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Books > Arts & Architecture > Performing arts > Dance
Moving Otherwise examines how contemporary dance practices in
Buenos Aires, Argentina enacted politics within climates of
political and economic violence from the mid-1960s to the
mid-2010s. From the repression of military dictatorships to the
precarity of economic crises, contemporary dancers and audiences
consistently responded to and reimagined the everyday
choreographies that have accompanied Argentina's volatile political
history. The titular concept, "moving otherwise" names how both
concert dance and its off-stage practice and consumption offer
alternatives to and modes to critique the patterns of movement and
bodily comportment that shape everyday life in contexts marked by
violence. Drawing on archival research based in institutional and
private collections, over fifty interviews with dancers and
choreographers, and the author's embodied experiences as a
collaborator and performer with active groups, the book analyzes
how a wide range of practices moved otherwise, including concert
works, community dance initiatives, and the everyday labor that
animates dance. It demonstrates how these diverse practices
represent, resist, and remember violence and engender new forms of
social mobilization on and off the theatrical stage. As the first
book length critical study of Argentine contemporary dance, it
introduces a breadth of choreographers to an English speaking
audience, including Ana Kamien, Susana Zimmermann, Estela Maris,
Alejandro Cervera, Renate Schottelius, Susana Tambutti, Silvia
Hodgers, and Silvia Vladimivsky. It also considers previously
undocumented aspects of Argentine dance history, including
crossings between contemporary dancers and 1970s leftist political
militancy, Argentine dance labor movements, political protest, and
the prominence of tango themes in contemporary dance works that
address the memory of political violence. Contemporary dance, the
book demonstrates, has a rich and diverse history of political
engagement in Argentina.
An Empty Room is a transformative journey through butoh, an
avant-garde form of performance art that originated in Japan in the
late 1950's and is now a global phenomenon. This is the first book
about butoh authored by a scholar-practitioner who combines
personal experience with ethnographic and historical accounts
alongside over twenty photos. Author Michael Sakamoto traverses
butoh dance history from its roots in post-World War II Japan to
its diaspora in the West in the 1970s and 1980s. An Empty Room
delves into the archive of butoh dance, gathering testimony from
multiple generations of artists active in Japan, the US, and
Europe. The book also creatively highlights seminal visual and
written texts, especially Hosoe Eikoh's photo essay, "Kamaitachi,"
and Hijikata Tatsumi's early essays. Sakamoto ultimately fashions
an original view of what butoh has been, is and, more importantly,
can be through the lens of literary criticism, photo studies,
folklore, political theory, and his experience performing,
photographing, teaching, and lecturing in 15 countries worldwide.
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