From the propulsive rhythm of the African dancer, to the swinging ragtime of the American jazz age, tap dancing has evolved into a unique blend of cultural expression, improvisation and creativity, open to all ages and abilities. With clear step-by-step instructions, The Essential Guide to Tap Dance covers basic steps such as the shuffle, pick up and paddle, before building these into traditional combinations such as the time step and shim sham. Additional material includes the history and development of tap dancing; rhythm and musicality; learning the language of tap dancing; the role of improvisation and choreography and finally, the basic steps to advanced techniques. This is the perfect companion to instruct the beginner tap dancer and expand the more experienced dancer's technique, offering full-colour pictures, helpful instruction and essential notes on this vibrant and accessible dance form.

Choreographing Shakespeare presents a hitherto unexplored history of the choreographers and performers who have created dance adaptations of Shakespeare. This book investigates forty dance works in genres such as ballet, modern dance, and hip-hop, produced between 1940 and 2016 by choreographers in Britain, America, and Europe, all of which use Shakespeare's plays and Sonnets as their source material. By combining scholarly analysis of these productions with practice-based conversations from six contemporary choreographers, Klett offers both breadth of coverage and in-depth analysis of how Shakespeare's poetic language is translated into the usually wordless medium of dance, and shows exactly how these dance adaptations move beyond the Shakespearean texts to engage with musical and choreographic influences. Ideal for students of Shakespeare and Dance Studies, Choreographing Shakespeare explores how dance adaptations strive to design legible and intelligible stories, while ultimately celebrating the beauty of pure movement.

What does it mean to be able to move? The Aging Body in Dance brings together leading scholars and artists from a range of backgrounds to investigate cultural ideas of movement and beauty, expressiveness and agility. Contributors focus on Euro-American and Japanese attitudes towards aging and performance, including studies of choreographers, dancers and directors from Yvonne Rainer, Martha Graham, Anna Halprin and Roemeo Castellucci to Kazuo Ohno and Kikuo Tomoeda. They draw a fascinating comparison between youth-oriented Western cultures and dance cultures like Japan's, where aging performers are celebrated as part of the country's living heritage. The first cross-cultural study of its kind, The Aging Body in Dance offers a vital resource for scholars and practitioners interested in global dance cultures and their differing responses to the world's aging population.

This collection of new essays explores connections between dance, modernism, and modernity by examining the ways in which leading dancers have responded to modernity. Burt and Huxley examine dance examples from a period beginning just before the First World War and extending to the mid-1950s, ranging across not only mainland Europe and the United States but also Africa, the Caribbean, the Pacific Asian region, and the UK. They consider a wide range of artists, including Akarova, Gertrude Colby, Isadora Duncan, Katherine Dunham, Margaret H'Doubler, Hanya Holm, Michio Ito, Kurt Jooss, Wassily Kandinsky, Margaret Morris, Berto Pasuka, Uday Shankar, Antony Tudor, and Mary Wigman. The authors explore dancers' responses to modernity in various ways, including within the contexts of natural dancing and transnationalism. This collection asks questions about how, in these places and times, dancing developed and responded to the experience of living in modern times, or even came out of an ambivalence about or as a reaction against it. Ideal for students and practitioners of dance and those interested in new modernist studies, Dance, Modernism, and Modernity considers the development of modernism in dance as an interdisciplinary and global phenomenon.

Dancing embodies cultural history and beliefs, and each dance carries with it features of the place where it originated. Influenced by different social, political, and environmental circumstances, dances change and adapt. American dance evolved in large part through combinations of multiple styles and forms that arrived with each new group of immigrants. Perspectives on American Dance is the first anthology in over twenty-five years to focus exclusively on American dance practices across a wide span of American culture. This volume and its companion show how social experience, courtship, sexualities, and other aspects of life in America are translated through dancing into spatial patterns, gestures, and partner relationships.In this volume of Perspectives on American Dance, the contributors explore a variety of subjects: white businessmen in Prescott, Arizona, who created a 'Smoki tribe' that performed 'authentic' Hopi dances for over seventy years; swing dancing by Japanese American teens in World War II internment camps; African American jazz dancing in the work of ballet choreographer Ruth Page; dancing in early Hollywood movie musicals; how critics identified 'American' qualities in the dancing of ballerina Nana Gollner; the politics of dancing with the American flag; English Country Dance as translated into American communities; Bob Fosse's sociopolitical choreography; and early break dancing as Latino political protest. The accessible essays use a combination of movement analysis, thematic interpretation, and historical context to convey the vitality and variety of American dance. They offer new insights on American dance practices while simultaneously illustrating how dancing functions as an essential template for American culture and identity.

