NOW A MAJOR FILM BY RALPH FIENNES, THE WHITE CROW 'A gripping account of an extraordinary life' Daily Telegraph Born on a train in Stalin's Russia, Rudolf Nureyev was ballet's first pop icon. No other dancer of our time has generated the same excitement - both on and off stage. Nureyev's achievements and conquests became legendary: he rose out of Tatar peasant poverty to become the Kirov's thrilling maverick star; slept with his beloved mentor's wife; defected to the West in 1961; sparked Rudimania across the globe; established the most rhapsodic partnership in dance history with the middle-aged Margot Fonteyn; reinvented male technique; gatecrashed modern dance; moulded new stars; and staged Russia's unknown ballet masterpieces in the West. He and his life were simply astonishing. 'Magnificent, a triumph. Captures every facet of this extraordinary man' Mail on Sunday 'The definitive study of a man who, in his combination of aesthetic grace and psychological grime, can truly be called a sacred monster' Observer 'Undoubtedly the definitive biography' Sunday Telegraph

In 1959, the Bolshoi Ballet arrived in New York for its first ever performances in the United States. The tour was part of the Soviet-American cultural exchange, arranged by the governments of the US and USSR as part of their Cold War strategies. This book explores the first tours of the exchange, by the Bolshoi in 1959 and 1962, by American Ballet Theatre in 1960, and by New York City Ballet in 1962. The tours opened up space for genuine appreciation of foreign ballet. American fans lined up overnight to buy tickets to the Bolshoi, and Soviet audiences packed massive theaters to see American companies. Political leaders, including Khrushchev and Kennedy, met with the dancers. The audience reaction, screaming and crying, was overwhelming. But the tours also began a series of deep misunderstandings. American and Soviet audiences did not view ballet in the same way. Each group experienced the other's ballet through the lens of their own aesthetics. Americans loved Soviet dancers but believed that Soviet ballets were old-fashioned and vulgar. Soviet audiences and critics likewise appreciated American technique and innovation but saw American choreography as empty and dry. Drawing on both Russian- and English-language archival sources, this book demonstrates that the separation between Soviet and American ballet lies less in how the ballets look and sound, and more in the ways that Soviet and American viewers were trained to see and hear. It suggests new ways to understand both Cold War cultural diplomacy and twentieth-century ballet.

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker (b. 1960) founded her dance company, Rosas, in 1983. Her work is grounded on a rigorous exploration of the relationship between dance and music, and over the years she has engaged the musical structures and scores of different periods and genres, from early music to contemporary expressions of classical and popular music. Her choreographic practice draws from geometric principles, nature, and social structures to offer unique perspectives on the articulation of the body in space and time. The minimalism of De Keersmaeker's earliest pieces gave way over the years to ingenious constructions for large ensembles. Then in 2007, the choreography underwent a fundamental change with the emergence of a new kind of minimalism, a paring down to essential principles of sparseness; the spatial constraints of geometric patterns; an unwavering commitment to elementary gestures, notably walking, breathing, and speaking; and a close adherence to a score, musical or otherwise, for the choreographic writing. Photographers Anne Van Aerschot and Herman Sorgeloos were privileged witnesses to this process, and their images, gathered here for the first time, offer an exceptionally acute look at Rosas's work over the last decade. Distributed for Mercatorfonds

Daniel B. Reed integrates individual stories with the study of performance to understand the forces of diaspora and mobility in the lives of musicians, dancers, and mask performers originally from Cote d'Ivoire who now live in the United States. Through the lives of four Ivorian performers, Reed finds that dance and music, being transportable media, serve as effective ways to understand individual migrants in the world today. As members of an immigrant community who are geographically dispersed, these performers are unmoored from their place of origin and yet deeply engaged in presenting their symbolic roots to North American audiences. By looking at performance, Reed shows how translocation has led to transformations on stage, but he is also sensitive to how performance acts as a way to reinforce and maintain community. Abidjan USA provides a multifaceted view of community that is at once local, national, and international, and where identity is central, but transportable, fluid, and adaptable.

