Why did the Greeks of the archaic and early Classical period join in choruses that sang and danced on public and private occasions? This book offers a wide-ranging exploration of representations of chorality in the poetry, art and material remains of early Greece in order to demonstrate the centrality of the activity in the social, religious and technological practices of individuals and communities. Moving from a consideration of choral archetypes, among them cauldrons, columns, Gorgons, ships and halcyons, the discussion then turns to an investigation of how participation in choral song and dance shaped communal experience and interacted with a variety of disparate spheres that include weaving, cataloguing, temple architecture and inscribing. The study ends with a treatment of the role of choral activity in generating epiphanies and allowing viewers and participants access to realms that typically lie beyond their perception.

When John Charles Chasteen learned that Simon Bolivar, the Liberator, danced on a banquet table to celebrate Latin American independence in 1824, he tried to visualise the scene. How, he wondered, did the Liberator dance? Did he bounce stiffly in his dress uniform? Or did he move his hips? In other words, how high had African dance influences reached in Latin American societies? A vast social gap separated Bolivar from people of African descent; however, Chasteen's research shows that popular culture could bridge the gap. Fast-paced and often funny, this book explores the history of Latin American popular dance before the twentieth century. Chasteen first focuses on Havana, Buenos Aires, and Rio de Janeiro, where dances featuring a 'transgressive close embrace' (forerunners of today's salsa, tango, and samba) emerged by 1900. Then, digging deeper in time, Chasteen uncovers the historical experiences that moulded Latin American popular dance, including carnival celebrations, the social lives of slaves, European fashions, and, oddly enough, religious processions. The relationship between Latin American dance and nationalism, it turns out, is very deep, indeed.

A passionate and moving tribute to the captivating power of dance, not just as an art form but as a language that transcends barriers "A veritable master class."-Anne Doventry, Booklist Mindy Aloff, a journalist, an essayist, and a dance critic, analyzes dance as the ultimate expression of human energy and feeling. From her personal anecdotes, her engaging collection of stories about dance from around the world, or her description of the captivating photograph by Helen Levitt of two children dancing, which she sees as one embodiment of the mystery and joy that dancing can evoke, Aloff's exploration of the aesthetic, social, and spiritual impacts of dance will prove spellbinding. Aloff takes us on a journey through various forms of dance-rituals, religious observances, storytelling, musical interpretations-to show why dance matters to human beings. Interlaced with personal experiences, this book builds on analysis to reveal the intimate relationship we have with dance-personal, spiritual, soul-searching, medicinal, and entertaining. The ideas speak to both specialist and general readers.

This book examines men, masculinities and sexualities in Western theatrical dance, offering insights into the processes, actions and interactions that occur in dance institutions around gender-transgressive acts, and the factors that set limits to transgression. This text uses interview and observation data to analyze the conditions that encourage some boys and young men to become involved in this widely unconventional activity, and the ways through which they negotiate the gendered and sexual attachments of their professional identity. Most importantly, the book analyzes the opportunities male dancers find to develop a reflexive habitus, engage in gender transgressive acts and experiment with their sexuality. At the same time, it approaches gender and sexuality as embodied, and therefore as parts of identity that are not as easily amendable. This book will be of interest to scholars in Gender and Sexuality Studies as well as Dance and Performance Studies.

This book offers new ways of thinking about dance-related artworks that have taken place in galleries, museums and biennales over the past two decades as part of the choreographic turn. It focuses on the concept of intersubjectivity and theorises about what happens when subjects meet within a performance artwork. The resulting relations are crucial to instances of performance art in which embodied subjects engage as spectators, participants and performers in orchestrated art events. Choreographing Intersubjectivity in Performance Art deploys a multi-disciplinary approach across dance choreography and evolving manifestations of performance art. An innovative, overarching concept of choreography sustains the idea that intersubjectivity evolves through places, spaces, performance and spectatorship. Drawing upon international examples, the book introduces readers to performance art from the South Pacific and the complexities of de-colonising choreography. Artists Tino Sehgal, Xavier Le Roy, Jordan Wolfson, Alicia Frankovich and Shigeyuki Kihara are discussed.

