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.

Laban's The Mastery of Movement on the Stage, first published in 1950, quickly came to be accepted as the standard work on his conception of human move-ment. When he died, Laban was in the process of preparing a new edition of the book, and so for some time after his death it was out of print. That a second edition appeared was solely due to the efforts of Lisa Ullmann, who, better than any other person, was aware of the changes that Laban had intended to make. The rather broader treatment of the subject made advis-able the change of title, for it was recognised that the book would appeal to all who seek to understand movement as a force in life. In this fourth edition Lisa Ullmann has taken the opportunity to make margin annotations to indicate the subject matter referred to in a particular section of the text, so that specified topics may be easily found. Kinetograms have been added to most of the examples in Chapters 2 and 3, as Laban originally intended, for the growing number of people who read and write movement notation. Lisa Ullmann has also compiled an Appendix on the the structure of effort, drawing largely on material from an unpublished book by Laban. The relationship between the inner motivation of movement and the outer functioning of the body is explored. Acting and dancing are shown as activities deeply concerned with man's urge to establish values and meanings. The student is introduced to basic principles underlying movement expres-sion and experience and the numerous exercises are intended to challenge his or her intellectual, emotional and physical responses. The many descrip-tions of movement scenes and mine-dances are designed to stimulate penetra-tion into man's inner life from where movement and action originate.

"Vandekeybus brought into focus a whole new genre of modern dance...Combat rolls, breakneck sprints and savagely wrestled duets became the defining vocabulary of a new generation." The Guardian. In 2016, Wim Vandekeybus' company Ultima Vez celebrates its 30th birthday. Never before has his oeuvre been recorded in a book. Until now. This extraordinary book is a visual trip through the most powerful images from his repertoire, a quest for the ideas and themes that inspire him. It aso contains unpublished texts, notes and scripts from his shows and films. A number of compagnons de route, such as David Byrne, Mauro Pawlowski, and Peter Verhelst, offer a personal textual contribution. Choreographer, filmmaker and photographer Wim Vandekeybus and his company Ultima Vez are at the top of the dance industry in Belgium - and around the world. After a cooperation with Jan Fabre, Vandekeybus founded his very own company Ultima Vez in 1986. His first performance, What the Body Does Not Remember (1987), was an international success and was awarded a Bessie Award (New York Dance and Performance Award), a prize awarded for pioneering work.

Unique in its focus on history rather than technique, Jazz Dance offers the only overview of trends and developments since 1960. Editors Lindsay Guarino and Wendy Oliver have assembled an array of seasoned practitioners and scholars who trace the numerous histories of jazz dance and examine various aspects of the field, including trends, influences, training, race, aesthetics, international appeal, and its relationship to tap, rock, indie, black concert dance, and Latin dance. Featuring discussions of such dancers and choreographers as Bob Fosse and Katherine Dunham, as well as analyses of how the form's vocabularly differs from ballet, this complex and compelling history captures the very essence of jazz dance.

Alvin Ailey (1931-1989) was a choreographic giant in the modern dance world and a champion of African-American talent and culture. His interracial Alvin Ailey American Dance theatre provided opportunities to black dancers and choreographers when no one else would. His acclaimed Revelations" remains one of the most performed modern dance pieces in the twentieth century. But he led a tortured life, filled with insecurity and self-loathing. Raised in poverty in rural Texas by his single mother, he managed to find success early in his career, but by the 1970s his creativity had waned. He turned to drugs, alcohol, and gay bars and suffered a nervous breakdown in 1980. He was secretive about his private life, including his homosexuality, and, unbeknownst to most at the time, died from AIDS-related complications at age 58.Now, for the first time, the complete story of Ailey's life and work is revealed in this biography. Based on his personal journals and hundreds of interviews with those who knew him, including Mikhail Baryshnikov, Judith Jamison, Lena Horne, Katherine Dunham, Sidney Poitier, and Dustin Hoffman, Alvin Ailey is a moving story of a man who wove his life and culture into his dance.

