Widely believed to be the oldest Indian dance tradition, odissi has transformed over the centuries from a sacred temple ritual to a transnational genre performed-and consumed-throughout the world. Building on ethnographic research in multiple locations, this book charts the evolution of odissi dance and reveals the richness, rigor, and complexity of the form as it is practiced today. As author and dancer-choreographer Nandini Sikand shows, the story of odissi is ultimately a story of postcolonial India, one in which identity, nationalism, tradition, and neoliberal politics dramatically come together.

Dance has proliferated in movies, television, Internet, and retail spaces while the spiritual power of dance has also been linked with mass consumption. Walter marries the cultural studies of dance and the religious aspects of dance in an exploration of consumption rituals, including rituals of being persuaded to buy products that include dance.

Across spatial, bodily, and ethical domains, music and dance both emerge from and give rise to intimate collaboration. This theoretically rich collection takes an ethnographic approach to understanding the collective dimension of sound and movement in everyday life, drawing on genres and practices in contexts as diverse as Japanese shakuhachi playing, Peruvian huayno, and the Greek goth scene. Highlighting the sheer physicality of the ethnographic encounter, as well as the forms of sociality that gradually emerge between self and other, each contribution demonstrates how dance and music open up pathways and give shape to life trajectories that are neither predetermined nor teleological, but generative.

"Bringing the study of Chinese theatre into the 21st-century, Lei discusses ways in which traditional art can survive and thrive in the age of modernization and globalization. Building on her previous work, this new book focuses on various forms of Chinese "opera" in locations around the Pacific Rim, including Hong Kong, Taiwan and California"--

Internationally traveled and familiar with salons and personalities of the dance world, we find a stroll through the years as Dorothy Dean Stevens gives us glimpses of personal encounters with leading dancers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

She begins by tracing her ancestors settling in the west; on through her early years, then to her entrance into the hallowed halls of European Ballet and the continued ties with leading dancers. Early in her life she studied at Cornish School of the Arts and later with Eugene Lorin. Such notables as Adolf Bolm, and Dimitri Romanoff, instructed in her dance studio in Monterey California. Sucessful dancers such as Frank Bourman, and Michael Smuin, who later founded the Smuin Ballet in San Francisco, taught for a time at Dorothy's studio.

She also covers the development of the cultural arts, tracing theater and talent that existed in the central California region of the Monterey Peninsula. But there is more to her life than this; travel and adventure, business and pleasure all woven into a tale of her life. Dorothy dances through joys and sorrows to the encore years in which her family, once again, takes the spot light.

As an international ecotourism destination, Yosemite National Park welcomes millions of climbers, sightseers, and other visitors from around the world annually, all of whom are afforded dramatic experiences of the natural world. This original and cross-disciplinary book offers an ethnographic and performative study of Yosemite visitors in order to understand human connection with and within natural landscapes. By grounding a novel "eco-semiotic" analysis in the lived reality of parkgoers, it forges surprising connections, assembling a collective account that will be of interest to disciplines ranging from performance studies to cultural geography.

"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.

The biography of a fascinating cultural hero, Rene Blum and the Ballets Russes uncovers the events in the life of the enigmatic and brilliant writer and producer who perished in the Holocaust. Brother of Leon Blum, the first socialist prime minister of France, Rene Blum was a passionate and prominent litterateur. He was the editor of the chic literary journal Gil Blas where he met such celebrated figures as Claude Debussy, Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, Andre Gide, and Paul Valery. As author Judith Chazin-Bennahum's research illustrates, Blum actually arranged for the publication of Proust's Swann's Way. But Blum's accomplishments and legacy do not end there: after enlisting in World War I, he won the Croix de Guerre and became a national hero. And Blum resurrected the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo after Diaghilev's death. Tragically, he was arrested in 1941 during a roundup of Jewish intellectuals and ultimately sent to Auschwitz.
Based on a treasure trove of previously undiscovered letters and documents, this thoroughly researched narrative not only tells the poignant story of Blum's life but also illustrates Blum's central role in the development of dance in the United States. Indeed, Blum's efforts to save his ballet company eventually helped to bring many of the world's greatest dancers and choreographers--among them Fokine, Balanchine, and Nijinska--to American ballet stages, shaping the path of dance in the United States for years to come."

Every year, countless young adults from affluent, Western nations travel to Brazil to train in capoeira, the dance/martial art form that is one of the most visible strands of the Afro-Brazilian cultural tradition. In Search of Legitimacy explores why "first world" men and women leave behind their jobs, families, and friends to pursue a strenuous training regimen in a historically disparaged and marginalized practice. Using the concept of apprenticeship pilgrimage-studying with a local master at a historical point of origin-the author examines how non-Brazilian capoeiristas learn their art and claim legitimacy while navigating the complexities of wealth disparity, racial discrimination, and cultural appropriation.

A far-reaching examination of exoticism, cultural internationalism and modernism's encounters with Indonesian tradition, "Performing Otherness "examines how Indonesia entered world stages through imperialism as an antimodern phantasm and through nationalism became a means of intercultural communication and cultural diplomacy.

