his dissertation analyzes the social practices around the dance halls of a Valencian central region, l’Horta-Albufera, during the 1940’s and 50’s. It begins with a reflection of the social identity of Horta’s people, and the often-contradicting spoken evidence which have conditioned profound study of dance halls located outside of big cities. From oral sources and local written documents, the research combines synchronic and diachronic point of views to exploring the different articulations which progressively transformed leisure activities in this area, putting special emphasis on the social interactivity and the contingency of the processes. The dance halls of this era —built in this region in 1929, 1944 and 1947—, established a stable and frequent leisure time which in previous decades had mainly been absorbed by dances organised by political and recreational circles. In the advent of the Franco regime, and in concordance with the Church discourse, the dictatorship needed to manage the presence of the dancing establishment, which didn’t liberalise entirely until 1946. Despite the regime’s acrid rhetoric to modern dance, the weekly dance session on dance halls were consolidated, and even grew, coexisting with celebrations and rituals of the life cycle and festive calendar of the area. The performance codification, the regulative practices of gender roles —in other musical events too, like the everyday songs—, the working and development of the event industry and their actors, the urbanism in relation to leisure, and the movements of young people into the promenades and dance sessions, were reorganised especially in the fifties. This process of change, in l’Horta-Albufera, cannot be understood without the career of people who danced in these spaces.
Les pistes de ball durant el primer franquisme: espais de lleure a l'Horta-Albufera
Ferrer Senabre, I. (Author). 2 Dec 2013
Student thesis: Doctoral thesis
Student thesis: Doctoral thesis