Here is the vibrant, colorful, high-stepping story of tap - the first comprehensive, fully documented history of a uniquely American art form, exploring all aspects of the intricate musical and social exchange that evolved from Afro-Irish percussive step dances like the jig, gioube, buck-and-wing, and juba to the work of such contemporary tap luminaries as Gregory Hines, Brenda Bufalino, Dianne Walker, and Savion Glover. In Tap Dancing America, Constance Valis Hill, herself an accomplished jazz tap dancer, choreographer, and performance scholar, begins with a dramatic account of a buck dance challenge between Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and Harry Swinton at Brooklyn's Bijou Theatre, on March 30, 1900, and proceeds decade by decade through the 20th century to the present day. She vividly describes tap's musical styles and steps - from buck-and-wing and ragtime stepping at the turn of the century; jazz tapping to the rhythms of hot jazz, swing, and bebop in the '20s, '30s and '40s; to hip-hop-inflected hitting and hoofing in heels (high and low) from the 1990s right up to today. Tap was long considered "a man's game," and Hill's is the first history to highlight such outstanding female dancers as Ada Overton Walker, Kitty O'Neill, and Alice Whitman, at the turn of the 20th century, as well as the pioneering women composers of the tap renaissance, in the 70s and 80s, and the hard-hitting rhythm-tapping women of the millennium such as Chloe Arnold, Ayodele Casel, Michelle Dorrance, and Dormeshia Sumbry Edwards. Written with uncanny foresight, the book features dancers who have become international touring artists and have performed on Broadway, won Emmy and Tony Awards, and received the prestigious Dance Magazine, Adele and Fred Astaire, and Jacob's Pillow Dance awards. Presented with all the verve and grace of tap itself and drawing on eyewitness accounts of early performances as well as interviews with today's greatest tappers, Tap Dancing America fills a major gap in American dance history and places tap firmly center stage.

Breaking is the first and most widely practiced hip-hop dance in the world today, with an estimated one million participants taking part in this dynamic, multifaceted artform. Yet, despite its global reach and over 40 years of existence, historical treatments of the dance have largely neglected the African Americans who founded it. Dancer and scholar Serouj "Midus" Aprahamian offers, for the first time, a detailed look into the African American beginnings of breaking in the Bronx, New York, during the 1970s. Given the pivotal impact the dance had on hip-hop's formation, this book also challenges numerous myths and misconceptions that have permeated studies of hip-hop culture's emergence. Aprahamian draws on untapped archival material, primary interviews, and detailed descriptions of early breaking to bring this buried history to life, with a particular focus on the early aesthetic development of the dance, the institutional settings in which hip-hop was conceived, and the movement's impact on sociocultural conditions in New York throughout the 1970s. By featuring the overlooked first-hand accounts of over 50 founding b-boys and b-girls, this book also shows how indebted breaking is to African American culture and interrogates the disturbing factors behind its historical erasure.

Dancing the World Smaller examines international dance performances in New York City in the 1940s as sites in which dance artists and audiences contested what it meant to practice globalism in mid-twentieth-century America. During and after the Second World War, modern dance and ballet thrived in New York City, a fertile cosmopolitan environment in which dance was celebrated as an emblem of American artistic and cultural dominance. In the ensuing Cold War years, American choreographers and companies were among those the U.S. government sent abroad to serve as ambassadors of American cultural values and to extend the nation's geo-political reach. Less-known is that international dance performance, or what was then-called "ethnic" or "ethnologic" dance, enjoyed strong support among audiences in the city and across the nation as well. Produced in non-traditional dance venues, such as the American Museum of Natural History, the Ethnologic Dance Center, and Carnegie Hall, these performances elevated dance as an intercultural bridge across human differences and dance artists as transcultural interlocutors. Dancing the World Smaller draws on extensive archival resources, as well as critical and historical studies of race and ethnicity in the U.S., to uncover a hidden history of globalism in American dance and to see artists such as La Meri, Ruth St. Denis, Asadata Dafora, Pearl Primus, Jose Limon, Ram Gopal, and Charles Weidman in new light. Debates about how to practice globalism in dance proxied larger cultural struggles over how to reconcile the nation's new role as a global superpower. In dance as in cultural politics, Americans labored over how to realize diversity while honoring difference and manage dueling impulses toward globalism, on the one hand, and isolationism, on the other.

