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.

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.

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.

Creating a sensation with her risque nightclub act and strolls down the Champs Elysees, pet cheetah in tow, Josephine Baker lives on in popular memory as the banana-skirted siren of Jazz Age Paris. In Josephine Baker and the Rainbow Tribe, Matthew Pratt Guterl brings out a little known side of the celebrated personality, showing how her ambitions of later years were even more daring and subversive than the youthful exploits that made her the first African American superstar. Her performing days numbered, Baker settled down in a sixteenth-century chateau she named Les Milandes, in the south of France. Then, in 1953, she did something completely unexpected and, in the context of racially sensitive times, outrageous. Adopting twelve children from around the globe, she transformed her estate into a theme park, complete with rides, hotels, a collective farm, and singing and dancing. The main attraction was her Rainbow Tribe, the family of the future, which showcased children of all skin colors, nations, and religions living together in harmony. Les Milandes attracted an adoring public eager to spend money on a utopian vision, and to worship at the feet of Josephine, mother of the world. Alerting readers to some of the contradictions at the heart of the Rainbow Tribe project--its undertow of child exploitation and megalomania in particular--Guterl concludes that Baker was a serious and determined activist who believed she could make a positive difference by creating a family out of the troublesome material of race.

This book illuminates the relationship between philosophy and experimental choreographic practice today in the works of leading European choreographers. A discussion of key issues in contemporary performance from the viewpoint of Deleuze, Spinoza and Bergson is accompanied by intricate analyses of seven groundbreaking dance performances.

"Dance Ethnography and Global Perspectives" presents the work of dance scholars whose professional fieldwork spans several continents and includes studies of the dance and movement systems of varied global communities. It offers a selection of dance ethnographies that represent individual approaches to fieldwork through the medium of traditional dance from around the globe - Bali, Croatia, Japan, Mallorca, Okinawa, the Philippines, Serbia, the United Kingdom, and West Africa. This fascinating collection is divided into three parts that represent different theoretical approaches to the study of dance and identity through the methodology of ethnography. With backgrounds in a wide range of disciplines, such as religious studies, social and cultural anthropology, folklore, history, psychosocial work, and tourism, the authors include various media of film and photographs to enrich their methodologies.

This fascinating book explores the rich history of exhibition ballroom dancing from its heyday in the 1910s to the present. Julie Malnig's record of this intimate, theatrical genre of dance features male-female teams--idolized as theatre personalities in cabaret, vaudeville, musicals, and, later, as stars of film and television. Both role models and teachers, exhibition ballroom teams showed the public exciting new forms and styles. Exhibition ballroom dancing is examined as a cultural and social phenomenon promoting new cultural standards, including the emancipation of women and a casualness and spontaneity between the sexes. A comprehensive study of this dance genre and entertainment form, this volume utilizes unexplored primary sources and is illustrated with original photographs. This book can be used by students, researchers, and anyone interested in the history of dance, theatre, and all forms of popular entertainment.

The relationship between the practice of dance and the technologies of representation have 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.

In this book, eleven authors analyze recent dance practices in the theatre, in club culture and on film, addressing dance in interdisciplinary relationship with music, painting and play texts. This text attempts to fill a gap with an up-to-date account of exciting and challenging new work, illuminated by fascinating new theoretical frameworks.

This book provides the first critical and contextual study of contemporary and historical dance theatre in Ireland. Since the arrival of the traditional dance spectacular Riverdance in 1994, Irish dance has not only become a topic of global interest, but also a subject of heated debate. The emergence of companies such as CoisCeim Dance Theatre and Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre in the mid-1990s marked an important turning point in Irish dance practice that once again provoked a re-thinking of the perception of the dancing body and its position within Irish performance culture. McGrath's study examines how groundbreaking dance theatre works have tackled some of the most urgent and difficult socio-political and cultural questions in Ireland, and how in doing so they have re-imagined seemingly hermetic narratives of oppression and limiting definitions of 'Irish' corporeality. This study provides a timely reading of these revolutionary moves.

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.

