Dancing resistance

Choreography as political praxis in transcultural space

Abstract

This article examines choreography as a political and epistemological practice of resistance in transcultural spaces, focusing on the interrelated methods of haunting and spirituality. Drawing on Avery Gordon’s sociology of haunting, Diana Taylor’s transculturation and repertoire, Gloria Anzaldúa’s spiritual activism, and José Esteban Muñoz’s queer failure, it theorizes dance as an embodied form of historical reckoning and knowledge transmission. Through an in-depth analysis of Aurora Sun Labeija’s solo performance Realness: Luk Kreung, the article demonstrates how choreography stages unresolved pasts, such as colonial militarization, gendered labour, and familial trauma, through gestural, repetitive, and ritual movement. By merging ballroom culture, Buddhist meditation, and Thai classical dance, Sun’s work enacts a critical refusal of normative political agency. The study argues that such choreographic practices constitute a vital form of sociological inquiry, one that disrupts dominant historical narratives and imagines queer, open-ended futures through embodied resistance.