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Books > Arts & Architecture > Performing arts > Dance
In this rich interdisciplinary study Tim Scholl provides a provocative and timely re-evaluation of the development of ballet from the 1880s to the middle of the twentieth century. In the light of a thoughtful re-appraisal of dance classicism he locates the roots of modern ballet in the works of Marius Petipa, rather than in the much-celebrated choreographic experiements of Diaghilev's Ballet Russe. Not only is this the first book to present nineteenth- and twentieth-century ballet as a continuous rather than broken tradition, From Petipa to Balanchine places works such as Sleeping Beauty, Les Sylphides, Apollo and Jewells in their proper cultural and artistic context. The only English-language study to be based on the original Russian soures, this book will be essential reading for all dance scholars. Written in an engaging and elegant style it will also appeal to anyone interested in the history of ballet generally.
In the autumn of 1912, Rudolf Steiner presented the first eurythmy performance. It marked the revival, in modern form, of the sacred art of dance, which had been used in the ancient Mysteries to express the movements of the stars and the planets. In the years that followed, Steiner and his wife, Marie von Sivers, developed eurythmy further, broadening it beyond the artistic to encompass healing and educational elements as well. One of the pioneers of this new form of movement was the Russian anthroposophist Tatiana Kisseleff, who became a student of Steiner's and later a celebrated eurythmy teacher. In this remarkable book, available for the first time in English, Kisseleff describes the spiritual foundations of eurythmy as they were explored in Steiner's lectures and recounts the instruction she received from him. This is both an eyewitness account of the origins of eurythmy and a record of a deeply personal journey of one person's efforts to master it. The book is illustrated throughout with photographs, drawings, facsimile reproductions from notebooks and posters advertising early eurythmy performances, alongside accounts of performances of various pieces including Goethe's Faust and Rudolf Steiner's own Mystery Dramas. This is a fascinating account for eurythmists and anyone who wants to delve more deeply into eurythmy's history and development.
Within qualitative research in the social sciences, the last decade has witnessed a growing interest in the use of visual methods. Visual Methods in Physical Culture is the first book in the field of sport and exercise sciences dedicated to harnessing the potential of using visual methods within qualitative research. Theoretically insightful, and methodologically innovative, this book represents a landmark addition to the field of studies in sport, exercise, the body, and qualitative methods. It covers a wide range of empirical work, theories, and visual image-based research, including photography, drawing, and video. In so doing, the book deepens our understanding of physical culture. It also responds to key questions, such as what are visual methods, why might they be used, and how might they be applied in the field of sport and exercise sciences. This volume combines clarity of expression with careful scholarship and originality, making it especially appealing to students and scholars within a variety of fields, including sport sociology, sport and exercise psychology, sociology of the body, physical education, gender studies, gerontology, and qualitative inquiry. This book was published as a special issue in Qualitative Research in Sport and Exercise.
A book on how to teach dance and train dancers, by one of the US's leading dance teachers. Written for dance teachers in both professional settings and academic settings. A unique approach, following Bill's own six decades of dance teaching and not covered by any other book.
The story behind the scandalous first performance of one of the most influential works in the history of music, as part of the stunning Landmark Library series. On 29 May 1913, at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees in Paris, a new ballet by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky, received its premiere. Many of the cultural big names of Paris were there, or were rumoured to have been there: Debussy, Ravel, Proust, Gertrude Stein, Picasso. When the curtain rose on a cast of frenziedly stamping dancers, a near-riot ensued, ensuring the evening would enter the folklore of modernism. While it was the dancing that triggered the mayhem, Stravinsky's score contained shocks enough, with its innovations in form, rhythm, dissonance and its sheer sonic power. The Rite of Spring would achieve recognition in its own right as a concert piece, and is now seen as one of the most influential works of the 20th century. Gillian Moore explores the cultural climate that created The Rite, tells the story of the creation of the music and the ballet and provides a guide to the music itself, showing how a scandalous novelty of 1913 became a 21st-century concert staple. As well as considering its influence on 20th-century classical composers, she probes The Rite's impact on film music (including scores for Star Wars and Jaws); its extensive influence on jazz musicians (including Charlie Parker) and by artists as diverse as Weather Report, Joni Mitchell, Frank Zappa and The Pet Shop Boys.
