to stand up to those who want to use the fringe as a site for lowering their social status. Although some do feel some social pressures from centres, intercultural dancers are not controlled by them. In the fringes, they connect to ideas and dances that are not a part of the centre’s dance. Intercultural dancers produce flexible and fluid genres, which are difficult to define, and therefore, to regulate. Although as an intercultural dance artist I can be read as being forced into the fringe by social constraints or as not being able to move into mainstream society, I actively and intentionally situate myself at times in the fringe of tradition (substitute
mainstream or another centre’s term in lieu of tradition). As a dancer, I am on the fringe of mainstream culture. As a Middle Eastern dancer, I am on the fringe of mainstream dance. As an experimental Middle Eastern dance, I am on the fringe of traditional/mainstream Middle Eastern dance. My choice to move comes not from a rejection of traditional dance. Although I love working within my traditions, I often feel constricted and unable to express all that I would like to within its frameworks, structures, and expectations. By creating dance and productions on the fringe, over time, this fringe has become my centre. The tension with multiple centres and fringes is part of my centre’s identity.
Rhizomatic Spaces As a means to resist making new binaries out of the peripheryas-centre, I constantly shift my centre. I know by having talked to several of them, some of the artists of the Interchange Festival do as well. I accomplish this through a rhizomatic practice. According to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, the rhizome is comprised of assemblages and lines of flight. An assemblage is a site where heterogeneous elements enter into a relationship. These diverse parts