How does Shakira "have it all?"

From her pies descalzos (bare feet) to those hips that don’t lie, Shakira has undoubtedly become a global phenomenon. A bit of pride emerges knowing that she hails from my mother’s home town of Barranquilla, Colombia. I learned all of her songs by heart back in 1996 when anyone and everyone in Colombia (and even Latin America) wondered where there love/heart was… ¿dónde estás corázon? … only to let out a sigh of relief knowing that he/she would eventually reply, ‘estoy aqui.’

When she began to dance more confidently in her performances and videos I was intrigued. Had her transition from pop-rockera in Latin America to ‘sexy Latina’ in the US commissioned her hips to begin moving and enticing? She quickly affirmed her body’s technical and aesthetic prowess by claiming that her hips didn’t lie. But it wasn’t until I saw her dancing bullerengue (a Colombian folkloric dance about female fertility) surrounded by representations of Barranquilla's carnivalesque revelry and dressed in white, skirts raised, hips pulsing side to side, that I knew I was in love (it's about 2:30 minutes into the Hips Don't Lie video)

Shakira - Hips Don't Lie
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Her hips continued to enthrall me when they were paired with Beyoncé’s. Here was a pairing of skin and sinew, of hips and hair that was almost too hot to handle. But, Shakira’s hips were never always this lithe or limber. In her early career and videos, her jet-black hair lay perfectly straightened down her back while her hips usually hid behind a guitar, a guitar that she has ceased to play as she became more mainstream, thereby replacing the curves of the guitar with her own. I wonder about the power of foreign, othered, and sinewy hips in the global marketplace. How did her hips break free and harness her inner she-wolf? She has admitted to studying Middle Eastern dance and somewhere there exist lonely dance studio spaces with steamed mirrors, longing for her undulating body to be reflected back onto them.

Beyonce Shakira Beautiful liar
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A newly techniqued body, disciplined in the art of hip-notism with hip vocabularies coming from Colombian cumbia and bullerengue, Middle Eastern "belly dance", and Brazilian samba accompanied her wavy blond hair and the hippie-rocker image which emerged as Shakira “crossed-over.” The juxtaposition between ripped jeans and harem-style hips drove the MTV crowd crazy. That’s right, Shakira, show them what hips can do!!

SHAKIRA Live - Objection
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Many hip-circles, figure eights, samba hip shimmies, and undulations initiated from the pelvis later, Shakira winds up sharing recording studio space with Lil Wayne and Timbaland to create the track “Give It Up To Me.” Here is where I shall pause, catch my breath and stretch for a moment.

Shakira ft. Lil Wayne - Give It Up To Me Official MusicVideo
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The video articulates a global citizenship for Shakira, a sonic and kinetic environment where access to the world is “given up to her.” Here, she metaphorically moves from the “third world” (her native Colombia) through the “first” (US hip hop culture) and back to the “third” (Asia), hips swinging in time to the infectious Timbaland beats that are visualized by the pounding woofers in the background. Lil Wayne is almost an accessory (or assistant) to her desire to have it all, his presence in the video merely to appreciate how “her hips swing like nunchuks.” Even his gaze shifts to her hips sways and at one point she waves him away coyly, dismissing his compliments, but even more so, dismissing her need for his presence. What I find troubling about this video is how the black bodies, Lil Wayne’s and then the dancing black girl chorus, literally labor in order to render Shakira’s global citizenship. Yes, she can have it all (records, money, fame, dancing ability, trademarked hip moves, money for her charity back home in Colombia) as long as there are other bodies around that will do the signifying and racializing labor for her. For example, a dancing black girl chorus (because I am reading Jayna Brown’s amazing book, Babylon Girls, this is the term that is in my mind at the moment) first appear in shadow; they are strong, muscular bodies frozen in poses, looking ready to pounce. She-wolves indeed. Initially, they are de-racialized because we cannot completely identify skin color but, at the same time the sonic environment along with the dance vocabularies used immediately racializes them. They are finally perceived as “black” when the lights turn on, and even more so by Shakira’s body. Her pale, blond appearance next to these deep cocoa brown women only intensifies Shakira’s incursion into “whiteness.” An exotic “whiteness” to be sure, her body capable of moving those hips, legs, torso and arms in ways not immediately associated with a white dancing body aesthetic. She is strategically placed in the center further highlighting her own highlighted body as it enacts black expressive gestures stemming from juba, step-dancing, and hip hop with militaristic precision.