Celebrating the diversity of dance across the South Pacific, this volume studies the various experiences, motivations and aims for dance, emerging from the voices of dance professionals in the islands. In particular, it focuses on the interplay of cultures and pathways of migration as people move across the region discovering new routes and connect

This book explores Salome's quintessential veiled dance through readings of fictional and poetic texts, dramatic productions, dance performances and silent films, arguing for the central place of this dancer - and her many interpreters - to the wider formal and aesthetic contours of modernism. Loie Fuller, Maud Allan, Oscar Wilde, Ida Rubinstein, Alla Nazimova, Djuna Barnes, Germaine Dulac, Edward Gordon Craig, W. B. Yeats, Ninette de Valois and Samuel Beckett are foregrounded for their innovative engagements with this paradigmatic fin-de-siecle myth, showing how the ephemeral stuff of dance became a constitutive element of the modernist imagination during this period.

Gracefully chronicling one Western woman's attraction to the universal charm of Islam and the Prophet Muhammad, this inspirational memoir chronicles why and how Brodbeck journeyed from the exciting world of modern dance in New York City to Istanbul, where she lovingly embraced Islam.

Part memoir, part dance history, this critical study explores ballet's power to inspire and to embody ideas about politics, race, women's agency, and spiritual development. Women who dance offer perspectives on such questions as: How do dancers deal with lingering stereotypes and new opportunities? How do dancers embody heritages from around globe? What do images projected by ballerinas say to their admirers? The author argues that dance relates to life in powerful, individual ways, and suggests societal shifts. Although ballet can appear (and sometimes is) elite and exclusionary, it also has revolutionary potential, seen here through the eyes of women who experience it.

"Absolutely spellbinding: ballerina Farrell's autobiography is the story of someone doing exactly what she wanted in life, and loving every minute of it. Through her work with George Balanchine, it is also the story of one of the greatest artistic collaborations in dance. . . . An uplifting, splendid memoir."--"Kirkus"

"An extraordinarily moving story."--"New York Times Book Review"

"Farrell's story is not only that of a great dancer but of a great star. . . . this book is important. The subject is great, the views of Balanchine are real and unique."--"Washington Post Book World"

Suzanne Farrell, world-renowned ballerina, was one of George Balanchine's most celebrated muses and remains a legendary figure in the ballet world. This memoir, first published in 1990 and reissued with a new preface by the author, recounts Farrell's transformation from a young girl in Ohio dreaming of greatness to the realization of that dream on stages all over the world. Central to this transformation was her relationship with George Balanchine, who invited her to join the New York City Ballet in the fall of 1961 and was in turn inspired by her unique combination of musical, physical, and dramatic gifts. He created masterpieces for her in which the limits of ballet technique were expanded to a degree not seen before. By the time she retired from the stage in 1989, Farrell had achieved a career that is without precedent in the history of ballet. One third of her repertory of more than 100 ballets were composed expressly for her by such notable choreographers as Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, and Maurice Bejart. Farrell recalls professional and personal attachments and their attendant controversies with a down-to-earth frankness and common sense that complements the glories and mysteries of her artistic achievement.

Suzanne Farrell has staged Balanchine's ballets in New York, Boston, Seattle, and Miami and for the Vienna Opera Ballet, the Kirov, and the Bolshoi. She is the subject of an Academy Award nominated documentary, "Suzanne Farrell--Elusive Muse." A professor of dance at Florida State University in Tallahassee, she also teaches a summer ballet course at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. In the fall of 2000, the Suzanne Farrell Ballet was launched as an ongoing partnership with the Kennedy Center.

In the twenty-first century, values of competition underpin the free-market economy and aspirations of individual achievement shape the broader social world. Consequently, ideas of winning and losing, success and failure, judgment and worth, influence the dance that we see and do. Across stage, studio, street, and screen, economies of competition impact bodily aesthetics, choreographic strategies, and danced meanings. In formalized competitions, dancers are judged according to industry standards to accumulate social capital and financial gain. Within the capitalist economy, dancing bodies compete to win positions in prestigious companies, while choreographers hustle to secure funding and attract audiences. On the social dance floor, dancers participate in dance-offs that often include unspoken, but nevertheless complex, rules of bodily engagement. And the media attraction to the drama and spectacle of competition regularly plays out in reality television shows, film documentaries, and Hollywood cinema. Drawing upon a diverse collection of dances across history and geography, The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Competition asks how competition affects the presentation and experience of dance and, in response, how dancing bodies negotiate, critique, and resist the aesthetic and social structures of the competition paradigm.