Daniel B. Reed integrates individual stories with the study of performance to understand the forces of diaspora and mobility in the lives of musicians, dancers, and mask performers originally from Cote d'Ivoire who now live in the United States. Through the lives of four Ivorian performers, Reed finds that dance and music, being transportable media, serve as effective ways to understand individual migrants in the world today. As members of an immigrant community who are geographically dispersed, these performers are unmoored from their place of origin and yet deeply engaged in presenting their symbolic roots to North American audiences. By looking at performance, Reed shows how translocation has led to transformations on stage, but he is also sensitive to how performance acts as a way to reinforce and maintain community. Abidjan USA provides a multifaceted view of community that is at once local, national, and international, and where identity is central, but transportable, fluid, and adaptable.

In the 1920s and 30s, musicians from Latin America and the Caribbean were flocking to New York, lured by the burgeoning recording studios and lucrative entertainment venues. In the late 1940s and 50s, the big-band mambo dance scene at the famed Palladium Ballroom was the stuff of legend, while modern-day music history was being made as the masters of Afro-Cuban and jazz idiom conspired to create Cubop, the first incarnation of Latin jazz. Then, in the 1960s, as the Latino population came to exceed a million strong, a new generation of New York Latinos, mostly Puerto Ricans born and raised in the city, went on to create the music that came to be called salsa, which continues to enjoy avid popularity around the world. And now, the children of the mambo and salsa generation are contributing to the making of hip hop and reviving ancestral Afro-Caribbean forms like Cuban rumba, Puerto Rican bomba, and Dominican palo. Salsa Rising provides the first full-length historical account of Latin Music in this city guided by close critical attention to issues of tradition and experimentation, authenticity and dilution, and the often clashing roles of cultural communities and the commercial recording industry in the shaping of musical practices and tastes. It is a history not only of the music, the changing styles and practices, the innovators, venues and songs, but also of the music as part of the larger social history, ranging from immigration and urban history, to the formation of communities, to issues of colonialism, race and class as they bear on and are revealed by the trajectory of the music. Author Juan Flores brings a wide range of people in the New York Latin music field into his work, including musicians, producers, arrangers, collectors, journalists, and lay and academic scholars, enriching Salsa Rising with a unique level of engagement with and interest in Latin American communities and musicians themselves.

Independent choreographer and filmmaker Robin Bisio is inspired both by poetry and by her native southern California landscapes, ranging from rolling fields to the rollicking sea shore. She collaborates with many talented artists and performers to create wild and stunning dances in challenging plein air environments. "'Your Flesh Shall Be a Poem' is a very attractive, wind-blown and provocative book." -Allegra Fuller Snyder, Professor Emerita of Dance, and former Director of the Graduate Program in Dance Ethnology, at UCLA

Early hip hop film musicals have either been expunged from cinema history or excoriated in brief passages by critics and other writers. Hip Hop on Film reclaims and reexamines productions such as Breakin' (1984), Beat Street (1984), and Krush Groove (1985) in order to illuminate Hollywood's fascinating efforts to incorporate this nascent urban culture into conventional narrative forms. Such films presented musical conventions against the backdrop of graffiti-splattered trains and abandoned tenements in urban communities of color, setting the stage for radical social and political transformations. Hip hop musicals are also part of the broader history of teen cinema, and films such as Charlie Ahearn's Wild Style (1983) are here examined alongside other contemporary youth-oriented productions. As suburban teen films banished parents and children to the margins of narrative action, hip hop musicals, by contrast, presented inclusive and unconventional filial groupings that included all members of the neighborhood. These alternative social configurations directly referenced specific urban social problems, which affected the stability of inner city families following diminished governmental assistance in communities of color during the 1980s. Breakdancing, a central element of hip hop musicals, is also reconsidered. It gained widespread acclaim at the same time that these films entered the theaters, but the nation's newly discovered dance form was embattled--caught between a multitude of institutional entities such as the ballet academy, advertising culture, and dance publications that vied to control its meaning, particularly in relation to delineations of gender. As street-trained breakers were enticed to join the world of professional ballet, this newly forged relationship was recast by dance promoters as a way to invigorate and ""remasculinize"" European dance, while young women simultaneously critiqued conventional masculinities through an appropriation of breakdance. These multiple and volatile histories influenced the first wave of hip hop films, and even structured the sleeper hit Flashdance (1983). This forgotten, ignored, and maligned cinema is not only an important aspect of hip hop history, but is also central to the histories of teen film, the postclassical musical, and even institutional dance. Kimberley Monteyne places these films within the wider context of their cultural antecedents and reconsiders the genre's influence.

