Carmela Muzio Dormani

“The Many Lives of Mambo” focuses on the creative world and cultural production of New York’s “on2” salsa dance scene. The project explores how dancers resist the racialized commodification of salsa by claiming physical space in the hyper-gentrified city and narrative space in the saturated social media landscape. The first full-length ethnographic study of this community of dancers, the study brings necessary critical attention back to salsa’s home city in the 21st century to examine what a cultural movement born out of community collaboration in working-class neighborhoods of color can tell us about today’s urban landscape.