This book sheds light on the fascinating untold story behind what is collectively and disputably called "disco dancing," and the incredible effect that the phenomenon had on America-in New York City and beyond. Disco is a dance and musical style that still influences these art forms today. Many think that disco "died" completely after the 1970s drew to a close, but in actuality people continued dancing in the clubs after the very word "disco" became an anathema. Disco Dance explains why disco was more than just a dance form or a fad, describing many of the clubs-in New York City especially-where the disco subculture thrived. The author examines the origins of disco music, its evolution, and how young people adapted the dance styles of the day to the disco beat, charting how this dance of celebration and rebellion during troubling times became subject to ridicule by the end of the decade. Provides information from interviews with famed disco dancers, the DJs who worked in concert with them, and habitual club goers Contains dancers' playlists and quotes from period musicians Includes archival art and photographs

Have you ever sat in the audience but wished you were on the stage? Or maybe you are a naturally creative person but sometimes you feel blocked or find it hard to keep going? If you ever breathed in with joy when you saw a particular colour, like the colour of the gorse or the sea, and would like to recapture that feeling and build on it, this book is for you. It will help you to become fitter in body and soul, to slow down your thinking and worrying and inhabit your body with more passion and ease. Lani O'Hanlon brings the creative and healing arts together in Dancing the Rainbow. It includes the story of how movement and dance transformed her life when she started to use dance to heal the trauma in her own body, and her book sets out to also transform the reader's life through dance. With easy to follow illustrations throughout, it uses tried and tested methods to unlock creative potential in a way that is in balance with the body's rhythm and with the rhythm of the Earth.

These vividly written letters document the lives of two remarkable women artists who were at the center of twentieth-century dance modernism. Mary Wigman's groundbreaking choreography and inspired performing in Germany during the 1910s and 1920s brought the emerging art of modern dance into dialogue with modern painting, theater, and film. Her disciple Hanya Holm took Wigman's aesthetic philosophy to the United States in 1931, effectively adapting it to the American temperament, and ultimately became a celebrated choreographer of Broadway musicals such as ""Kiss Me, Kate"" and ""My Fair Lady"". Written between 1920 and 1971, Wigman's letters are a treasury of fascinating detail about artistry, friendships of women, and the stamina of two artists who refused to capitulate to personal, political, and cultural forces that confronted them. They inject immediacy into discussions of Wigman's work within the Third Reich and cast light on Holm's construction of an American identity. With her extensive annotation Gitelman contributes context to the domestic and social spheres within which the women worked on two continents. Never before published in any language, these letters are untapped resources for historians of twentieth-century culture, German-American relations, as well as dance.

Ann Daly ranks among the most insightful, articulate dance critics and scholars writing today. Spanning the divide between journalism and scholarship, this collection offers a double-sighted view of dance in America from 1986 to the present, documenting the shift in experimental dance from formal to social concerns, and recording the expansion of dance studies in the academy from historical documentation to cultural criticism.
Daly examines performance art and visual art as they relate to and influence dance, with a look at the intersection of dance and history. Gender is the subject of the final section of the book. More than 80 reviews, features, essays, interviews and scholarly articles -- including extended considerations of Pina Bausch, Deborah Hay, Bill T. Jones and Ralph Lemon -- were originally published in venues ranging from High Performance to The New York Times to TDR: A Journal of Performance Studies.

Marian Horosko brings together new and previously published interviews of Martha Graham's ""family"" of dancers, teachers, choreographers and actors and interweaves them with provocative biographical material about the life and influence of the creator of classic modern dance. Spanning the past 75 years, the interviews testify to the remarkable legacy that inspired the careers of many in the dance world, among them dancers from the contemporary generation who inherited her technique, but never saw her perform. The interviews of teachers, all former Graham students, reflect their passion for maintaining Graham's few fixed principles and her emotional integrity. Some of the foremost actors of Graham's time (she died in 1991) describe their stormy encounters with her in the process of her attempts to teach them that ""movement doesn't lie"". Although not a textbook - no textbook describing the exercises exists at the time of publication - this book offers a syllabus of Graham's work. Drawn from a private film of a class for her advanced and professional company members in the 1960s, it includes comments from Graham and testifies to her use of imagery in teaching. Photographs that capture the dancers' physical configuration document the development of Graham's choreographic legacy, which expanded and changed as she created each new work, more than 200 in all. These images, along with the interviews and commentary, plot the evolution of Graham's methodology and vocabulary of movement, on which classical modern dance continues to rely.