Robert Cohan is part of the pantheon of American contemporary choreographers which includes Alvin Ailey and Paul Taylor. Like them he follows in the tradition of their teacher Martha Graham whose works were grounded in finding through dance a way to express the human condition, in all its forms. This he has done in over fifty works, from early solos and duets to large group works which have been performed by contemporary and ballet companies around the world. A distinguished teacher, choreographer and advocate for dance, he has shaped the lives of generations of dance artists. Robert Cohan joined the Martha Graham Dance Company in 1946 and left it 23 years later when he was invited by Robin Howard to become the first Artistic Director of the Contemporary Dance Trust in London and as such was the founder Artistic Director of The Place, London Contemporary Dance School and London Contemporary Dance Theatre, which he directed for over 20 years. As director of LCDT he created many works for the Company in collaboration with leading composers and designers, including the classics, Cell, Stabat Mater, Forest and Nymphaeas. No one has had a greater influence on the development of dance in Britain than Cohan. Having pioneered the teaching of contemporary dance technique in Britain, he was instrumental in the development of a vast following, not only for the repertory of LCDT but through his pioneering residencies held throughout the country, for the many other British companies which followed. Without him there would be no Robert North, Richard Alston, Siobhan Davies, Lloyd Newson, Rosemary Butcher, Dharshan Singh-Bhuller, Anthony van Laast: the list could go on and include choreographers and dancers in every part of the world. From 1980 to 1990 he acted as the Artistic Advisor to the Batsheva Dance Company and choreographed several works for them and the Bat Dor Company in Israel. He has been continually in demand as a director of choreographic courses, notably the International Course for Professional Choreographers and Composers which he directed six times. Since 1989 he has been working freelance and has choreographed ballets for Scottish Ballet as well as companies in Germany and Italy. This book is based on extensive interviews with Cohan, his family, friends and colleagues. Drawing together his life in dance around the world, it provides the first in depth study of this seminal figure in the dance world. The author: Paul Jackson trained in both music and dance and has worked in both subjects internationally. He is a past Chair of the Standing Conference for Dance in Higher Education, the umbrella organisation for British university dance departments. From 1997-2002 he was head of music at Northumbria University where he also founded both dance degrees. He worked previously at the Arts Educational Schools, Islington Arts Factory, Central School of Ballet and at Walter Nicks' school the CFPD in Poitiers, France.

While Jews are commonly referred to as the "people of the book," American Jewish choreographers have consistently turned to dance as a means to articulate personal and collective identities; tangle with stereotypes; advance social and political agendas; and imagine new possibilities for themselves as individuals, artists, and Jews. Dancing Jewish delineates this rich history, demonstrating that Jewish choreographers have not only been vital contributors to American modern and postmodern dance, but that they have also played a critical and unacknowledged role in the history of Jews in the United States. By examining the role dance has played in the struggle between Jewish identification and integration into American life, the book moves across disciplinary boundaries to show how cultural identity, nationality, ethnicity, and gender are formed and performed through the body and its motions. A dancer and choreographer, as well as an historian, Rebecca Rossen offers evocative analyses of dances while asserting the importance of embodied methodologies to academic research. Featuring over fifty images, a companion website, and key works from 1930 to 2005 by a wide range of artists-including David Dorfman, Dan Froot, David Gordon, Hadassah, Margaret Jenkins, Pauline Koner, Dvora Lapson, Liz Lerman, Sophie Maslow, Anna Sokolow, and Benjamin Zemach-Dancing Jewish offers a comprehensive framework for interpreting performance and establishes dance as a crucial site in which American Jews have grappled with cultural belonging, personal and collective histories, and the values that bind and pull them apart.

