Paris at the turn of the century - Art Nouveau, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec and the Folies Bergere. This was the atmosphere which nurtured the artistic development of the remarkable dancer and choreographer Ida Rubinstein.
This long-awaited biography gives us a unique insight into the life of a remarkable woman, responsible for a fascinating chapter of our artistic heritage. She was a chameleon, a diva, who lived many lives, overcoming the anti-Semitism of her times to enchant and captivate the highest of societies.
Untrained as a dancer, Ida Rubinstein's charisma attracted collaborators such as Debussy, Stravinsky, Ravel, Cocteau, Bakst, and Benois. She scandalized high society from Paris to St. Petersburg and attracted the attention of everyone from Marc Chagall to Sarah Bernhardt.
Vicki Woolf has appeared in several films and countless plays. Her training as a dancer led to the development of her own method of exercises and related publications, prior to undertaking the research for Danc

The Routledge Companion to Dance Studies maps out the key features of dance studies as the field stands today, while pointing to potential future developments. It locates these features both historically-within dance in particular social and cultural contexts-and in relation to other academic influences that have impinged on dance studies as a discipline. The editors use a thematically based approach that emphasizes that dance scholarship does not stand alone as a single entity, but is inevitably linked to other related fields, debates, and concerns. Authors from across continents have contributed chapters based on theoretical, methodological, ethnographic, and practice-based case studies, bringing together a wealth of expertise and insight to offer a study that is in-depth and wide-ranging. Ideal for scholars and upper-level students of dance and performance studies, The Routledge Companion to Dance Studies challenges the reader to expand their knowledge of this vibrant, exciting interdisciplinary field.

Kathakali Dance-Drama provides a comprehensive introduction to the distinctive and colourful dance-drama of Kerala in South-West India for the first time. This landmark volume:
* explores Kathakali's reception as it reaches new audiences both in India and the west
* includes two cases of controversial of Kathakali experiments
* explores the implications for Kathakali of Keralan politics
During these performances heroes, heroines, gods and demons tell their stories of traditional Indian epics. The four Kathakali plays included in this anthology, translated from actual performances into English are:
* The Flower of Good Fortune
* The Killing of Kirmmira
* The Progeny of Krishna
* King Rugmamgada's Law
Each play has an introduction and detailed commentary and is illustrated by stunning photographs taken during performances. An introduction to Kathakali stage conventions, make-up, music, acting, and training is also provided, making this an ideal volume for both the specialist and non-specialist reader.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203197666

Kathakali Dance-Drama provides a comprehensive introduction to the distinctive and colourful dance-drama of Kerala in South-West India for the first time. This landmark volume:
* explores Kathakali's reception as it reaches new audiences both in India and the west
* includes two cases of controversial of Kathakali experiments
* explores the implications for Kathakali of Keralan politics.
During these performances heroes, heroines, gods and demons tell their stories of traditional Indian epics. The four Kathakali plays included in this anthology, translated from actual performances into English are:
* The Flower of Good Fortune
* The Killing of Kirmmira
* The Progeny of Krishna
* King Rugmamgada's Law.
Each play has an introduction and detailed commentary and is illustrated by stunning photographs taken during performances. An introduction to Kathakali stage conventions, make-up, music, acting, and training is also provided, making this an ideal volume for both the specialist and non-specialist reader.

This book addresses the mind-body dichotomy in movement and dance. This book includes a description of the often-forgotten kinesthetic sense, body awareness, somatic practices, body-based way of thinking, mental imagery, nonverbal communication, human empathy, and symbol systems, what occurs in the brain during learning, and why and how movement and dance should be part of school curricula. This exploration arguers that becoming more aware of bodily sensations serves as a basis for knowing, communicating, learning, and teaching through movement and dance. This book will be of great interest to scholars and students interested in teaching methodology and for courses in physical education, dance, and education.

The writings of six choreographers are assembled in this book and the leap they have taken to go from the medium of choreography into written text constitutes a form of translation. Some of the texts investigate the possibilities of written language as invention, others use it as a means to illustrate specific tenets or describe choreographic projects. All yield insight into the process of coaxing language from the body.