Never before has a greater variety of careers been available in dance-and never before has such comprehensive, expert guidance on those burgeoning careers been accessible in one book. Careers in Dance is a master guide that will help students navigate the expanding opportunities in dance and familiarize current professionals with potential career choices that best align with their pursuits and strengths. This highly practical text offers a wealth of information on career options in a variety of settings and with a variety of focuses, including commercial ventures, scholarly pursuits, administrative avenues, medical and scientific settings, and interdisciplinary opportunities. Readers are guided in discovering their deepest interests and learning how to translate their unique strengths into rich and fulfilling careers. In keeping with recent trends in higher education dance programs, Careers in Dance spotlights entrepreneurship and leadership opportunities for dancers, delving into an array of options and offering much-needed advice. The book covers some of the social and cultural influences that affect success in the field, and it explores various career opportunities: K-12 and postsecondary dance education Dance studios Performance, choreography, and production Dance research, analytical writing, and journalism Dance administration and advocacy Dance science, therapy, and medical and somatic practices Private competition companies Technical theater and related areas The text also helps readers understand the connections between dance and other disciplines. For example, it details the interdisciplinary opportunities involving technology, technical theater, and media. It also notes the possibilities for continued education in graduate school programs and suggests approaches to acclimating to life as a working professional. Careers in Dance offers two recurring elements throughout the book: Profiles of, and interviews with, esteemed professional dancers, revealing their real-world experiences and affording insights into different dance careers Reflection prompts that encourage self-reflection and prepare readers to seek career development and career advancement opportunities This text explores the opportunities dance students and professionals can pursue, helps them pinpoint their areas of interest and strengths, and equips them to create their unique paths to a fulfilling career in dance. In doing so, Careers in Dance provides the advice and strategies dancers need to actualize their own destinies in dance.
The years between 1910 and 1940 were formative for Mexico, with the ouster of Porfirio Diaz, the subsequent revolution, and the creation of the new state. Amid the upheaval, Mexican dance emerged as a key arena of contestation regarding what it meant to be Mexican. Through an analysis of written, photographic, choreographic, and cinematographic renderings of a festive Mexico, Choreographing Mexico examines how bodies in motion both performed and critiqued the nation. Manuel Cuellar details the integration of Indigenous and regional dance styles into centennial celebrations, civic festivals, and popular films. Much of the time, this was a top-down affair, with cultural elites seeking to legitimate a hegemonic national character by incorporating traces of indigeneity. Yet dancers also used their moving bodies to challenge the official image of a Mexico full of manly vigor and free from racial and ethnic divisions. At home and abroad, dancers made nuanced articulations of female, Indigenous, Black, and even queer renditions of the nation. Cuellar reminds us of the ongoing political significance of movement and embodied experience, as folklorico maintains an important and still-contested place in Mexican and Mexican American identity today.
In the 1880s, there wasn't much in Anson, Texas, in the way of entertainment for the area's cowhands. But Star Hotel operator M. G. Rhodes changed that when he hosted a Grand Ball the weekend before Christmas. A restless traveling salesman, rancher, and poet from New York named William Lawrence Chittenden, a guest at the Star Hotel, was so impressed with the soiree that he penned his observances in the poem "The Cowboys' Christmas Ball." Re-enacted annually since 1934 based on Chittenden's poem, the contemporary dances attract people from coast to coast, from Canada, and from across Europe and elsewhere. Since 1993 Grammy Award-winning musical artist Michael Martin Murphey has played at the popular event. Far more than a history of the Jones County dance, Paul Carlson analyses the long poem, defining the many people and events mentioned and explaining the Jones County landscape Chittenden lays out in his celebrated work. The book covers the evolution of cowboy poetry and places Chittenden and his poem chronologically within the ever-changing western genre. Dancin' in Anson: A History of the Texas Cowboys' Christmas Ball is a novel but refreshing look at a cowboy poet, his poem, and a joyous Christmas-time family event that traces its roots back nearly 130 years.
