Date of Award
Spring 2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
African American Studies
First Advisor
Veal, Michael
Abstract
Geometry of a Ghost: Chicago Footwork and the Sound System Continuum is a dissertation in African American Studies and American Studies. It documents a cultural, music and dance history of Chicago footwork. Footwork is a style of Black electronic music and dance with roots in the 1980s history of Chicago house music. Across three chapters, it frames Chicago footwork within a broad spectrum of Black electronic dance music histories across the Americas. Chapter One focuses on the rise of sound system culture in Jamaica and the art of disco DJing in New York City. Across multiple sites, Chapter One documents Black dance music history in relation to liberation movements, including historical struggles for decolonization, racial justice, and gay rights. It concludes in Chicago with a focus on the history of house music, based on oral history interviews with house music originators in dance, music and community organizing. Chapter Two outlines the development of Chicago footwork dancing to the sounds of house music in late 1980s. Footwork begins with the development of a move called “the ghost” on the West Side of Chicago. Incorporating oral histories of dance, this chapter shows how footwork catalyzed community for youth under threat from poverty, racism and systemic violence in Chicago. Footwork’s ghost dance borrowed movements from spirit possession in church. As footwork spread, it offered solidarity and sanctuary to dancers in the margins of Chicago. “Footwork saved my life,” is testimony repeated many times by its dancers and DJs. Geometry of a Ghost’s third and final chapter highlights dance films, album art and community organizing conducted by the author from the early 2010s until the present. It focuses on histories of queer nightlife, vogue dancing and ballroom culture in New York City as a context for a study of the 2013 film Icy Lake. It then pivots to examine the author’s ongoing art and filmmaking practice with Chicago footwork dancers over the last decade. Through collaborative dance filmmaking and art, the chapter studies how dancers cross boundaries with movement, laying foundations for new social flows across the city and far beyond it. The dissertation concludes with a focus on dance films that bridge Chicago footwork and Native American dance.
Recommended Citation
Glasspiegel, Wills, "Geometry of a Ghost: Chicago Footwork and the Sound System Continuum" (2024). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 1375.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/1375