Curating Dramaturgies investigates the transformation of art and performance and its impact on dramaturgy and curatorship. Addressing contexts and processes of the performing arts as interconnecting with visual arts, this book features interviews with leading curators, dramaturgs and programmers who are at the forefront of working in, with, and negotiating the daily practice of interdisciplinary live arts. The book offers a view of praxis that combines perspectives on theory and practice and looks at the way that various arts institutions, practitioners and cultural agents have been working to change the way that art and performance have developed and experienced by spectators in the last decade. Curating Dramaturgies argues that cultural producers and scholars are becoming more cognizant of this overlapping and transforming field. The introductory essay by the editors explores the rise of interdisciplinary live arts and its ramifications in cultural and political terms. This is further elaborated in the interviews with 15 diversely placed arts professionals who are at the forefront of rethinking and consolidatingthe ever-evolving field of the visual arts and performance.

It was indeed an adventure for those pioneers in France who struggled for the recognition of the new-born dance of the twentieth century - from the free dance of Isadora Duncan, through the absolute dance of Mary Wigman, to the modern dance of Martha Graham.
Jacqueline Robinson has lived at the heart of this adventure, sharing the aspirations of a whole generation who often suffered from the lack of understanding of an establishment more inclined towards classical ballet.
From the breaking of the soil in the twenties, to the flowering in the sixties, here is a chronicle of the changing landscape of French dance. Here is the story of those men and women, ploughmen and poets, rebels and visionaries - the recollection of those events that made it possible for dance as an art form in Western countries to rise again as a fundamental expression of the human spirit.

A pioneer choreographer in modern American dance, Anna Sokolow has led a bewildering, active international life. Her meticulous biographer Larry Warren once looked up Anna Sokolow in a few reference books and found that she was born in three different years and that her parents were from Poland except when they were in Russia, and found many other inaccuracies.
Drawing on material from nearly 100 interviews, Larry Warren has created a fascinating account and assessment of the life and work of Anna Sokolow, whose nomadic career was divided between New York, Mexico, and Israel.
Setting her work on more than 70 dance companies, Anna Sokolow not only pioneered the development of a personal approach to movement, which has become part of the language of contemporary dance, but also created such masterpieces as "Rooms," dealing with loneliness and alienation, and "Dreams," which concerns the inner torment of victims of the Nazi Holocaust. Her unflinching look at the darker sides of experien

Why do women choreographers chose to create the dances they do in the manner they do? How do women in dance work independently and organizationally? How do women set up institutions? How has higher education helped or hindered women in the world of dance? These are the questions this work seeks to address.;In dealing with some of the tensions, joys, frustrations and fears women experience at various points of their creative lives, the contributors strike a balance between a theoretical sense of feminism and its practice in reality. This book aims to present answers to questions about women, power and action.

"East Meets West in Dance" chronicles this development in the words of many of its best known and most active exponents. This collection of articles provides a theoretical discussion of the promises and pitfalls inherent in transplanting art forms from one culture to another; it offers practical guidance for those who might want to participate in this enterprise and explains the general history of the dance exchange to date. It also identifies the differences that are unique to specific cultures, such as the development of theatrical forms, arts education, and the status of artists. This is a first examination of a phenomenon that has already touched most people in the arts community worldwide, and that none can afford to ignore.
A lively dialogue has evolved over the last few decades between dance professionals -- performers, teachers and administrators -- in the United States and Europe and their counterparts in Asia and the Pacific rim.

"East Meets West in Dance" chronicles this development in the words of many of its best known and most active exponents. This collection of articles provides a theoretical discussion of the promises and pitfalls inherent in transplanting art forms from one culture to another; it offers practical guidance for those who might want to participate in this enterprise and explains the general history of the dance exchange to date. It also identifies the differences that are unique to specific cultures, such as the development of theatrical forms, arts education, and the status of artists. This is a first examination of a phenomenon that has already touched most people in the arts community worldwide, and that none can afford to ignore.
A lively dialogue has evolved over the last few decades between dance professionals -- performers, teachers and administrators -- in the United States and Europe and their counterparts in Asia and the Pacific rim.