Uncover the most mesmerising moments in ballet history with this scintillating visual guide. Written with ballet legend Viviana Durante, this book will introduce you to the most famous performers and enthrall you with fascinating stories. Discover more than 70 celebrated dances, from The Nutcracker and Swan Lake to The Rite of Spring. Learn about renowned companies such as The Royal Ballet and the Bolshoi Ballet. Explore the lives of ballet dancers across the centuries, such as Margot Fonteyn, Carlos Acosta, and Darcey Bussell, and meet composers and choreographers, including the likes of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Matthew Bourne. Tracing the history of ballet all the way from its origins at court and the first institutes to the contemporary scene, this comprehensive yet accessible volume offers an unrivalled overview of this dance form. Rarely seen photographs covering key figures, pieces, and performances, alongside compelling facts about each dance - the sources they draw from, their production history, and their reception over time - make for a sumptuous visual treat and an essential gift for all dance and ballet enthusiasts.

Fully revised and updated, this second edition of Contemporary Choreography presents a range of articles covering choreographic enquiry, investigation into the creative process, and innovative challenges to traditional understandings of dance making. Contributions from a global range of practitioners and researchers address a spectrum of concerns in the field, organized into seven broad domains: Conceptual and philosophical concerns Processes of making Dance dramaturgy: structures, relationships, contexts Choreographic environments Cultural and intercultural contexts Challenging aesthetics Choreographic relationships with technology. Including 23 new chapters and 10 updated ones, Contemporary Choreography captures the essence and progress of choreography in the twenty-first century, supporting and encouraging rigorous thinking and research for future generations of dance practitioners and scholars.

Staging British South Asian Culture: Bollywood and Bhangra in British Theatre looks afresh at the popularity of forms and aesthetics from Bollywood films and bhangra music and dance on the British stage. From Andrew Lloyd Webber's Bombay Dreams to the finals of Britain's Got Talent, Jerri Daboo reconsiders the centrality of Bollywood and bhangra to theatre made for or about British South Asian communities. Addressing rarely discussed theatre companies such as Rifco, and phenomena such as the emergence of large- scale Bollywood revue performances, this volume goes some way towards remedying the lack of critical discourse around British South Asian theatre. A timely contribution to this growing field, Staging British South Asian Culture is essential reading for any scholar or student interested in exploring the highly contested questions of identity and representation for British South Asian communities.

Issues of race, class, gender and religion permeate the study of contemporary dance, resulting in cultural clashes in classrooms and studios. The first of its kind, this book provides dance educators with tools to refocus teaching methods to celebrate the pluralism of the United States. The contributors discuss how to diversify dance history courses in higher education and ballet technique classes, choreographing dance about socially charged contemporary issues and incorporating Native American dances into the curriculum, among other topics. The application of critical pedagogy in the dance classroom enables instructors to teach methods that reflect students' culture and affirm their experiences.

How did flamenco-a song and dance form associated with both a despised ethnic minority in Spain and a region frequently derided by Spaniards-become so inexorably tied to the country's culture? Sandie Holguin focuses on the history of the form and how reactions to the performances transformed from disgust to reverance over the course of two centuries. Holguin brings forth an important interplay between regional nationalists and image makers actively involved in building a tourist industry. Soon they realized flamenco performances could be turned into a folkloric attraction that could stimulate the economy. Tourists and Spaniards alike began to cultivate flamenco as a representation of the country's national identity. This study reveals not only how Spain designed and promoted its own symbol but also how this cultural form took on a life of its own.

First Published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Astaire by Numbers looks at every second of dancing Fred Astaire committed to film in the studio era-all six hours, thirty-four minutes, and fifty seconds. Using a quantitative digital humanities approach, as well as previously untapped production records, author Todd Decker takes the reader onto the set and into the rehearsal halls and editing rooms where Astaire created his seemingly perfect film dances. Watching closely in this way reveals how Astaire used the technically sophisticated resources of the Hollywood film making machine to craft a singular career in mass entertainment as a straight white man who danced. Decker dissects Astaire's work at the level of the shot, the cut, and the dance step to reveal the aesthetic and practical choices that yielded Astaire's dancing figure on screen. He offers new insights into how Astaire secured his masculinity and his heterosexuality, along with a new understanding of Astaire's whiteness, which emerges in both the sheer extent of his work and the larger implications of his famous "full figure" framing of his dancing body. Astaire by Numbers rethinks this towering straight white male figure from the ground up by digging deeply into questions of race, gender, and sexuality, ultimately offering a complete re-assessment of a twentieth-century icon of American popular culture.