As war is declared can The Variety Girls keep smiling through...Cleethorpes - September 1939 Struggling to keep their spirits up as the reality of war hits home and theatres are closed, friends Jessie Delaney and Frances O'Leary search for work to see them through until they can sing and dance again. Frances, once upon a time followed her dreams of becoming a dancer but soon found herself with a broken heart and a precious secret when her lover abandoned her. Keeping her secret from her friends grows more difficult as time passes and their friendship grows.. But with her lover returning to England from a successful tour of America, how long will it be before the truth comes to light? Secrets aren't good for anyone and Frances isn't the only one hiding things from her friends. Ginny Thomspon, another Variety Girl is hoping for the best. But is hope enough? Can the Variety Girls pull together to help each other through the tough times or will their secrets tear them apart? A gritty and heart-warming saga perfect for readers of Elaine Everest, Nancy Revell and Pam Howes. Praise for Tracy Baines: 'A charming, heart-warming saga about ambition, hard work and courage in the cut and thrust of a world often driven by jealousy and spite'. Rosie Clarke 'Immerse yourself in the exciting, evocative world of Wartime musical theatre. I highly recommend this book.' Fenella Miller 'An emotional, entertaining read that had me gripped!' Sheila Riley 'An absorbing and poignant saga. I loved it from the very beginning and would highly recommend it...' Elaine Roberts 'Terrific - beautifully written. The book twinkles. A well-crafted and satisfying story' Maisie Thomas 'A pleasure from start to finish.' Glenda Young '...you will have to read this well-researched song and dance of a novel in great gulps as I did' Annie Clark 'I just loved this book! Molly Walton The Variety Girls is terrific - beautifully written & with an unusual background. The stage costumes twinkle with sequins and the book twinkles with tiny details of theatre life that add depth and atmosphere to this well-crafted and satisfying story. Maisie Thomas, The Railway Girls 'A pleasure from start to finish.' Glenda Young, Belle of the Backstreets '...you will have to read this well-researched song and dance of a novel in great gulps as I did' Milly Adams 'an evocative, busy, entertaining read, which has well balanced touches of humour, vying with angst, and of course, more than a dollop of tension.' Margaret Graham, Frost Magazine 'Characterisation is one of the book's strong points - the individual characters stay in your mind long after you finish the story.' Barbara Dynes, The Voice

Music-Dance explores the identity of choreomusical work, its complex authorship and its modes of reception as well as the cognitive processes involved in the reception of dance performance. Scholars of dance and music analyse the ways in which a musical score changes its prescriptive status when it becomes part of a choreographic project, the encounter between sound and motion on stage, and the intersection of listening and seeing. As well as being of interest to musicologists and choreologists considering issues such as notation, multimedia and the analysis of performance, this volume will appeal to scholars interested in applied research in the fields of cognition and neuroscience. The line-up of authors comprises representative figures of today's choreomusicology, dance historians, scholars of twentieth-century composition and specialists in cognitive science and performance studies. Among the topics covered are multimedia and the analysis of performance; the notational practice of choreographers and the parallel attempts of composers to find a graphic representation for musical gestures; and the experience of dance as a paradigm for a multimodal perception, which is investigated in terms of how the association of sound and movement triggers emotions and specific forms of cognition.

This book contains readings of American, British and European postmodern dances informed by feminist, postcolonialist, queer, and poststructuralist theories. It explores the roles dance and space play in constructing subjectivity. By focusing on site-specific dance, the mutual construction of bodies and spaces, body-space interfaces and "in-between spaces," the dances and dance films are read "against the grain" to reveal their potential for troubling conventional notions of subjectivity associated with a white, Western, heterosexual able-bodied, male norm.

The study of dance and movement as cultural phenomena frequently utilizes ethnography as a research strategy, yet no single text draws together the various fields of the social sciences. Written by leading exponents in dance ethnography from the disciplines of anthropology, ethnology, folklore studies and sociology, this international collection of essays addresses theoretical and methodological issues alongside considerations of documentary techniques and matters of politics and ethics.

In 1866, when the ballet La Source debuted, the public at the Paris Opera may have been content to dream about its setting in the verdant Caucasus, its exotic Circassians, veiled Georgians, and powerful Khan. Yet the ballet's botany also played to a public thinking about ethnic and exotic others at the same time-and in the same ways-as they were thinking about plants. Along with these stereotypes, with a flower promising hybridity in a green ecology, and the death of the embodied Source recuperated as a force for regeneration, the ballet can be read as a fable of science and the performance as its demonstration. Programmed for the opening gala of the new Opera, the Palais Garnier, in 1875 the ballet reflected not so much a timeless Orient as timely colonial policy and engineering in North Africa, the management of water and women. One Dead at the Paris Opera Ballet takes readers to four historic performances, over 150 years, showing how- through the sacrifice of a feminized Nature- La Source represented the biopolitics of sex and race, and the cosmopolitics of human and natural resources. Its 2011 reinvention at the Paris Opera, following the adoption of new legislation banning the veil in public spaces, might have staged gender and climate justice in sync with the Arab Spring, but opted instead for luxury and dream. Its 2014 reprise might have focused on decolonizing the stage or raising eco-consciousness, but exemplified the greater urgency attached to Islamist threat rather than imminent climate catastrophe, missing the ballet's historic potential to make its audience think.

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.

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.

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.