This book traces the history of engagements between dance and the visual arts in the mid-twentieth century and provides a backdrop for the emerging field of contemporary, intermedial art practice. Exploring the disciplinary identity of dance in dialogue with the visual arts, this book unpacks how compositional methods that were dance-based informed visual art contexts. The book provokes fresh consideration of the entangled relationship between, and historiographic significance of, visual arts and dance by exploring movements in history that dance has been traditionally mapped to (Neo-Avant Garde, Neo-Dada, Conceptual art, Postmodernism, and Performance Art) and the specific practices and innovations from key people in the field (like John Cage, Anna Halprin, and Robert Rauschenberg). This book also employs a series of historical and critical case studies which show how compositional approaches from dance-breath, weight, tone, energy-informed the emergence of the intermedial. Ultimately this book shows how dance and choreography have played an important role in shaping visual arts culture and enables the re-imagination of current art practices through the use of choreographic tools. This unique and timely offering is important reading for those studying and researching in visual and fine arts, performance history and theory, dance practice and dance studies, as well as those working within the fields of dance and visual art. Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com
Examining a century of dance criticism in the United States and its influence on aesthetics and inclusion Dance criticism has long been integral to dance as an art form, serving as documentation and validation of dance performances, yet few studies have taken a close look at the impact of key critics and approaches to criticism over time. The first book to examine dance criticism in the United States across 100 years, from the late 1920s to the early twenty-first century, Shaping Dance Canons argues that critics in the popular press have influenced how dance has been defined and valued, as well as which artists and dance forms have been taken most seriously. Kate Mattingly likens the effect of dance writing to that of a flashlight, illuminating certain aesthetics at the expense of others. Mattingly shows how criticism can preserve and reproduce criteria for what qualifies as high art through generations of writers and in dance history courses, textbooks, and curricular design. She examines the gatekeeping role of prominent critics such as John Martin and Yvonne Rainer while highlighting the often-overlooked perspectives of writers from minoritized backgrounds and dance traditions. The book also includes an analysis of digital platforms and current dance projects-On the Boards TV, thINKingDANCE, Black Dance Stories, and amara tabor-smith's House/Full of BlackWomen-that challenge systemic exclusions. In doing so, the book calls for ongoing dialogue and action to make dance criticism more equitable and inclusive.
Liz Aggiss and Billy Cowie, known collectively as Divas Dance
Theatre, are renowned for their highly visual, interdisciplinary
brand of dance performance that incorporates elements of theatre,
film, opera, poetry and vaudevillian humor. They have created dance
theatre, cabaret, live art, single and multiple screen dance
installations, and live performance installations.
Ballet impresario Sergey Pavlovich Diaghilev and composer Sergey Sergeyevich Prokofiev are eminent figures in twentieth-century cultural history, yet this is the first detailed account of their fifteen-year collaboration. The beginning was not trouble-free, but despite two false starts (Ala i Lolli and the first version of its successor, Chout) Diaghilev maintained his confidence in the composer. With his guidance and encouragement Prokofiev established his mature balletic style. After some years of estrangement during which Prokofiev wrote for choreographer Boris Romanov and conductor/publisher Serge Koussevitsky, Diaghilev came to the composer's rescue at a low point in his Western career. The impresario encouraged Prokofiev's turn towards 'a new simplicity' and offered him a great opportunity for career renewal with a topical ballet on Soviet life (Le Pas d'acier). Even as late as 1928-29 Diaghilev compelled Prokofiev to achieve new heights of expressivity in his characterizations (L'Enfant prodigue). Although Western scholars have investigated Prokofiev's operas, piano works, and symphonies, little attention has been paid to his early ballets written for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Despite Prokofiev's devotion to opera, it was his ballets for Diaghilev as much as his concertos and solo piano works that earned his renown in Western Europe in the 1920s. Stephen D. Press discusses the genesis of each ballet, including the important contributions of the scenic designers (Mikhail Larionov, Georgy Yakulov and Georges Rouault) and the choreographer/dancers (Leonid Massine, Serge Lifar and George Balanchine), and the special relationship between the ballets' progenitors.
The 1909 arrival of Serge de Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in Paris marked the beginning of some two decades of collaboration among litterateurs, painters, musicians, and choreographers, many not native to France. Charles Batson's original and nuanced exploration of several of these collaborations integral to the formation of modernism and avant-gardist aesthetics reinscribes performances of the celebrated Russians and the lesser-known but equally innovative Ballets Suedois into their varied artistic traditions as well as the French historical context, teasing out connections and implications that are usually overlooked in less decidedly interdisciplinary studies. Batson not only uncovers the multiple meanings set in motion through the interplay of dancers, musicians, librettists, and spectators, but also reinterprets literary texts that inform these meanings, such as Valery's 'L'Ame et la danse'. Identifying the performing body as a site where anxieties, drives, and desires of the French public were worked out, he shows how the messages carried by and ascribed to bodies in performance significantly influenced thought and informed the direction of much artistic expression in the twentieth century. His book will be a valuable resource for scholars working in the fields of literature, dance, music, and film, as well as French cultural studies.