Award-winning New York City Ballet soloist Georgina Pazcoguin, aka the Rogue Ballerina, gives readers a backstage tour of the real world of elite ballet - the gritty, hilarious, sometimes shocking truth you don't see from the orchestra circle. In this love letter to the art of dance and the sport that has been her livelihood, NYCB's first Asian American female soloist Georgina Pazcoguin lays bare her unfiltered story of leaving small-town Pennsylvania for New York City and training amid the unique demands of being a hybrid professional athlete/artist, all before finishing high school. She pitches us into the fascinating, whirling shoes of dancers in one of the most revered ballet companies in the world with an unapologetic sense of humour about the cutthroat, survival-of-the-fittest mentality at NYCB. Some swan dives are literal: even in the ballet, there are plenty of face-plants, backstage fights, late-night parties, and raucous company bonding sessions. Rocked by scandal in the wake of the #MeToo movement, NYCB sits at an inflection point, inching toward progress in a strictly traditional culture, and Pazcoguin doesn't shy away from ballet's dark side. She continues to be one of the few dancers openly speaking up against the sexual harassment, mental abuse, and racism that in the past went unrecognized or was tacitly accepted as par for the course - all of which she has painfully experienced firsthand. Tying together Pazcoguin's fight for equality in the ballet with her infectious and deeply moving passion for her craft, Swan Dive is a page-turning, one-of-a-kind account that guarantees you'll never view a ballerina or a ballet the same way again.

This essential pocket guide to this enduringly popular art, is a perfect introduction to over eighty of the most performed ballets today. Spanning nearly two centuries of classical dancing, this indispensable book begins in the Romantic era of the 1830s, moves through the great Tchaikovskly ballets of Tsarist St Petersburg, to the inspirational work of Diaghilev at the beginning of the twentieth century and the luminous neo-classicism of Balanchine. Ashton and Macmillan are covered in depth, and the most recent ground-breaking work brings us up to the present day.

Dancing Motherhood explores how unique factors about the dance profession impact mothers working in it. Ali Duffy introduces the book by laying a foundation of social and cultural histories and trends leading to the issues mothers in dance negotiate today. This study then reveals perspectives from mothers in dance working in areas such as performance choreography, dance education, writing, and advocacy though survey and interview data. Based on participant responses, recommendations for changes in policy, hiring, evaluation, and other work practices to better support working mothers in dance are outlined and discussed. Finally, essays from five working mothers in dance offers more intimate, personal stories and guidance geared to mothers, future mothers, and colleagues and supervisors of mothers in the dance field. By describing lived experiences and offering suggestions for improved working conditions and self-advocacy, this book initiates expanded discussion about women in dance and promotes change to positively impact dancing mothers, their employers, and the dance field.

Politics as Public Art presents a keystone collection that pursues new frameworks for a critical understanding of the relationship between public art and protest movements through the utilization of socially engaged and choreopolitical approaches. This anthology draws from a unique combination of interdisciplinary scholarship and activism where it integrates geographically rich perspectives from political and grassroots community contexts spanning the United States, Europe, Australia, and Southeastern Africa. The volume questions, and reimagines, not only how public art practice can be integral to politics, including forms of surveillance and control of bodily movement. It also probes into how political participation itself can be construed as a form of public artmaking for radical social change and just worlds. This collection advocates for scholar-activist inquiry into how socially engaged public art practices can pave the way for thinking through-and working toward-championing more inclusive futures and, as such, choreographing greater intersectional justice. This book provides a wide appeal to audiences across humanities and social science scholarship, arts practice, and activism seeking conceptual and empirically informed tools for moving from public art and choreopolitical theory into modes of praxis: critical reflection and action.

"An excellent introduction to the many complexities and facets of powwows. It entices the reader to recognize the importance of bodies in motion--in particular, dance--in forging social worlds and mediating power relations."--Zoila Mendoza, author of Creating Our Own: Folklore, Performance, and Identity in Cuzco, Peru "An outstanding interpretation of Native American powwow dancing that reveals its significance in the context of colonial and postcolonial history and across cultures and borders. As dancer and dance scholar, Axtmann brings a keen eye and her own kinesthetic knowledge of dance to her groundbreaking interpretation of the movement styles of powwow dances. "--Elizabeth Fine, author of Soulstepping: African American Step Shows "In her meticulously researched book, Ann Axtmann has added a new dimension to our understanding of Native performance. This rich ethnographic and cultural analysis will be of tremendous interest to scholars, students, and the general public. Axtmann makes a strong and moving case for the power of the dancing body."--Julie Malnig, editor of Ballroom, Boogie, Shimmy Sham, Shake: A Social and Popular Dance Reader Thousands of intertribal powwows occur every year throughout the United States and Canada. Sometimes lasting up to a week, these sacred and traditional events are central to Native American spirituality. Attendees dance, drum, sing, eat, reestablish family ties, and make new friends. In this compelling interdisciplinary work, Ann Axtmann examines powwows as practiced primarily along the northeast Atlantic coastline from New Jersey into New England. Focusing on the centrality of bodies in motion, she introduces us to the complexities of powwow history, describes how space and time are performed along the powwow trail, identifies the specific dance styles employed, and considers the issue of race in relation to Native American dancers and the phenomenon of "playing Indian" by non-Natives. Ultimately, Axtmann seeks to understand how powwow dancers express and embody power and what these dances signify for the communities in which they are performed.

