The Modern Synthesis of Josephine Baker and Carmen Amaya

Open Access

Abstract

African American dancer, Josephine Baker, and Spanish Gitana dancer Carmen Amaya, synthesized various identity categories in what I call modern synthesis, an idea expanded on from Monica Miller's article, "The Black Dandy as Bad Modernist." Expanding on various scholars including Brenda Dixon Gottschild, I argue Baker emerged from a tragic/comic context of African American performance which developed from slavery to vaudeville while Amaya came from flamenco, which, according to William Washabaugh in his Flamenco: Passion, Politics, and Popular Culture, exhibits simultaneous opposition as it simultaneously exists within various identity categories and qualities in flamenco culture. Emerging from these dissonant traditions, Amaya and Baker merge male and female stylization into hybrid-gendered performances in successful transatlantic careers that suggested possibilities beyond what was acceptable for women of color in their era.