The third instalment in Craig Revel Horwood's frank and funny autobiography takes the reader through the highs and lows of the Strictly Come Dancing star's 'fab-u-lous' life. Join Craig and a host of Strictly stars - including Ore Oduba, Judy Murray and the unforgettable Ed Balls - on the show and live tours and get the real stories from behind the scenes. The Aussie-born judge shares his famously forthright views on the changes in the show's line up, from Bruce Forsyth and Len Goodman's departures to the arrival of Claudia Winkleman and Shirley Ballas, as well as the dancers and stars. Away from Strictly, Craig reveals fresh heartache over failed romances, his pain at losing his dad and how his work kept him from flying to Australia for the funeral. He marks the milestones in his life, including turning fifty and moving from London to live in a 'gorgeous' country pile, as well as going under the knife for a second hip operation plus a few nips and tucks. The multi-talented dancer, director and choreographer also discusses his award-winning shows, including Sister Act and Son of a Preacher Man, and spending a year in drag as Miss Hannigan in Annie. Plus, he reveals all about his foray into movies, choreographing Hugh Grant for Paddington 2 and making his big screen debut in Nativity Rocks. With his famous wit and a wealth of backstage gossip, In Strictest Confidence is the perfect read for all his fans as well as those of Strictly Come Dancing.

Integrative Performance serves a crucial need of 21st-century performers by providing a transdisciplinary approach to training. Its radical new take on performance practice is designed for a climate that increasingly requires fully rounded artists. The book critiques and interrogates key current practices and offers a proven alternative to the idea that rigorous and effective training must separate the disciplines into discrete categories of acting, singing, and dance. Experience Bryon's Integrative Performance Practice is a way of working that will profoundly shift how performers engage with their training, conditioning and performance disciplines. It synthesizes the various elements of performance work in order to empower the performer as they practice across disciplines within any genre, style or aesthetic. Theory and practice are balanced throughout, using: Regular box-outs, introducing the work's theoretical underpinnings through quotes, case studies and critical interjections. A full program of exercises ranging from training of specific muscle groups, through working with text, to more subtle structures for integrative awareness and presence. This book is the result of over twenty years of practice and research working with interdisciplinary artists across the world to produce a training that fully prepares performers for the demands of contemporary performance and all its somatic, emotive and vocal possibilities.

The dance circle (called the cypher) is a common signifier of breaking culture, known more for its spectacular moves than as a ritual practice with foundations in Africanist aesthetics. Yet those foundations-evident in expressive qualities like call and response, the aural kinesthetic, the imperative to be original, and more-are essential to cyphering's enduring presence on the global stage. What can cyphers activate beyond the spectacle? What lessons do cyphers offer about moving through and navigating the social world? And what possibilities for the future do they animate? With an interdisciplinary reach and a riff on physics, author Imani Kai Johnson centers the voices of practitioners in a study of breaking events in cities across the US, Canada, and parts of Europe. Dark Matter in Breaking Cyphers: the Life of Africanist Aesthetics in Global Hip Hop draws on over a decade of research and provides a detailed look into the vitality of Africanist aesthetics and the epistemological possibilities of the ritual circle.

How does the production of performance engage with the fundamental issues of our advanced neo-capitalist age? Andre Lepecki surveys a decade of experimental choreography to uncover the dual meaning of 'performance' in the twenty-first century: not just an aesthetic category, but a mode of political power. He demonstrates the enduring ability of performance to critique and subvert this power, examining this relationship through five 'singularities' in contemporary dance: thingness, animality, persistence, darkness, and solidity. Exploring the works of Mette Ingvartsen, Yvonne Rainer, Ralph Lemon, Jerome Bel and others, Lepecki uses his concept of 'singularity'-the resistance of categorization and aesthetic identification-to examine the function of dance and performance in political and artistic debate.

This succinct and engaging text explores the interdependence between theatre and dance. Making a compelling case for the significance of resisting genre distinctions in the arts, Kate Elswit demonstrates why and how the ampersand between theatre and dance needs to be understood as the rule, rather than the exception. This illuminating guide focuses on the interconnected ecosystems of practice that constitute performance history, the expansion of theatre and dance forms on contemporary North American and European stages, and the disciplinary methods that scholars use today to understand such practices, both past and present. Accessible and affordable, this is an ideal resource for theatre students and lovers everywhere.