Invitation to the Dance: Authenticity and Fusion in Tango Shalom and Other Multicultural Movies

Movies have designated dance as a positive way for marginal and groups assigned a low status to cope with the enduring pain of inequality. A brief history of dance movies reveals the sentimental appeal of stories of coping with inequality by adopting dancer identities. The recent movie Tango Shalom offers an example of the use of dancing as a model for reconciling subcultural integrity with multicultural harmony and for substituting self-chosen identities as a relief from socially imposed identities of disadvantage.