The vital role of dance in enacting the embodied experiences of Indigenous peoples In Dancing Indigenous Worlds, Jacqueline Shea Murphy brings contemporary Indigenous dance makers into the spotlight, putting critical dance studies and Indigenous studies in conversation with one another in fresh and exciting new ways. Exploring Indigenous dance from North America and Aotearoa (New Zealand), she shows how dance artists communicate Indigenous ways of being, as well as generate a political force, engaging Indigenous understandings and histories. Following specific dance works over time, Shea Murphy interweaves analysis, personal narrative, and written contributions from multiple dance artists, demonstrating dance's crucial work in asserting and enacting Indigenous worldviews and the embodied experiences of Indigenous peoples. As Shea Murphy asserts, these dance-making practices can not only disrupt the structures that European colonization feeds upon and strives to maintain, but they can also recalibrate contemporary dance. Based on more than twenty years of relationship building and research, Shea Murphy's work contributes to growing, and largely underreported, discourses on decolonizing dance studies, and the geopolitical, gendered, racial, and relational meanings that dance theorizes and negotiates. She also includes discussions about the ethics of writing about Indigenous knowledge and peoples as a non-Indigenous scholar, and models approaches for doing so within structures of ongoing reciprocal, respectful, responsible action.

On Site: Methods for Site-Specific Performance Creation is a practical book for artists and students at all levels who create or are learning to create making sited dance works. Author Stephan Koplowitz covers specific, hands-on strategies for an array of issues to consider before, during, and after embarking upon a project, including site selection, procuring permits, designing the audience experience, researching and exploring a site for inspiration and content, differences in urban and natural environments, definitions of key production roles, building effective collaborations with artists, and techniques to generate site-inspired production elements such as sound/music, costumes, lighting, and media. He also offers helpful chapters on project budgeting, contract negotiation, fundraising, marketing, documentation, and assessment. Based on the author's career spanning over 30 years of site-specific creation, the book also includes the voices of over 24 other artists, producers, and writers who share their perspectives and experiences on the many topics covered. A guide designed to make site work practical, intentional, and attainable, On Site will become a well-worn reference for anyone interested in the creative process and discovering the power of site-specific works.

There are many skills one needs to produce a piece of dance. Bruce describes the basic foundation or ingredients of his version of Dance Theatre as: Movement, Drama, Sound and Vision. A choreographer has to study all of them to the best of their ability and learn how to combine them. _x000D_ There is no definitive method of choreography. Any choreographer who has a voice has learnt and executed it in their way. Choreographers pick up things here and there from what they see, who they work with, and assemble a craft themselves. So much of what they do as artists is intuition and instinct. Creativity cannot be tamed and fully understood or concluded. Artists are dealing with imagination.

A massive dance music revolution swept across Europe and Britain beginning early in the 1980s. Merging rock, new wave, disco and worldbeat sounds, an explosion of exciting and increasingly electronic dance-pop music caused a sensation worldwide. In this book of original interviews, 32 of the era's most celebrated singers, songwriters, producers and industry professionals share fascinating memories of their lives and careers during this extraordinary time. They include Thomas Anders (Modern Talking's "You're My Heart, You're My Soul"), Pete Burns (Dead or Alive's "You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)"), Desireless ("Voyage Voyage"), Phil Harding (PWL Mixmaster), Junior ("Mama Used To Say"), Leee John (Imagination's "Just An Illusion"), Liz Mitchell (Boney M.'s 1988 "Megamix"), Fab Morvan (Milli Vanilli's "Girl You Know It's True"), Taco ("Putting On the Ritz"), Jennifer Rush ("The Power of Love"), Sabrina ("Boys"), Spagna ("Call Me"), Amii Stewart ("Knock On Wood"), Yazz ("The Only Way Is Up") and many more. Special commentary by Academy Award winner Mel Brooks and Dallas TV star Audrey Landers.

Theorizing the experiences of black and brown bodies in hip hop dance Baring Unbearable Sensualities brings together a bold methodology, an interdisciplinary perspective and a rich array of primary sources to deepen and complicate mainstream understandings of Hip Hop Dance, an Afro-diasporic dance form, which have generally reduced the style to a set of techniques divorced from social contexts. Drawing on close observation and interviews with Hip Hop pioneers and their students, Rosemarie A. Roberts proposes that Hip Hop Dance is a collective and sentient process of resisting oppressive manifestations of race and power. Roberts argues that the experiences of marginalized black and brown bodies materialize in and through Hip Hop Dance from the streets of urban centers to contemporary worldwide expressions. A companion web site contains over 30 video clips referenced in the text.