A facsimile reprint of the second edition published in Paris, 1780. Malpied's instructional manual describes Baroque dance steps and their correlation with music using the notation system published by Raoul-Auger Feuillet in 1700. Additionally, the manual contains information on the minuet and also provides an extensive discussion on hand and arm positions. Malpied's Trait is also important in that it describes, for the first time, the five positions for the arms, in conjunction with the five position of the feet. The work also notes detailed treatment of the arms, hands and fingers. Malpied's method shows a marked advance on the work of Feuillet and Rameau in the simplification of the recording of dance steps, and his book is noted for the simplification and clarification of the Feuillet method.

In Back to the Dance Itself, Sondra Fraleigh edits essays that illuminate how scholars apply a range of phenomenologies to explore questions of dance and the world; performing life and language; body and place; and self-knowing in performance. Some authors delve into theoretical perspectives, while others relate personal experiences and reflections that reveal fascinating insights arising from practice. Collectively, authors give particular consideration to the interactive lifeworld of making and doing that motivates performance. Their texts and photographs study body and the environing world through points of convergence, as correlates in elemental and constant interchange modeled vividly in dance. Selected essays on eco-phenomenology and feminism extend this view to the importance of connections with, and caring for, all life. Contributors: Karen Barbour, Christine Bellerose, Robert Bingham, Kara Bond, Hillel Braude, Sondra Fraleigh, Kimerer LaMothe, Joanna McNamara, Vida Midgelow, Ami Shulman, and Amanda Williamson.

This examines in new ways opera and ballet criticism in early nineteenth-century France, taking seriously the motivations and beliefs of journalist critics. Rather than seeing their work as useful primarily for its raw factual information, the essays collected here look carefully at the historical, cultural, and aesthetic background that led critics to write as they did.

Following on from the volume on The King's Theatre, Haymarket, 1778-1791 (published by OUP in 1995), this interdisciplinary study of opera and ballet now turns to London's Pantheon Opera during the period 1789-95. The Pantheon Opera, founded in 1790, aimed to give London a kind of court opera that would feature opera seria and ballet d'action. It tried to hire Mozart to compete with Haydn, but its high aspirations led only to a quick bankruptcy. A recent major archival discovery has permitted startlingly full analysis of the company's repertoire, costumes, staging practices, and finances.

He sang and danced in the rain, proclaimed New York to be a wonderful town, and convinced a group of Parisian children that they had rhythm. One of the most influential and respected entertainers of Hollywood's golden age, Gene Kelly revolutionized film musicals with his innovative and timeless choreography. A would-be baseball player and one-time law student, Kelly captured the nation's imagination in films such as Anchors Aweigh (1945), On the Town (1949), An American in Paris (1951), and Singin' in the Rain (1952). In the first comprehensive biography written since the legendary star's death, authors Cynthia Brideson and Sara Brideson disclose new details of Kelly's complex life. Not only do they examine his contributions to the world of entertainment in depth, but they also consider his political activities -- including his opposition to the Hollywood blacklist. The authors even confront Kelly's darker side and explore his notorious competitive streak, his tendency to be a taskmaster on set, and his multiple marriages. Drawing on previously untapped articles and interviews with Kelly's wives, friends, and colleagues, Brideson and Brideson illuminate new and unexpected aspects of the actor's life and work. He's Got Rhythm is a balanced and compelling view of one of the screen's enduring legends.

The need to 'rethink' and question the nature of dance history has not diminished since the first edition of Rethinking Dance History. This revised second edition addresses the needs of an ever-evolving field, with new contributions considering the role of digital media in dance practice; the expansion of performance philosophy; and the increasing importance of practice-as-research. A two-part structure divides the book's contributions into: * Why Dance History? - the ideas, issues and key conversations that underpin any study of the history of theatrical dance. * Researching and Writing - discussions of the methodologies and approaches behind any successful research in this area. Everyone involved with dance creates and carries with them a history, and this volume explores the ways in which these histories might be used in performance-making - from memories which establish identity to re-invention or preservation through shared and personal heritages. Considering the potential significance of studying dance history for scholars, philosophers, choreographers, dancers and students alike, Rethinking Dance History is an essential starting point for anyone intrigued by the rich history and many directions of dance.

Music, Dance, and Drama in Early Modern English Schools is the first book to systematically analyze the role that the performing arts played in English schools after the Reformation. Although the material record is riddled with gaps, Amanda Eubanks Winkler sheds light on the subject through an innovative methodology that combines rigorous archival research with phenomenological and performance studies approaches. She organizes her study around a series of performance-based questions that demonstrate how the schoolroom intersected with the church, the court, the domicile, the concert room, and the professional theater, which allows her to provide fresh perspectives on well-known canonical operas performed by children, as well as lesser-known works. Eubanks Winkler also interrogates the notion that performance is ephemeral, as she considers how scores and playtexts serve as a conduit between past and present, and demonstrates the ways in which pedagogical performance is passed down through embodied praxis.

