Graduation Year

2025

Date of Submission

1-2026

Document Type

Open Access Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

International Relations

Reader 1

Professor Jennifer Taw

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Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

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2026 Christina Zogopoulou

Abstract

This paper examines dance not as a strategic tool for persuasion or visibility, but as an inherently meaningful political practice that shapes how protest is experienced, sustained, and lived by participants. Drawing on global dance-protests, from feminist protests in India to anti-ICE protests in the United States, it demonstrates that dance emerges across conditions of celebration and mourning, safety and repression, and hope and despair.

The paper advances a conceptual framework organized around three interrelated themes: energy, body politics, and community. Grounded in interdisciplinary theory from social movement studies, dance studies, feminist and Black radical thought, and supported by qualitative methods –including five semi-structured interviews with community organizers and protest participants– the analysis explores how dance transforms affective energy, reclaims the body as a site of political agency, and produces forms of collective belonging through embodied synchrony.

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