An illustrated and in-depth exploration of four of Rosas's early works, Fase, Rosas danst Rosas, Elena's Aria, and Bartok, through sketches, notes, and photographs Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker is one of the most prominent choreographers in contemporary dance. Her 1982 debut with Fase immediately attracted the attention of the international dance scene; since then, De Keersmaeker and her company, Rosas, have created an impressive series of choreographic works that have been described as "pure writing with movement in time and space." This book explores four of Rosas' early works, Fase, Rosas danst Rosas, Elena' s Aria, and Bartok, through sketches, notes in reviews, and photographs. Distributed for Mercatorfonds

Whether you're an absolute beginner or a Strictly Come Dancing wannabe, it's time to get up and dance Craig Revel Horwood's Ballroom Dancing gives you the confidence you need to take your first steps on the dancefloor. It even includes style tips from the style guru, Len Goodman, to give you that professional look. Discover the history, foot positions, turns, and more, to all your favourite Strictly dances: * Waltz * Social foxtrot * Quickstep * Tango * Rumba * Samba * Cha cha cha * Jive Ballroom dancing is totally cool, funky, and fantastically rewarding. What better way to get fit than tangoing your tension away, and foxtrotting the fat off your thighs? Happy dancing.

"When I learned about improvisation from Anna, it was like receiving the other half of the hemisphere. Without improvisation I would not have developed the work that I'm doing."--Trisha Brown
"Anna Halprin--who, with her husband, the architect Lawrence Halprin, is considered to be the wellspring of what we call postmodern dance--has spent most of her long life shattering rules, conventions, expectations, and long-cherished ideals like so many porcelain teacups. . . . In this new cultural history and intellectual biography, Janice Ross has unscrolled a story--with her subject's full collaboration--that continuously reveals and surprises. It is a groundbreaking achievement in dance scholarship, commensurate with the work of Sally Banes, the scholar of postmodern dance to whom this book is affectionately dedicated."--Mindy Aloff, author of "Dance Anecdotes"
"This book is an eye-opener. It is fascinating to learn about the different creative periods in Anna Halprin's life, from her involvement with Jewish identity and culture, dance education, and Bauhaus emigres in the thirties and forties to her relationship with the Beat poets in San Francisco, her influential summer workshops, and her exploration of ritual and performance from the fifties to the present."--Mark Franko, author of "Excursion for Miracles: Paul Sanasardo, Donya Feuer and Studio for Dance (1955-1964)"
"Janice Ross has done a masterful job of capturing the life, work, and impact of the little midwestern woman whose influence shaped the dance revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s, and whose greatest accomplishment may have been 'finding dance culture where no one else had looked.' Ross illuminates the West Coastroots of postmodernism, and outlines Halprin's accomplishments as a healer, which are still accruing after more than sixty years."--Elizabeth Zimmer, dance critic and editor

Soloing on the page, choreographer Annie-B Parson rethinks choreography as dance on paper. Parson draws her dances into new graphic structures calling attention to the visual facts of the materiality of each dance work she has made. These drawings serve as both maps of her pieces in the aftermath of performance, and a consideration of the elements of dance itself. This book explores the meanings that form itself holds, and Parson's visual maps of choreographic ideas inspire new thinking around the shared elements underneath all art making.

What is the legacy of Martha Graham and why does it endure? How and why did the philosophy and subsequent canon of Martha Graham flood out into an artistic diaspora that is still a wellspring of inspiration for contemporary artists? How do dancers that have never studied with, or worked under, Martha Graham maintain her vision? All of these questions, and many more, are considered in this fascinating book, authored by one of the Martha Graham Company's ex-principal dancers, which illuminates the ongoing significance of the Martha Graham Dance Company almost 100 years after it was founded. Through doing so, we are offered a study of the history of the Martha Graham Dance Company - the longest-standing modern dance company in America, its international diaspora and the current generation of dancers taking up the mantel. Drawing on extensive interviews conducted for the book, the company's story is told through the experiences, inspirations, motivations and words of performers from Graham's iconic artistic lineage.

