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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Whether as performers or spectators, more people enjoy dance today than ever before. Its extraordinary range extends from classical ballet and baroque court spectacles to avant-garde modern dance, tap and world dance. Everyone with an interest in dance will have felt the need for a guide to the art's rich history and complex present state. Susan Au's lucid text covers the whole subject, vividly describing the great performers and performances of the past as well as exploring in detail the dance world of today. A generous selection of illustrations completes the picture, taking the reader from the palaces of the Medici to the lofts of Manhattan, from the dancing of Louis XIV to the experimental choreography of Twyla Tharp and Pina Bausch. A new final chapter documents the work of the chief dancers and choreographers from the 1980s to the present, covering offshoots of modern dance such as Tanztheater and Butoh, and recent developments in performance art and sitespecific choreography. The author discusses the upsurge in the popularity of dances of the past, among them ballroom dancing and the Argentine tango, and notes the revival of tap dancing as well as the successful transition of Irish step dancing to the theatre. In addition, she records the uses dance and dancers have made of recent technological advances, including cinedance and videodance, CD-ROMs, and the Internet.

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

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.

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.

In recent years, a growth in dance and wellbeing scholarship has resulted in new ways of thinking that place the body, movement, and dance in a central place with renewed significance for wellbeing. The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Wellbeing examines dance and related movement practices from the perspectives of neuroscience and health, community and education, and psychology and sociology to contribute towards an understanding of wellbeing, offer new insights into existing practices, and create a space where sufficient exchange is enabled. The handbook's research components include quantitative, qualitative, and arts-based research, covering diverse discourses, methodologies, and perspectives that add to the development of a complete picture of the topic. Throughout the handbook's wide-ranging chapters, the objective observations, felt experiences, and artistic explorations of practitioners interact with and are printed alongside academic chapters to establish an egalitarian and impactful exchange of ideas.