Later in the video, the skyline of Hong Kong signifies Shakira’s global travels as she moves from the US (where I situate hip-hop in this analysis) to South and East Asia. Computerized Ganesh arms appear behind hers while her fingertips adorned with Thai gold and gesturing in an amalgam of bharata natyam and Thai arm movements seem to conjure the global capitalist marketplace that has indeed embraced her as a commodity worth consuming in the first world, or the third, or any other that exists in between.

Allusions to Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” video and choreography appear, yet the choreography in “Give it up to me” seems relatively easier to pick up and master for those willing to practice, learn and embody the moves. While the chorus repeats “you can have it all, anything you want, you can make it yours, anything you want in the world” like a self help daily affirmation, I think about how Shakira has utilized her celebrity status and the cultural and economic capital that comes with that, to start an educational children’s charity in Colombia called Pies Descalzos Foundation. Rather than make a value statement or judgment on this kind of philanthropic endeavor, I want to consider how the rendering of a third world woman’s body into a first world commodity (through Shakira’s own self-exoticization and fetishization) enables “charitable” circulations of capital. What is at stake in terms of the processes through which such capital is gained? What types of bodies are used, valued or created in order for such processes to occur and what does that say about how consumerism and capitalism operate? To conclude with not really a conclusion in this instance, I just want to state that the trademarking of truthful, ample, yet nimble hips by Shakira has allowed her to assume some power over the world with an army of poised black women hands on swinging hips, ready to attack.

Dance, Power, Obamamania

Having written these quick perspectives on dance practice and the figure of Obama, I realized that I should look at the man himself dancing. He did a lot of it. It reminds me of that quote, "if I can't dance in your revolution, then I don't want to be a part of it..." often attributed to Emma Goldman.



Obama the man seemd to be having a genuinely good time spreading his message wherever he went. His forays into ass shaking, rather than cause a good deal of laughing, were met with geniune delight and response in kind. We can think about his hips, and those cute little fists up by the shoulders, relaying information that he could not otherwise say without sounding cocky and/or crazy: "I am winning and I know it. I am joyful in this knowledge and I invite you to join me in this feeling."



Obama is that guy who starts dancing across the dance floor when his song comes on in search of a partner, moving his head and hips while professionally scanning the room until he finds YOU.



Obviously, a lot of people decided he would be a great dance partner, just enough awkardness to make his moves accesible and endearing; locked on the beat, though, so you can't get lost in the melissima or polyrhythm. It's in his dancing that all of his points of origins could be said to coalesce, revealing a man with many options, not one beholden to "blood memories."

In dance scholarship we frequently trace, or at least attempt to, the history of a dance move, discover who it "Really" belongs to, when it was first performed/staged/recorded/taught, etc. This act is usually futile, since most popular dances evolve mightily form their point of origin, other dances that seem to circulate mostly as religious implements tend to turn up at house parties with different music, poeple travel, artists, travel and then so do the dances. The provenance of a dance is quite an elusive thing.

Similarly, stamping a racial identity onto a series of floor patterns, torso isolations (or not), spine positions and arm swings can also be exhausting, and in the end, ten years down the line, really not the point of the dance anyway. These days, I prefer to think about dances, popular dances, as a series of networked corpo-realities that mark a specific location, pattern of practice and set of material conditions (that includes access to television and/or robust internet connections). To me, Obama's hips, facial expression, feet, arms, and hands reveal not so much ancestry as travel, accomodation, adoptation...code switching.



Given that we all now find ourselves immersed in codes, digital, indexical and corporeal--the ease with which Obama can allow in his body several codes to co-exist without resolving them is on the one hand, "funny," but on the other, "cool." This not to be confused or conflated with the "cool" that he exudes when getting out of a car, or putting on his jacket, lighting up a cigarette, kicking up his feet. No that cool is almost a picture perfect study in 1950s bebop elegance. The cool that I am referncing is the, "that's ok like that. I like it cause it is itself" type of cool that so many of us use instead of saying, "alright," "ok," or even "yes." Obama's dancing is cool cause, well yeah, I could do that. That's cool.

A little hip there, a lot of teeth here, and soon, Obama's dancing helped create a delirium, a mass need to move with him; effortlessly, in one's own contradictions.