Dance Nation and Its Representational Challenges

Abstract

Clare Barron’s award-winning 2018 play Dance Nation revolves around a group of elite young dancers as they prepare for the annual competition season. Praised for its authentic depiction of adolescence, ferocious and witty feminism, no-holds-barred dialogue, and engagement with women’s lives in our #MeToo moment, Barron’s work also features distinctive casting and performance directives. By encouraging productions to use adult actors without dance talent, Barron seeks to counter mainstream cultural representations of teenagers. But in performance, these directives create dissonance not only with her narrative but also with her efforts to portray the nexus of young women and artistic excellence. Additionally, Barron relies upon both conventional dance narrative tropes and dramaturgical structures that reinscribe her characters within the cultural framework she aspires to resist. Closer analysis suggests that Dance Nation ultimately offers deeply conflicted images of youth-forward feminism and girl culture, undermining Barron’s stated goal “to present a different picture of teenage girls onstage.”