Does a dance communicate ? What ? How ? Are all dances meaningful ? Do spectators see what a choreographer sees ? "The strands of the dance medium like locks of hair plait into one meaningful whole. The interlock is all." The interlock is what this book explores from the choreographer and performers' perspective with every genre in contemporary dance theatre in mind. Written for practical people in dance, the text is organised in 32 short chapters each addressing a question on the way in which choreographers might or might not engage with their audiences in dance theatre works. The topics include an introduction to communication theory and the way in which the interlocking network between performers, movement material, sound, and performance can carry meaning. The book is written from choreographers' and performers' perspectives, with 46 dance works cited from a wide range of genres. The text is unusually presented - as closely as possible to how we speak to each other - with key words in bold type for ease of reference. Valerie Preston-Dunlop is an internationally recognised lecturer, teacher, and author on dance. She is currently Adviser for Postgraduate Studies and Research at the Trinity Laban Centre in London.

A Performance link between the Biography of Lester Horton and his Dance Technique. Bradley Shelver explores the training and performance potentials of Horton's Technique. Through his own experiences with dancing and teaching, Shelver explains the benefits and comparisons between the Horton Technique and other dance training tools. With photographs by Torben Rasmussen, the book gives a detailed glimpse of the past and future of the Dance Technique of Lester Horton. Introduction is written by Ana Marie Forsythe.

DESTINED TO DANCE They called her a genius. They called her a goddess. They called her a monster. Which title best fits Martha Graham, iconic Mother of Modern Dance? Find out - in the first historical novel about this great American diva. DESTINED TO DANCE is a creative portrait of the legendary dancer and choreographer. Written by award-winning author Marcy Heidish, Martha Graham's story holds the spotlight - and the reader. Skillfully weaving fact and fiction, Heidish (A Woman Called Moses, etc.) offers another remarkable account of an American heroine: her successes, her sorrows, and her struggles. Here is a masterful portrait of Graham, onstage, back-stage, offstage. With literary grace and lively prose, the woman behind the icon is revealed. We see Graham's break-through brilliance, often compared to Picasso's or Sravinsky. We also witness Graham's triumph over alcoholism, despair, and a failed marriage. Set against the intriguing world of dance, Martha Graham's story offers us a close-up on a complex and compelling overcomer. Martha Graham (1894-1991) invented a new "language of movement," still taught around the world and exemplified in such classic works as Appalachian Spring, among 180 others. The Martha Graham Center for Contemporary Dance tours widely and its current artistic director, a former Graham dancer, has contributed unique input to this novel. As always, Heidish's research is thorough and her sense of her subject is magical. For all who love the arts, all who seek inspiration, and all who like to read between history's lines, DESTINED TO DANCE is a must-read book.

In distinction to many extant histories of ballet, The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Ballet prioritizes connections between ballet communities as it interweaves chapters by scholars, critics, choreographers, and working professional dancers. The book looks at the many ways ballet functions as a global practice in the 21st century, providing new perspectives on ballet's past, present, and future. As an effort to dismantle the linearity of academic canons, the fifty-three chapters within provide multiple entry points for readers to engage in balletic discourse. With an emphasis on composition and process alongside dances created, and the assertion that contemporary ballet is a definitive era, the book carves out space for critical inquiry. Many of the chapters consider whether or not ballet can reconcile its past and actually become present, while others see ballet as flexible and willing to be remolded at the hands of those with tools to do so.