Belle-epoque Paris witnessed the emergence of a vibrant and diverse dance scene, one that crystallized around the Ballets Russes, the Russian dance company formed by impresario Sergey Diaghilev. The company has long served as a convenient turning point in the history of dance, celebrated for its revolutionary choreography and innovative productions. This book presents a fresh slant on this much-told history. Focusing on the relation between music and dance, Davinia Caddy approaches the Ballets Russes with a wide-angled lens that embraces not just the choreographic, but also the cultural, political, theatrical and aesthetic contexts in which the company made its name. In addition, Caddy examines and interprets contemporary French dance practices, throwing new light on some of the most important debates and discourses of the day.

The relationship between the practice of dance and the technologies of representation has excited artists since the advent of film. Dancers, choreographers, and directors are increasingly drawn to screendance, the practice of capturing dance as a moving image mediated by a camera. While the interest in screendance has grown in importance and influence amongst artists, it has until now flown under the academic radar. Emmy-nominated director and auteur Douglas Rosenberg's groundbreaking book considers screendance as both a visual art form as well as an extension of modern and post-modern dance without drawing artificial boundaries between the two. Both a history and a critical framework, Screendance: Inscribing the Ephemeral Image is a new and important look at the subject. As he reconstructs the history and influences of screendance, Rosenberg presents a theoretical guide to navigating the boundaries of an inherently collaborative art form. Drawing on psycho-analytic, literary, materialist, queer, and feminist modes of analysis, Rosenberg explores the relationships between camera and subject, director and dancer, and the ephemeral nature of dance and the fixed nature of film. This interdisciplinary approach allows for a broader discussion of issues of hybridity and mediatized representation as they apply to dance on film. Rosenberg also discusses the audiences and venues of screendance and the tensions between commercial and fine-art cultures that the form has confronted in recent years. The surge of screendance festivals and courses at universities around the world has exposed the friction that exists between art, which is generally curated, and dance, which is generally programmed. Rosenberg explores the cultural implications of both methods of reaching audiences, and ultimately calls for a radical new way of thinking of both dance and film that engages with critical issues rather than simple advocacy.

Hijikata Tatsumi's explosive 1959 debut Forbidden Colors sparked a new genre of performance in Japan - butoh: an art form of contrasts, by turns shocking and serene. Since then, though interest has grown exponentially, and people all over the world are drawn to butoh's ability to enact paradox and contradiction, audiences are less knowledgeable about the contributions and innovations of the founder of butoh. Hijikata Tatsumi and Butoh traces the rollicking history of the creation and initial maturation of butoh, and locates Hijikata's performances within the intellectual, cultural, and economic ferment of Japan from the sixties to the eighties.

This book explores the nexus between gender, ageing and culture in dancers practicing a variety of genres. It challenges existing cultural norms which equate ageing with bodily decline and draws on an interdisciplinary theoretical framework to explore alternatives for developing a culturally valued mature subjectivity through the practice of dance.

Initially branching out of the European contradance tradition, the danzon first emerged as a distinct form of music and dance among black performers in nineteenth-century Cuba. By the early twentieth-century, it had exploded in popularity throughout the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean basin. A fundamentally hybrid music and dance complex, it reflects the fusion of European and African elements and had a strong influence on the development of later Latin dance traditions as well as early jazz in New Orleans. Danzon: Circum-Caribbean Dialogues in Music and Dance studies the emergence, hemisphere-wide influence, and historical and contemporary significance of this music and dance phenomenon.
Co-authors Alejandro L. Madrid and Robin D. Moore take an ethnomusicological, historical, and critical approach to the processes of appropriation of the danzon in new contexts, its changing meanings over time, and its relationship to other musical forms. Delving into its long history of controversial popularization, stylistic development, glorification, decay, and rebirth in a continuous transnational dialogue between Cuba and Mexico as well as New Orleans, the authors explore the production, consumption, and transformation of this Afro-diasporic performance complex in relation to global and local ideological discourses. By focusing on interactions across this entire region as well as specific local scenes, Madrid and Moore underscore the extent of cultural movement and exchange within the Americas during the late nineteenth and early twentieth-centuries, and are thereby able to analyze the danzon, the dance scenes it has generated, and the various discourses of identification surrounding it as elements in broader regional processes. Danzon is a significant addition to the literature on Latin American music, dance, and expressive culture; it is essential reading for scholars, students, and fans of this music alike."

John W. Bubbles was the ultimate song-and-dance man. A groundbreaking tap dancer, he provided inspiration to Fred Astaire, Eleanor Powell, and the Nicholas Brothers. His vaudeville team Buck and Bubbles captivated theater audiences for more than thirty years. Most memorably, in the role of Sportin' Life he stole the show in the original production of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, in the process crafting a devilish alter ego that would follow him through life. Coming of age with the great jazz musicians, he shared countless stages with the likes of Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, and Ella Fitzgerald. Some of his disciples believed his rhythmic ideas had a formative impact on jazz itself. In later years he made a comeback as a TV personality, revving up the talk shows of Steve Allen and Johnny Carson and playing comic foil to Bob Hope, Judy Garland, and Lucille Ball. Finally, after a massive stroke ended his dancing career, he made a second comeback-complete with acclaimed performances from his wheelchair-as a living legend inspiring a new generation of entertainers. His biggest obstacle was the same one blocking the path of every other Black performer of his time: unrelenting, institutionalized racism. Yet Bubbles was an entertainer of the old school, fierce and indestructible. In this compelling and deeply researched biography, his dramatic story is told for the first time.