Senegal has played a central role in contemporary dance due to its rich performing traditions, as well as strong state patronage of the arts, first under French colonialism and later in the postcolonial era. In the 1980s, when the Senegalese economy was in decline and state fundingwithdrawn, European agencies used the performing arts as a tool in diplomacy. This had a profound impact on choreographic production and arts markets throughout Africa. In Senegal, choreographic performers have taken to contemporary dance, while continuing to engage with neo-traditional performance, regional genres like the sabar, and the popular dances they grew up with. A historically informed ethnography of creativity, agency, and the fashioning of selves through the different life stages in urban Senegal, this book explores the significance of this multiple engagement with dance in a context of economic uncertainty and rising concerns over morality in the public space.

Through discussion of a dazzling array of artists in India and the diaspora, this book delineates a new language of dance on the global stage. Myriad movement vocabularies intersect the dancers' creative landscape, while cutting-edge creative choreography parodies gender and cultural stereotypes, and represents social issues.

With a political agenda foregrounding collaborative practice to promote ethical relations, these individually and joint written essays and interviews discuss dances often with visual art, theatre, film and music, drawing on continental philosophy to explore notions of space, time, identity, sensation, memory and ethics.

A comprehensive 'how to' book on the Laban system of movement - from the author of Laban for Actors and Dancers. Laban for All offers a simplified version of Rudolf Laban's system for analysing - and annotating - the way the human being moves. It can be used by relative beginners upwards. The reader is introduced to the language and terms of Laban, with each new concept accompanied by very specific, clearly illustrated exercises - each designed to strengthen and deepen our understanding. When the basic vocabulary has been explained and demonstrated, its expressive possibilities in drama and dance are further explored. The result is a thorough - and thoroughly practical - grounding in the most significant movement system of modern times.

The year is 1932. Frederick Ashton is living in Earls Court and Anton Dolin ('will ere long be proclaimed the rival and successor of Nijinsky') in bohemian Chelsea. Ninette de Valois is hobnobbing with the Bloomsbury Group, while little Alicia Markova is exiled to North Kensington. Less illustrious figures are running dancing schools everywhere from Glasgow to Truro. Across the channel Serge Lifar ('who possesses an important collection of pictures by well-known artists connected with the ballet') is lording it at the Paris Opera, while Danilova and Balanchine are cohabiting in the 17th arrondissement. Harald Kreutzberg can be found in Hamburg, Rudolf Laban in Berlin, and Serge Grigorieff in Monte-Carlo. Back in Great Britain, The Casani School of Dancing will guarantee you a career as a Dancer or Hostess, earning 5 to 10 a week, after a series of 150 private lessons at a most reasonable cost, and D. Walter and Co will sell you an automatic revolving spotlight ('the most wonderful lighting effect ever produced') for a mere 5 15s 6d. You can ensure youthful natural contours when dancing with the aid of a Kestos Brassiere, and at 102 Charing Cross Road Princess Yvonne will furnish you with a set of rather risque photographs to further your career. As well as a long biographical section, the directory includes a list of dance associations round the world, details of stage dancing competitions and lists of the Dancing Times Cup winners and Ballroom Competition winners. It provides a fascinating glimpse of the dance world in days gone by.

In the land of samba there is another vibrant culture capturing the attention of urban youth. This compelling account argues that hip hop, while certainly a product of globalized flows of information and technology, is by no means homogenous. Using more than five years of anthropological fieldwork in Sao Paulo, Brazil's largest city, Pardue represents "culture" as generative and thus meaningful as a set of practices. When interpreted in this manner, local hip hoppers become closer to what they claim to be--subjects rather than objects of history and everyday life. In his ethnography, the first in English to look at Brazilian hip hop, Pardue highlights the analytical categories of race, class, gender, and territory.

The Beatles were one of the most important musical phenomena of the twentieth century, and together with their manager, Brian Epstein, it can truly be stated that they changed the world. But there were dark aspects to the Beatles story to go along with the million-sellers, and the record-breaking tours. Lost opportunities, millions of pounds lost or squandered or stolen, and the involvement of some very unpleasant characters. "For No One" is the story of the Beatles rise to super-stardom and their descent into a petty squabbling break-up, and a decline highlighted by tragic death and squalid murder and a host of unanswered questions.

Theatre and Performance in the Asia-Pacific is an analysis of the theatrical imaginative as it manifests in theatre and performance in Australia, Indonesia, Japan and Singapore. The sites encompass marked differences in language, performance, history and politics, and variations in the solidity and volatility of their imagined worlds. Recognizing these differences, the book explores contrasts in each nation as it identifies with the region and the cultural interconnections that support a regional identity. While the four nations demonstrate degrees of ambivalence and connection to the Asia-Pacific as a region, the project argues that relations to modernity and globalization are less nation-specific. The project articulates a regional configuration of modernity which is multiple, contradictory but nonetheless regional. Each nation has in common the imperative to reconcile with and adapt to European modernity in a way that renders global modernity multiple rather than singular.