One of the most important articles I’ve ever read is “An Anthropologist Looks at Ballet as a Form of Ethnic Dance” by Joann Kealiinohomoku (What Is Dance? Readings in Theory and Criticism Eds. Roger Copeland and Marshall Cohen. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. 533 – 49). You can read the article here but I’ll try to upload it somewhere myself.
If you’ve any interest in ethnicity and dance, and concurrently in the appropriation or adoption of black dance by white dancers, then you should read that article.
Some of my posts on these topics:
Another look at appropriation in dance (1st Dec 2011)
black-white dance (19th Apr 2006)
gimme de kneebone bent (19th Nov 2011)