This book provides the first comprehensive examination of the urban phenomenon known as Ballroom culture that first gained notoriety in the documentary Paris Is Burning in 1990. Butch Queens Up in Pumps uniquely explores the ways in which Black LGBT people in Detroit use performance and other cultural practices-such as alternative identity, kinship, and community formations-to contend with or alter the conditions in which they live. Butch Queens Up in Pumps is as much an examination of Black queer cultural formations as it is an ethnographic account of Ballroom culture in Detroit. Marlon M. Bailey's rare perspective as both participant and observer in the Ballroom scene makes for compelling reading and lends his analysis an uncommon immediacy and authenticity, producing a remarkable performance ethnography that delves deeply into this subcultural phenomenon. The book will appeal to scholars and students across a wide range of disciplines, including African American studies, gender and sexuality studies, performance studies, dance, and anthropology, and to anyone interested in the politics, prevention, and activism surrounding HIV/AIDS.

Employing a cultural theory approach, this book explores the relationship between popular dance and value. It traces the shifting value systems that underpin popular dance scholarship and considers how different dancing communities articulate complex expressions of judgment, significance and worth through their embodied practice.

The 'ballet d'action' was one of the most successful and controversial forms of theatre in the early modern period. A curious hybrid of dance, mime and music, its overall and overriding intention was to create drama. It was danced drama rather than dramatic dance; musical drama rather than dramatic music. Most modern critical studies of the ballet d'action treat it more narrowly as stage dance, and very few view it as part of the history of mime. Little use has previously been made of the most revealing musical evidence. This innovative book does justice to the distinctive hybrid nature of the ballet d'action by taking a comparative approach, using contemporary literature and literary criticism, music, mime and dance from a wide range of English and European sources. Edward Nye presents a fascinating study of this important and influential part of eighteenth-century European theatre.

With a companion website that includes short online film episodes, this book proposes expansive ways of deconstructing and re-constituting sexuality and gender and thus more embodied and ethical ways of 'doing' life, and offers an understanding and critique of embodiment through an integration of performance, psychotherapy and feminist philosophy.

Examining the work of impresarios, financiers, and the press as well as the artists themselves, Hohman demonstrates how a variety of Russian theatrical styles were introduced and incorporated into American theatre and dance during the beginning of the twentieth century.

Originally published in 1883, and reprinted on numerous occasions, this Cambridge edition of Moliere's classic comedie-ballet provides the original French text, together with an introduction written in English, and English summaries for each of the five acts. A generous notes section and appendices are also contained. This is a rigorously edited edition that will be of value to anyone with an interest in the French language and its literature.

Dancers create 'civic culture' as performances for public consumption, but also as vernaculars connecting individuals who may have little in common. Examining performance and the construction of culturally diverse communities the book suggests that amateur and concert dance can teach us how to live and work productively together.

A renewed interest in nature, the ancient Greeks, and the freedom of the body was to transform dance and physical culture in the early twentieth century. The book discusses the creative individuals and developments in science and other art forms that shaped the evolution of modern dance in its international context.

This is the first book to explore the relationship between experimental theatre and performance making in France. Reflecting the recent return to aesthetics and politics in French theory, it focuses on how a variety of theatre and performance practitioners use their art work to contest reality as it is currently configured in France.

This text explores how performers offer conscious-and unconscious-portrayals of the spectrum of age to their audiences. It considers a variety of media, including theatre, film, dance, advertising, and television, and offers critical foundations for research and course design, sound pedagogical approaches, and analyses.

The Routledge Dance Studies Reader has been expanded and updated, giving readers access to thirty-seven essential texts that address the social, political, cultural, and economic impact of globalization on embodiment and choreography. These interdisciplinary essays in dance scholarship consider a broad range of dance forms in relation to historical, ethnographic, and interdisciplinary research methods including cultural studies, reconstruction, media studies, and popular culture. This new third edition expands both its geographic and cultural focus to include recent research on dance from Southeast Asia, the People's Republic of China, indigenous dance, and new sections on market forces and mediatization. Sections cover: Methods and approaches Practice and performance Dance as embodied ideology Dance on the market and in the media Formations of the field. The Routledge Dance Studies Reader includes essays on concert dance (ballet, modern and postmodern dance, tap, kathak, and classical khmer dance), popular dance (salsa and hip-hop), site-specific performance, digital choreography, and lecture-performances. It is a vital resource for anyone interested in understanding dance from a global and contemporary perspective.

Newly updated, lavishly illustrated classic book that celebrates the female dancers of the Arab world and their impact on the West. "I think it is the most eloquent of female dances, with is hauntinglyricism, its fire, its endlessly shifting kaleidoscope of sensualmovement." With these words, Wendy Buonaventura explains her ownfascination with Arabic dance and gives the reader a thorough understanding of the origins, history and development of this ancient art, which has survived in the face of commercialism, religiousdisapproval, and changing times.

Interrogating America looks at American culture and politics from the lens of American theatre and drama, drawing from specialists in the field of theatre to reflect upon the role of theatre in the creation of the American cultural and political milieu. The essays confront such iconic concepts as the American Dream and the American Melting Pot, addressing issues such as American enfranchisement and historical limitations placed on the idea of inclusion based on class, race, and gender. Together, the essays create a portrait of the dynamic give-and-take that is central to the idea of Americanness and America itself.