In response to a scarcity of writings on the intersections between dance and Christianity, Dancing to Transform examines the religious lives of American Christians who, despite the historically tenuous place of dance within Christianity, are also professional dancers. Emily Wright details how these dancing Christians transform what they perceive as secular professional by transforming concert dance into different kinds of religious practices in order to express individual and communal religious identities. Through a multi-site, qualitative study of four professional dance companies, Wright explores how religious and artistic commitments, everyday lived experience and varied performance contexts influence and shape the approaches of Christian professional dancers to creating, transforming and performing dance. Subsequently, this book provides readers with a greater awareness and appreciation for the complex interactions between American Christianity and dance. This study, in turn, delivers audiences a richer, more nuanced picture of the complex histories of these Christian, dancing communities and offers more fruitful readings of their choreographic productions.

One of the most important dance artists of the twentieth century, dancer and choreographer Katherine Dunham (1909-2006) created works that thrilled audiences the world over. As an African American woman, she broke barriers of race and gender, most notably as the founder of an important dance company that toured the United States, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Australia for several decades. Through both her company and her schools, she influenced generations of performers for years to come, from Alvin Ailey to Marlon Brando to Eartha Kitt. Dunham was also one of the first choreographers to conduct anthropological research about dance and translate her findings for the theatrical stage. Katherine Dunham: Dance and the African Diaspora makes the argument that Dunham was more than a dancer-she was an intellectual and activist committed to using dance to fight for racial justice. Dunham saw dance as a tool of liberation, as a way for people of African descent to reclaim their history and forge a new future. She put her theories into motion not only through performance, but also through education, scholarship, travel, and choices about her own life. Author Joanna Dee Das examines how Dunham struggled to balance artistic dreams, personal desires, economic needs, and political commitments in the face of racism and sexism. The book analyzes Dunham's multiple spheres of engagement, assessing her dance performances as a form of black feminist protest while also presenting new material about her schools in New York and East St. Louis, her work in Haiti, and her network of interlocutors that included figures as diverse as ballet choreographer George Balanchine and Senegalese president Leopold Sedar Senghor. It traces Dunham's influence over the course of several decades from the New Negro Movement of the 1920s to the Black Power Movement of the late 1960s and beyond. By drawing on a vast, never-utilized trove of archival materials along with oral histories, choreographic analysis, and embodied research, Katherine Dunham: Dance and the African Diaspora offers new insight about how this remarkable woman built political solidarity through the arts.

Bob Fosse (1927-87) is recognized as one of the most significant figures in the post-World War II American musical theater. With his first Broadway musical, The Pajama Game in 1954, the "Fosse style" was already fully developed, with the hunched shoulders, turned in stance, and stuttering, staccato jazz movements. Fosse moved decisively into the role of director with Redhead in 1959 and was a key figure in the rise of the director-choreographer in the Broadway musical. He also became the only star director of musicals of his era-a group that included Jerome Robbins, Gower Champion, Michael Kidd, and Harold Prince- to equal his Broadway success in films. Following his unprecedented triple crown of show business awards in 1973 (an Oscar for Cabaret, Emmy for Liza With a Z, and Tony for Pippin), Fosse assumed complete control of virtually every element of his projects. But when at last he had achieved complete autonomy, his final projects, the film Star 80 and the musical Big Deal, both written and directed by Fosse, were rejected by audiences and critics. A fascinating look at the evolution of Fosse as choreographer and director, Big Deal: Bob Fosse and Dance in the American Musical considers Fosse's career in the context of changes in the Broadway musical theater over four decades. It traces his early dance years and the importance of early mentors George Abbott and Jerome Robbins on his work. It examines how each of the important women in his adult life-all dancers-impacted his career and influenced his dance aesthetic. Finally, the book investigates how his evolution as both artist and individual mirrored the social and political climate of his era and allowed him to comfortably ride a wave of cultural changes.