This unparalleled collection, international and innovative in scope, analyzes the dynamic tensions between masculinity and dance. Introducing a lens of intersectionality, the book's content examines why, despite burgeoning popular and contemporary representations of a normalization of dancing masculinities, some boys don't dance and why many of those who do struggle to stay involved. Prominent themes of identity, masculinity, and intersectionality weave throughout the book's conceptual frameworks of education and schooling, cultures, and identities in dance. Incorporating empirical studies, qualitative inquiry, and reflexive accounts, Doug Risner and Beccy Watson have assembled a unique volume of original chapters from established scholars and emerging voices to inform the future direction of interdisciplinary dance scholarship and dance education research. The book's scope spans several related disciplines including gender studies, queer studies, cultural studies, performance studies, and sociology. The volume will appeal to dancers, educators, researchers, scholars, students, parents, and caregivers of boys who dance. Accessible at multiple levels, the content is relevant for undergraduate students across dance, dance education, and movement science, and graduate students forging new analysis of dance, pedagogy, gender theory, and teaching praxis.

In this book, Shay Welch expands on the contemporary cognitive thinking-in-movement framework, which has its roots in the work of Maxine Sheets-Johnstone but extends and develops within contemporary embodied cognition theory. Welch believes that dance can be used to ask questions, and this book offers a method of how critical inquiry can be embodied. First, she presents the theoretical underpinnings of what this process is and how it can work; second, she introduces the empirical method as a tool that can be used by movers for the purpose of doing embodied inquiry. Exploring the role of embodied cognition and embodied metaphors in mining the body for questions, Welch demonstrates how to utilize movement to explore embodied practices of knowing. She argues that our creative embodied movements facilitate our ability to bodily engage in critical analysis about the world.

The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Reenactment brings together a cross-section of artists and scholars engaged with the phenomenon of reenactment in dance from a practical and theoretical standpoint. Synthesizing myriad views on danced reenactment and the manner in which this branch of choreographic performance intersects with important cultural concerns around appropriation this Handbook addresses originality, plagiarism, historicity, and spatiality as it relates to cultural geography. Others topics treated include transmission as a heuristic device, the notion of the archive as it relates to dance and as it is frequently contrasted with embodied cultural memory, pedagogy, theory of history, reconstruction as a methodology, testimony and witnessing, theories of history as narrative and the impact of dance on modernist literature, and relations of reenactment to historical knowledge and new media.

Surveying the state of American ballet in a 1913 issue of Clure's Magazine, author Willa Cather reported that few girls expressed any interest in taking ballet class and that those who did were hard-pressed to find anything other than dingy studios and imperious teachers. One hundred years later, ballet is everywhere. There are ballet companies large and small across the United States; ballet is commonly featured in film, television, literature, and on social media; professional ballet dancers are spokespeople for all kinds of products; nail polish companies market colors like "Ballet Slippers" and "Prima Ballerina;" and, most importantly, millions of American children have taken ballet class. Beginning with the arrival of Russian dancers like Anna Pavlova, who first toured the United States on the eve of World War I, Ballet Class: An American History explores the growth of ballet from an ancillary part of nineteenth-century musical theater, opera, and vaudeville to the quintessential extracurricular activity it is today, pursued by countless children nationwide and an integral part of twentieth-century American childhood across borders of gender, class, race, and sexuality. A social history, Ballet Class takes a new approach to the very popular subject of ballet and helps ground an art form often perceived to be elite in the experiences of regular, everyday people who spent time in barre-lined studios across the United States. Drawing on a wide variety of materials, including children's books, memoirs by professional dancers and choreographers, pedagogy manuals, and dance periodicals, in addition to archival collections and oral histories, this pathbreaking study provides a deeply-researched national perspective on the history and significance of recreational ballet class in the United States and its influence on many facets of children's lives, including gender norms, consumerism, body image, children's literature, extracurricular activities, and popular culture.