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.

Buto is rarely given the credit it deserves as one of the most innovative forms of dance and theater that emerged throughout the 20th century. One of the world's leading experts on the form, author Bruce Baird offers in The History of Buto a new account of a crucial and influential performance art of the latter half of the 20th century. Tracing the performances and techniques of ten of the most important names in the first and second generation of buto, including Hijikata Tatsumi, Maro Akaji, Carlotta Ikeda, and Kobayashi Saga, as well as following its migration abroad to France and elsewhere, The History of Buto puts on display the creativity of the founders as well as the variety of directions taken by subsequent dancers. In addition, this book places these choreographer/dancers at the center of many of our time's most important issues, demonstrating the importance and relevance of their reflections around the relationship between humans, technology and new media, and the status of gender and ethnicity in Japan, Europe, and the world. Baird guides us through all of this with an approachable, expansive view of an artform with which he is intimately and uniquely familiar.

The Life and Works of Lev Ivanov is the first book-length study in any language of this Russian choreographer - Marius Petipa's colleague and Tchaikovsky's collaborator - who is widely celebrated yet virtually unknown. It follows Ivanov from his school days to a career as choreographer in one of the greatest ballet companies in the world - the Imperial Ballet of St Petersburg. That mileu, Ivanov's ballets, and their reception are described and lavishly documented.

This book locates the philosophy of Ubuntu as the undergirding framework for indigenous dance pedagogies in local communities in Uganda. Through critical examination of the reflections and practices of selected local dance teachers, the volume reveals how issues of inclusion, belonging, and agency are negotiated through a creatively complex interplay between individuality and communality. The analysis frames pedagogies as sites where reflective thought and kinaesthetic practice converge to facilitate ever-evolving individual imagination and community innovations.

Dancing Women: Female Bodies Onstage is a spectacular and timely contribution to dance history, recasting canonical dance since the early nineteenth century in terms of a feminist perspective. Setting the creation of specific dances in socio-political and cultural contexts, Sally Banes shows that choreographers have created representations of women that are shaped by - and that in part shape - society's continuing debates about sexuality and female identity.
Broad in its scope and compelling in its argument Dancing Women:
* provides a series of re-readings of the canon, from Romantic and Russian Imperial ballet to contemporary ballet and modern dance
* investigates the gaps between plot and performance that create sexual and gendered meanings
* examines how women's agency is created in dance through aspects of choreographic structure and style
* analyzes a range of women's images - including brides, mistresses, mothers, sisters, witches, wraiths, enchanted princesses, peasants, revolutionaries, cowgirls, scientists, and athletes - as well as the creation of various women's communities on the dance stage
* suggests approaches to issues of gender in postmodern dance
Using an interpretive strategy different from that of other feminist dance historians, who have stressed either victimization or celebration of women, Banes finds a much more complex range of cultural representations of gender identities.

Music in 17th and early 18th century Italy was wonderfully rich and varied: in theatrical and secular vocal chamber music alone, we saw the rise of the solo song and cantata, and the birth and growth of opera, all establishing important new structural and expressive paradigms. But this was also a complex time of uncertainty and change, as 'old' and 'new' interacted in subtle and often surprising ways. There is still much to document, explore and explain in terms of composers and repertories and their multi-layered contexts. This collection of essays by European, British and American musicologists seeks to consolidate the recent growth interest in seventeenth century studies. It includes discussions of leading composers (d'India, Monteverdi, Rovetta, Steffani, Albinoni, Vivaldi and Handel), repertories (chamber laments, staged balli and operatic mad-scenes), geographical issues (the arrival of Neapolitan opera in Venice), institutional contexts, and iconography. Inspiration for the book was drawn from the poineering research of Nigel Fortune, to whom the volume is dedicated on his 70th birthday.