How to Land: Finding Ground in an Unstable World presents a new look at embodiment that treats gravity as the organizing force for thinking and moving through our twenty-first century world. Author Ann Cooper Albright argues that a renewed attention to gravity as both a metaphoric sensibility and a physical experience can help transform moments of personal disorientation into an opportunity to reflect on the important relationship between individual resiliency and communal responsibility. Long one of the nation's preeminent thinkers in dance improvisation, Albright asks how dancers are affected by repeated images of falling bodies, bombed-out buildings, and displaced peoples, as well as recurring evocations of global economies and governments in discursive free fall or dissolution. What kind of fear gets lodged in connective tissue when there is an underlying anxiety that certain aspects of our world are in danger of falling apart? To answer this question, she draws on analyses of perception from cognitive studies, tracing the discussions of meaning, body and language through the work of Mark Johnson, Thomas Csordas, and George Lakoff, among others. In addition, she follows the past decade of debate in contemporary media concerning the implications of the weightless and two-dimensional social media exchanges on structures of attention and learning, as well as their effect on the personal growth and socialization of a generation of young adults. Each chapter interweaves discussions of movement actions with their cultural implications, documenting specific bodily experiences and then tracing their ideological ripples out through the world.

Human Kinetics' Interactive Dance Series includes Beginning Tap Dance, Beginning Ballet, Beginning Modern Dance, and now Beginning Jazz Dance and Beginning Musical Theatre Dance. These titles are the traditional dance courses taught through dance, physical education, and fine arts departments for general education students, dance majors, and minors. Using the steps to success model and adaptations from the Outdoor Adventure series, these beginning dance titles contain components from these previous series. Beginning Jazz Dance is the perfect resource for helping students gain a strong foundation of beginning jazz dance techniques. Written by jazz dance choreographer and professor James Robey, this text * prepares students to have a successful experience in a beginning jazz dance technique course; * includes 80 photos accompanied by descriptions that visually present the beginning jazz dance technique and dance concepts that will reinforce and extend classroom learning; and * introduces students to the history, artists, significant works, styles, and aesthetics of the genre so they understand dance as a performing art. In addition, Beginning Jazz Dance comes with a web resource that includes 55 photos and 125 video clips of basic jazz dance technique. Students can access these photos and videos at any time for their study or practice, and instructors and students alike will benefit from the wealth of resources on the website, including assignments, worksheets, glossary terms with and without definitions, interactive chapter quizzes, and web links to help students develop their basic knowledge and skills. (The web resource is included with all new print books and some ebooks. For ebook formats that don't provide access, the web resource is available separately.) Through the text, students learn these aspects of jazz dance: * The core concepts of jazz dance, the value of studying jazz dance, and class expectations * The structure of a jazz dance class, the roles of everyone in the studio, and how to be physically and mentally prepared for class * Tips on injury prevention, nutrition guidelines, and basic anatomy and kinesiology as applied to movement in jazz dance * Basic body alignment and positions in jazz dance * Jazz walks, kicks, turns, leaps, and floor work Beginning Jazz Dance provides students with the context, background information, and basic instruction they need in order to understand the genre and appreciate jazz dance as a performing art. This text, with its companion web resource, is ideal for dance majors, dance minors, and general education students enrolled in beginning jazz dance technique courses. It is also suitable for students in performing arts and magnet schools and high school dance programs.

Popular styles of electronic dance music are pervasively mediated by technology, not only within production but also in performance. The most familiar performance format in this style, the DJ set, is created with turntables, headphones, twelve-inch vinyl records, and a mixing board. Going beyond simply playing other people's records, DJs select, combine, and manipulate different parts of records to form new compositions that differ substantially from their source materials. In recent years, the "laptop set" has become equally common; in this type of performance, musicians use computers and specialized software to transform and reconfigure their own precomposed sounds. Both types of performance are largely improvised, evolving in response to the demands of a particular situation through interaction with a dancing audience. Within performance, musicians make numerous spontaneous decisions about variables such as which sounds they will play, when they will play them, and how they will be combined with other sounds. Yet the elements that constitute these improvisations are also fixed in certain fundamental ways: performances are fashioned from patterns or tracks recorded beforehand, and in the case of DJ sets, these elements are also physical objects (vinyl records). In Playing with Something that Runs, author Mark J. Butler explores these improvised performances, revealing the ways in which musicians utilize seemingly invariable prerecorded elements to create dynamic, real-time improvisations. Based on extensive interviews with musicians in their studios, as well as in-depth studies of particular mediums of performance, including both DJ and laptop sets, Butler explores the ways in which technologies, both material and musical, are used in performance and improvisation in order to make these transformations possible. An illuminating look at the world of popular electronic-music performance, Playing with Something that Runs is an indispensable resource for electronic dance musicians and fans as well as scholars and students of popular music.

In the early days of swing dancing, Frankie Manning stood out for his moves and his innovative routines. This is his autobiography, recalling how his first years of dancing as a teenager at Harlem's Savoy Ballroom led to his becoming chief choreographer and a lead dancer for 'Whitey's Lindy Hoppers'.