What is the legacy of Martha Graham and why does it endure? How and why did the philosophy and subsequent canon of Martha Graham flood out into an artistic diaspora that is still a wellspring of inspiration for contemporary artists? How do dancers that have never studied with, or worked under, Martha Graham maintain her vision? All of these questions, and many more, are considered in this fascinating book, authored by one of the Martha Graham Company's ex-principal dancers, which illuminates the ongoing significance of the Martha Graham Dance Company almost 100 years after it was founded. Through doing so, we are offered a study of the history of the Martha Graham Dance Company - the longest-standing modern dance company in America, its international diaspora and the current generation of dancers taking up the mantel. Drawing on extensive interviews conducted for the book, the company's story is told through the experiences, inspirations, motivations and words of performers from Graham's iconic artistic lineage.

Beginning Modern Dance text and web resource introduce undergraduate and high school students to modern dance as a performing art through participation, appreciation, and academic study in the dance technique course. In the book, 50 photos with concise descriptions support students in learning beginning modern dance technique and in creating short choreographic or improvisational studies. For those new to modern dance, the book provides a friendly orientation on the structure of a modern dance technique class and includes information regarding class expectations, etiquette, and appropriate attire. Students also learn how to prepare mentally and physically for class, maintain proper nutrition and hydration, and avoid injury. Beginning Modern Dance supports students in understanding modern dance as a performing art and as a medium for artistic expression. The text presents the styles of modern dance artists Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey and Jose Limon, Katherine Dunham, Lester Horton, and Merce Cunningham along with an introduction to eclectic modern dance style. Chapters help students begin to identify elements of modern dance as they learn, view, and respond to dance choreography and performance. The accompanying web resource offers 38 interactive video clips and photos of dance technique to support learning and practice. In addition, e-journal and self-reflection assignments, performance critiques, and quizzes in the web resource help students develop their knowledge of modern dance as both performers and viewers. (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 modern dance, students learn new movement vocabularies and explore their unique and personal artistry in response to their world. Beginning Modern Dance text and web resource support your students in their experience of this unique and dynamic genre of dance. Beginning Modern Dance is a part of Human Kinetics' Interactive Dance Series. The series includes resources for modern dance, ballet, and tap dance that support introductory dance technique courses taught through dance, physical education, and fine arts departments. Each student-friendly text includes a web resource offering video clips of dance instruction, assignments, and activities. The Interactive Dance Series offers students a guide to learning, performing, and viewing dance.

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

This study focuses on dance as an activist practice in and of itself, across geographical locations and over the course of a century, from 1920 to 2020. Through doing so, it considers how dance has been an empowering agent for political action throughout civilisation. Dance and Activism offers a glimpse of different strategies of mobilizing the human body for good and justice for all, and captures the increasing political activism epitomized by bodies moving on the streets in some of the most turbulent political situations. This has, most recently, undoubtedly been partly owing to the rise of the far-right internationally, which has marked an increase in direct action on the streets. Offering a survey of key events across the century, such as the fall of President Zuma in South Africa; pro-reproductive rights action in Poland and Argentina; and the recent women's marches against Donald Trump's presidency, you will see how dance has become an urgent field of study. Key geographical locations are explored as sites of radical dance - the Lower East Side of New York; Gaza; Syria; Cairo, Iran; Iraq; Johannesburg - to name but a few - and get insights into some of the major figures in the history of dance, including Pearl Primus, Martha Graham, Anna Sokolow and Ahmad Joudah. Crucially, lesser or unknown dancers, who have in some way influenced politics, all over the world are brought into the limelight (the Syrian ballerinas and Hussein Smko, for example). Dance and Activism troubles the boundary between theory and practice, while presenting concrete case studies as a site for robust theoretical analysis.