This transdisciplinary study scientifically reports the way the established contemporary dance sector in Europe operates from a micro-perspective. It provides a dance scholarly and sociological interpretation of its mechanisms by coupling qualitative data (interview material, observations, logbooks, and dance performances) to theoretical insights. The book uncovers the sometimes contradicting mechanisms related to the precarious project-oriented labor and art market that determine the working and living conditions of contemporary dance artists in Europe's dance capitals Brussels and Berlin. In addition, it examines how these working and living conditions affect the work process and outcome. From a sociological perspective, the book engages with the relevant contemporary social issue of precarity and this within the much-at-risk professional group of contemporary dance artists. In this regard, the research brings novelty within the subject area, particularly by employing a unique methodological approach. Although the research is initially set up in a specific geographical context and within a specific research population, the book offers insights into issues that affect our neoliberal society at large. The research findings show potential to make a relevant contribution with regards to precarity within dance studies and performance studies, but also labor studies and cultural sociology.

This visually stunning publication celebrates a unique collaboration between two of the UK's leading cultural institutions, the National Gallery and The Royal Ballet. Together they commissioned three contemporary artists - Chris Ofili, Conrad Shawcross and Mark Wallinger - to work with international choreographers and composers to create three new ballets inspired by Titian's paintings Diana and Actaeon, The Death of Actaeon and Diana and Callisto. As well as designing all the sets and costumes, the artists also produced entirely new works in response to Titian's masterpieces for a show at the National Gallery. The book tells the story of this extraordinary, complex project from conception to stage and gallery. The artists' notebooks, sketches and other material from the studio are reproduced to show how they evolved their initial ideas into working designs. Numerous views of the dancers' rehearsals, installations and production work, and dozens of unseen photographs of the performances themselves, take the reader behind the scenes to see the many processes and people involved in transforming the artists' vision into a finished production. All three creative teams offer through interviews and personal statements their own reflections on the project and on working with very different art forms. An introduction by National Gallery curator and originator of the project, Minna Moore Ede, explains how it came to fruition and how both aspects of the collaboration unfolded. A foreword by Dame Monica Mason, outgoing director of The Royal Ballet, completes the volume.

This magnificent new biography of the extraordinary impresario of the arts and creator of the Ballets Russes 100 years ago draws on important new research, notably from Russia. 'Scheijen masterfully recounts the phenomenal way in which Diaghilev contrived, under virtually impossible circumstances, to nurture a sequence of works ... he triumphs in making clear the degree to which, despite the cosmopolitanism of so much of the work, Russia was at the core of Diaghilev' Simon Callow, Guardian 'It's a fabulous, complicated, very sexy story and Sjeng Scheijen takes us through it with a steadying calm that fudges none of the outrage on or off stage' Duncan Fallowell, Daily Express 'Magnificent ... filled with extraordinary glamour' Rupert Christiansen, Daily Mail

This detailed portrait of George Balanchine presents new approaches to his choreography. The book examines Balanchine from diverse perspectives and discusses unexplored aspects of his work, such as the notion of Balanchine as an architect, and his experiments with the African-American dance tradition. The articles complement and reinforce each other, taking interdisciplinary perspectives and encouraging a reexamination of, and expansion of, existing opinions.

In dieser Studie stellt der Autor Fausts Werdegang vom Gelehrten zum OEkonomen, Landesplaner und Unternehmer dar und zeigt durch die innovative "geographische Deutung" des funften Akts, inwiefern durch Fausts Neulandgewinnung eine bluhende Kulturlandschaft hat entstehen koennen. Bislang bestand in der Faust-Forschung weitgehend Konsens daruber, dass Faust am Ende des Dramas ein Egomane und ein Illusionist ist und dass dessen Neulandprojekt scheitern wird. Der Autor zeigt hier, dass ganz im Gegenteil Fausts wirtschaftliches Wirken und damit sein ganzes Leben (trotz so mancher Schattenseiten) von Erfolg gekroent ist. Durch diese neue Sichtweise weist das Buch den Weg zu einem positiven Faust-Bild.

Mary Wigman, Germany's premier dancer between the two world wars, envisioned the performer in the thrall of ecstatic and demonic forces. Widely hailed as an innovator of dance modernism, she never acknowledged her complex relationship with National Socialism. In Ecstasy and the Demon, Susan Manning advances a sociological explanation for the collaboration between German modern dancers and National Socialism. She models methods for dance studies that contextualize choreography in relation to changing sociopolitical conditions, bringing dance scholarship into conversation with intellectual trends across the humanities. The introduction to this second edition brings Manning's groundbreaking work to bear on dance studies today and reconsiders Wigman's career from the perspective of queer theory and globalization, further illuminating the interplay of dance and politics in the twentieth century. Susan Manning is professor of English, theater, and performance studies at Northwestern University.