“We Rule the Waves”: Athletic Labor, Femininity, and the Collective in Billy Rose’s Aquacade

Jahanmir, Yasmine Marie

doi:10.1162/DRAM_a_00676

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September 01 2017

“We Rule the Waves”: Athletic Labor, Femininity, and the Collective in Billy Rose’s Aquacade

Yasmine Marie Jahanmir

Yasmine Marie Jahanmir is Assistant Professor of Drama at the American University of Kuwait. A lifelong synchronized swimmer, her dissertation “Bathing Beauties: Gender, Nationalism, and Space in Theatrical Synchronized Swimming” identifies synchronized swimming as an important nexus of feminine labor, nationalist spectacle, and bodily display in American popular culture. She has published in Women and Performance, Theatre Survey, and The Living Dance: An Anthology of Essays on Movement and Culture. She recently completed her PhD in Theater and Dance with an emphasis in Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. [email protected]

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Yasmine Marie Jahanmir

Yasmine Marie Jahanmir is Assistant Professor of Drama at the American University of Kuwait. A lifelong synchronized swimmer, her dissertation “Bathing Beauties: Gender, Nationalism, and Space in Theatrical Synchronized Swimming” identifies synchronized swimming as an important nexus of feminine labor, nationalist spectacle, and bodily display in American popular culture. She has published in Women and Performance, Theatre Survey, and The Living Dance: An Anthology of Essays on Movement and Culture. She recently completed her PhD in Theater and Dance with an emphasis in Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. [email protected]

Online ISSN: 1531-4715

Print ISSN: 1054-2043

2017

New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

TDR/The Drama Review (2017) 61 (3 (235)): 112–131.

https://doi.org/10.1162/DRAM_a_00676

Abstract

In the 1930s and ‘40s, nightclub impresario Billy Rose cast Olympic swimmers and divers in starring roles for his patriotic World’s Fair revue. Positioning the Aquacade in the genealogies of mass spectacles, militaristic display, girly revues, and the rising popularity of pool culture reveals the theatrical framing of athletic labor as vigorously effective in creating a visible female collective on the eve of World War II.

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2017

New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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