Performing selves: the semiotics of selfhood in Samoan dance

Dianna Mary. Georgina

doi:10.7273/000005774

This dissertation investigates three questions: 1) How valid is Erik Erikson’s theory of adolescent identity formation for teens in American Samoa? 2) What role could traditional Samoan dance play in forming a sense of self that merges two opposing cultural concepts of self? 3) Can dance provide a venue for the semiotic representation of a merging of these construals of self? While adolescence as a developmental period is not new to Samoa, teenagers in American Samoa are going through an adolescence that has become more similar to that experienced by American teens and less like the smooth and easy adolescence Mead described. Teens, according to Erik Erikson, are in a developmental period where they are asking themselves, “Who am I?” It is difficult to define self when one’s traditional culture emphasizes harmonious interdependence and playing one’s proper role in the hierarchy; meanwhile, the attractive, modern culture seen on television and in the movies emphasizes independence and individuality. Not all teens were experiencing the kind of emotional turbulence that led others to selfdestructive behaviors. Adolescent girls I spoke with were demonstrating resilience and an ability to thrive emotionally. They have merged Western and Samoan cultural conceptions of self through traditional Samoan dance. Adolescent girls in American Samoa are also challenging the social norms of the role of girls and women in dance and perhaps in society. They are emiotically merging opposing definitions of self and identity through dance, by inserting elements of individuality in a group activity. They are dancing again in the role of clown, and in what has been an all-male dance, the ‘ailao. By reasserting their roles as clowns and warriors, they are reclaiming a modern version of pre-contact traditional roles. As American Samoa gradually changes with encroachment by the West, traditional Samoan dance also evolves. Not only is it absorbing elements of dance forms and styles from other Polynesian islands and adapting to pressures to be more appealing to non-Samoans, it is also changing to reflect the changes in conceptions of self influenced by globalization and the spread of Western ideas. It will be interesting to see how today’s adolescent girls, when they become tomorrow’s dance choreographers, modify traditional Samoan dance to reflect other changes—the seeds of which are being sown today. This dissertation contributes to our understanding of adolescent identity formation in a postcolonial non-Western culture by examining the validity of Erik Erikson’s theory in American Samoa. It contributes to theories of biculturalism by exploring the ways in which Samoan adolescent girls are using traditional Samoan dance in defining self in a two-culture world—a self that merges opposing cultural concepts of what it means to be a person. It also explores the role played by traditional Samoan dance in the creation and expression of this composite concept of self.

Performing selves: the semiotics of selfhood in Samoan dance

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