Cuban music is recognized unanimously as a major historical force behind Latin American popular music, and as an important player in the development of US popular music and jazz. However, the music produced on the island after the Revolution in 1959 has been largely overlooked and overshadowed by the Buena Vista Social Club phenomenon. The Revolution created the conditions for the birth of a type of highly sophisticated popular music, which has grown relatively free from market pressures. These conditions premised the new importance attained by Afro-Cuban dance music during the 1990s, when the island entered a period of deep economic and social crisis that has shaken Revolutionary institutions from their foundations. Vincenzo Perna investigates the role of black popular music in post-Revolutionary Cuba, and in the 1990s in particular. The emergence of timba is analysed as a distinctively new style of Afro-Cuban dance music. The controversial role of Afro-Cuban working class culture is highlighted, showing how this has resisted co-optation into a unified, pacified vision of national culture, and built musical bridges with the transnational black diaspora. Musically, timba represents an innovative fusion of previous popular and folkloric Afro-Cuban styles with elements of hip-hop and other African-American styles like jazz, funk and salsa. Timba articulates a black urban youth subculture with distinctive visual and choreographic codes. With its abrasive commentaries on issues such as race, consumer culture, tourism, prostitution and its connections to the underworld, timba demonstrates at the 'street level' many of the contradictions of contemporary Cuban society. After repeatedly colliding with official discourses, timba has eventually met with institutional repression. This book will appeal not only to ethnomusicologists and those working on popular music studies, but also to those working in the areas of cultural and Black studies, anthropology, Latin American studies, Cuban studies and Caribbean studies.
The Dancing God: Staging Hindu Dance in Australia charts the sensational and historic journey of de-provincialising and popularising Hindu dance in Australia. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, colonialism, orientalism and nationalism came together in various combinations to make traditional Hindu temple dance into a global art form. The intricately symbolic Hindu dance in its vital form was virtually unseen and unknown in Australia until an Australian impresario, Louise Lightfoot, brought it onto the stage. Her experimental changes, which modernised Kathakali dance through her pioneering collaboration with Indian dancer Ananda Shivaram, moved the Hindu dance from the sphere of ritualistic practice to formalised stage art. Amit Sarwal argues that this movement enabled both the authentic Hindu dance and dancer to gain recognition worldwide and created in his persona a cultural guru and ambassador on the global stage. Ideal for anyone with an interest in global dance, The Dancing God is an in-depth study of how a unique dance form evolved in the meeting of travellers and cultures.
The third instalment in Craig Revel Horwood's frank and funny
autobiography takes the reader through the highs and lows of the
Strictly Come Dancing star's 'fab-u-lous' life. Join Craig and a host
of Strictly stars - including Ore Oduba, Judy Murray and the
unforgettable Ed Balls - on the show and live tours and get the real
stories from behind the scenes.
Elizabeth B. Schwall aligns culture and politics by focusing on an art form that became a darling of the Cuban revolution: dance. In this history of staged performance in ballet, modern dance, and folkloric dance, Schwall analyzes how and why dance artists interacted with republican and, later, revolutionary politics. Drawing on written and visual archives, including intriguing exchanges between dancers and bureaucrats, Schwall argues that Cubans dancers used their bodies and ephemeral, nonverbal choreography to support and critique political regimes and cultural biases. As esteemed artists, Cuban dancers exercised considerable power and influence. They often used their art to posit more radical notions of social justice than political leaders were able or willing to implement. After 1959, while generally promoting revolutionary projects like mass education and internationalist solidarity, they also took risks by challenging racial prejudice, gender norms, and censorship, all of which could affect dancers personally. On a broader level, Schwall shows that dance, too often overlooked in histories of Latin America and the Caribbean, provides fresh perspectives on what it means for people, and nations, to move through the world.
