“Our ancestors passed this down to us for a reason”: information practices of ballet folklórico dancers in Mexican-American communities
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-11-2021-0225 |
| Published date | 20 January 2022 |
| Date | 20 January 2022 |
| Pages | 1213-1227 |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
| Author | Iulian Vamanu,Micaela Terronez |
“Our ancestors passed this down
to us for a reason”: information
practices of ballet folkl
orico
dancers in
Mexican-American communities
Iulian Vamanu
School of Library and Information Science, University of Iowa,
Iowa City, Iowa, USA, and
Micaela Terronez
Tredway Library, Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois, USA
Abstract
Purpose –This paper explores informational dimensions of dancing by focusing on the cases of two folk
dance groups practicing Mexican ballet folkl
orico in the US.
Design/methodology/approach –Thematic analysis of (1) extensive recollections from one of the study’s
coauthors, an academic librarian who was an active member of a ballet folkl
orico group; (2) an interview with
that coauthor’s brother, who is the current director of this school; and (3) instructional and demonstrative
videos posted on YouTube by two US-based ballet folkl
orico groups.
Findings –Ballet folkl
orico dancers must use a wide range of information. The most important is sociocultural
information, which expert dancers display while dancing and help novices acquire as enacted, expressed, or
recorded information. According to expert dancers, sociocultural information becomes increasingly embodied
through repeated enactment and constant interaction with ambient information. Specifically, ambient
information provides parameters that both enable and limit the performance of the dance.
Originality/value –This paper contributes to the emergent Library and Information Science (LIS) literature
on dancing and its informational aspects.
Keywords Ballet folkl
orico, Folk dance, Mexican-American, Information, Information use,
Information practice, Heritage
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Dancing is an activity that brings excitement to people’s lives, whether they watch dance as
spectators or engage in dance as amateurs or professionals. Dance is also a key expression of
identity for ethno-cultural groups;it is often presented in festive contexts as a way for group
members to assert specific ethno-cultural identities. With a few exceptions, Library and
Information Science (LIS) scholarship has largely neglected dance as a researchtopic and has
thereby left openthe question about the possible connections between danceand information
phenomena. Most authors who have researched dance (Hajibayova and Buente, 2017;Oke,
2017;Sutherland, 2019) have examined it in the contexts of knowledge representation and
archivalpreservation practicesprimarily. For example,Hajibayova and Buente(2017) analyzed
vocabularies used for representing and organizing Hawaiian culture and focused their
discussion on the Hawaiian hula dance; Sutherland (2019) examined dances to thematize the
concept of “gestural documents.”Oke (2017) reflected on what makes dancing so difficult to
Ballet folkl
orico
dancers
1213
The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments which have
improved the paper significantly.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0022-0418.htm
Received 11 November 2021
Revised 28 December 2021
Accepted 29 December 2021
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 78 No. 6, 2022
pp. 1213-1227
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-11-2021-0225
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