This complete scholarly edition of the collection of manuscript choreographies from c.1565-c.1675 associated with the Inns of Court is the first full-length study of these sources to be published. It offers practical reconstructions of the dances and provides a selection of musical settings simply but idiomatically arranged for four-part instrumental ensemble or keyboard. A Part One centres on the manuscript sources which transmit the Almain, and on the trends and influences that shaped its evolution in Britain from c. 1549 to c. 1675, taking account of both music and choreography.A In viewing the Almain within its broader historical context, Ian Payne throws new light on the dance, arguing that, together with the 'measures' which accompany it in the choreographies, it owes an even greater debt to the English country dance than has hitherto been acknowledged, a popular style that received its fullest expression in Playford's English Dancing Master of 1651. A The second part of the book focuses on the dances themselves. The steps are described in detail and reconstructions provided for the nine Almains and some of the other measures included in the manuscripts. Part Three comprises a complete critical edition of the manuscripts. A These easily performable versions of the dances will be an invaluable aid to those wishing to learn the dances, reconstruct them for stagings of Shakespeare's plays or Jacobean masques, and for dance historians.
First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Martha Graham's Cold War frames the story of Martha Graham and her particular brand of dance modernism as pro-Western Cold War propaganda used by the United States government to promote American democracy. Representing every seated president from Dwight D. Eisenhower through Ronald Reagan, Graham performed politics in the global field for over thirty years. Why did the State Department consistently choose Martha Graham? As with other art forms such as jazz or avant-garde paintings, modern dance was seen to demonstrate American values of individualism and freedom; the choreographer used the freed body to make a new dance technique that could find the essence of human narratives. Graham targeted elites and its youth with modern dance to propound the 'universalism' of human rights under the banner of American democracy. In her choreography, argues author Victoria Phillips, Graham recast the stories of the Western canon through female protagonists whom she captured as timeless, seemingly beyond current politics, and in so doing implied superior political and cultural values of the Free World. Centering on powerful yet not demonstrably American female characters, the stories Graham danced seduced and captured the imaginations of elite audiences without seeming to force a determinedly American agenda. When her characters grew mythic on stage, they became the stories of all mankind, as Graham termed it. "My dances are ages old in meaning," she declared. But Graham took the pro-American argument one step further than her artistic compatriots. She added the trope of the frontier to her repertory. In the Cold War, Graham's particular modernism and the woman herself ossified, as did political aims of a cultural diplomacy based on an appeal to foreign elites. Phillips lays bare the side-by-side trajectories between the aging of Graham's choreography, her work as an ambassador, and the political dominance of the United States as a global power. With her tours and Cold War modernism, she demonstrated the power of the individual, immigrants, republicanism, and freedom from walls and metaphorical fences through cultural diplomacy with the unfettered language of movement and dance.
Discusses all basic principles of ballet, grouping movement by fundamental types. Diagrams show clearly the exact foot, leg, arm and body positions for the proper execution of many steps and movements. Offers dancers, teachers and ballet lovers information often difficult to locate in other books.
Dance Technique and Injury Prevention has established itself as the key reference for everyone involved in dance injury and treatment, physical therapy, and dance instruction. In this newly revised and expanded edition, Dr Howse reviews the subject's five main areas: Anatomy and Physiology, Injuries (general), Injuries (specific) - Their Cause and Treatment, Strengthening Exercises, and Technical Faults and Anatomical Variations. The new set of strengthening exercises is a special feature of this edition. Comprehensively illustrated with more than 320 diagrams and photographs, Dance Technique and Injury Prevention 3/e deserves a place in every professional's library and treatment room.
This book focuses on how Latin American people and cultural practices have moved from one continent to another, and specifically to London. How do Latin Americans experience such a process and what part do different people play in the re-making of Latin identities in the neighbourhoods, parks, bars and dance clubs of London? Through a critical engagement with theories of globalization, the geography of power, cultural identity and the transformation of places, the book explores how the formation of Latin identities is directly related to wider social, economic and political processes. Drawing on the voices of migrant peoples, community activists, shop owners, sports organizers, club owners, dancers, dance teachers, musicians and disc jockeys, the book argues that the micro movements of people - through a shopping mall or across a dance floor in a club - are directly connected to global processes involving the regulated movement of citizens, sounds and images across national boundaries and through cities.
In honour of Doris Humphrey's centennial, which was celebrated worldwide in 1995, this issue explores her legacy to the world of dance and her place in history. The varied aspects of her work are covered including choreography, teaching approach, Labanotation scores, reconstruction/recreations, and composition. In order to convey a sense of movement into the next century, the articles are presented in "chronological" order, beginning with that of Ernestine Stodelle, who worked with Humphrey during the 1920's and ending with an examination of Mindlin's 1995 experience learning Humphrey's work from Stodelle. |
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