Instruments of Embodiment draws on fashion theory and the philosophy of embodiment to investigate costuming in contemporary dance. It weaves together philosophical theory and artistic practice by closely analyzing acclaimed works by contemporary choreographers, considering interviews with costume designers, and engaging in practice-as-research. Topics discussed include the historical evolution of contemporary dance costuming, Merce Cunningham's innovative collaborations with Robert Rauschenberg, and costumes used in Ohad Naharin's Virus (2001) and in a ground-breaking Butoh solo by Tatsumi Hijikata. The relationship between dance costuming and high fashion, wearable computing, and the role costume plays in dance reconstruction are also discussed and, along the way, an anarchist materialism is articulated which takes an egalitarian view of artistic collaboration and holds that experimental costume designs facilitate new forms of embodied experience and ways of seeing the body. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars working in performance philosophy, philosophy of embodiment, dance and performance studies, and fashion theory.

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.

This book examines the performance of Bauls, 'folk' performers from Bengal, in the context of a rapidly globalizing Indian economy and against the backdrop of extreme nationalistic discourses. Recognizing their scope beyond the musical and cultural realm, Sukanya Chakrabarti engages in discussing the subversive and transformational potency of Bauls and their performances. In-Between Worlds argues that the Bauls through their musical, spiritual, and cultural performances offer 'joy' and 'spirituality,' thus making space for what Dr. Ambedkar in his famous 1942 speech had identified as 'reclamation of human personality'. Chakrabarti destabilizes the category of 'folk' as a fixed classification or an origin point, and fractures homogeneous historical representations of the Baul as a 'folk' performer and a wandering mendicant exposing the complex heterogeneity that characterizes this group. Establishing 'folk-ness' as a performance category, and 'folk festivals' as sites of performing 'folk-ness,' contributing to a heritage industry that thrives on imagined and recreated nostalgia, Chakrabarti examines different sites that produce varied performative identities of Bauls, probing the limits of such categories while simultaneously advocating for polyvocality and multifocality. While this project has grounded itself firmly in performance studies, it has borrowed extensively from fields of postcolonial studies and subaltern histories, literature, ethnography and ethnomusicology, and cosmopolitan studies.

This anthology negotiates the influential, yet silent educational presence of spiritualities within the field of somatic movement dance education internationally. The expressive and integral nature of spiritual experience remains academically undefined and peripheral to our understanding of creative practice. Lack of theoretical rigour, as well as a lack of a substantive definitional and methodological competency, has resulted in spirituality being marginalised. To date, important questions about how diverse spiritualities shape professional practice in the somatic movement and dance arts remain unanswered. This cutting-edge collection fills that void, providing greater creative and discursive clarity.

This unique work is an annotated collection and collation of Western writing on Indian dance from the period of Marco Polo's travels to India to the formulation of the anti-devadasi bill in 1930, and a little beyond. The book reproduces more than 250 extracts from important texts, which provide examples of how dance in India was perceived as an art, as well its position in the broader cultural, religious, social, and ethical environment. Though some excerpts from these texts are cited in other writings on Indian dance history, there is no other available work that reproduces such a large number of historical writings on Indian dance and places them in a fluid historical context.

A Sourcebook of Performance Labor presents the views and experiences of collaborators in other artists' works. This book reorients well-known works of contemporary performance and social practice around the workers who have shaped, enacted, and supported them. It emerges from perspectives on maintenance, care, affective labor, and the knowledges created and preserved through gesture and intersubjectivity. This compilation of interviews is filled with the voices of collaborators in notable works attributed to established contemporary artists, including Francis Alys, Tania Bruguera, Suzanne Lacy, Ernesto Pujol, Asad Raza, Dread Scott, and Tino Sehgal. In the spirit of the artworks under discussion, this book reinvests in the possibilities for art as a collective effort to explore new ways of finding ourselves in others and others in ourselves. The Sourcebook collection is a contribution for further theorizing a largely unaddressed perspective in contemporary art. This collection will be of great interest to students and scholars in performance studies and art history.

Dance, Ageing and Collaborative Arts-Based Research contributes a critical and comprehensive perspective on the role of the arts -specifically dance - in enhancing the lives of older people. The book focuses on the development of an innovative arts-based program for older adults and the collaborative process of exploring and understanding its impact in relation to ageing, social inclusion, and care. It offers a wide audience of readers a richer understanding of the role of the arts in ageing and life enrichment, critical contributions to theories of ageing and care, specific approaches to arts-based collaborative research, and an exploration of the impact of Sharing Dance from the perspective of older adults, artists, researchers, and community leaders. Given the interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of this book, it will be of interest across health, social science, and humanities disciplines, including gerontology, sociology, psychology, geography, nursing, social work, and performing arts. Licence line: Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This book provides a fascinating and concise history of devised theatre practice. As both a founding member of Philadelphia's Pig Iron Theater Company and a Professor, Telory Arendell begins this journey with a brief history of Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop and Living Newspapers through Brecht's Berliner Ensemble and Joe Chaikin's Open Theatre to the racially inflected commentary of Luis Valdez's Teatro Campesino and Ariane Mnouchkine's collaboration with Theatre de Soleil. This book explores the impact of devised theatre on social practice and analyzes Goat Island's use of Pina Bausch's gestural movement, Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed in Giving Voice, Anna Deavere Smith's devised envelope for Verbatim Theatre, The Tectonic Theatre Project's moment work, Teya Sepinuck's Theatre of Witness, Pig Iron's use of Lecoq mime to build complex physical theatre scripts, and The Riot Group's musical arrangement of collaborative devised text. Included are a foreword by Allen J. Kuharski and three devised plays by Theatre of Witness, Pig Iron, and The Riot Group. Replete with interviews from the initial Pig Iron collaborators on subjects of writing, directing, choreographing, teaching, and developing a pedagogical platform that supports devised theatre.

The Moving Body in the Aural Skills Classroom-influenced by Dalcroze-eurhythmics-is a practical guide for college-level teachers and students interested in integrating the moving body into the traditional aural skills classroom. What distinguishes this book from other texts is its central concern with movement-to-music as a tool for developing musical perception and the kinesthetic aspects humans experience as performers. Moving to music and watching others move cultivates an active, multi-sensory learning experience, in which students learn by discovery and from each other. Improvisatory and expressive elements are built into exercises to encourage a dynamic link between musical training and artistic performance. Designed for a three- to four-semester undergraduate curriculum, the book contains a wealth of exercises that teach rhythmic, melodic, harmonic and formal concepts. Exercises not only develop the ear, but also awaken the muscular and nervous system, foster mind-body connections, strengthen the powers of concentration (being in the "musical now "), develop inner-hearing, short- and long-term memory, multi-tasking skills, limb autonomy, and expressive freedom. Exercises are presented in a graded, though flexible order allowing you to select individual exercises in any sequence. Activities involve movement through space (traveling movement) as well as movement in place (stationary movement) for those teaching in small classrooms. The text can be used as a teacher's manual, a supplementary aural-skills textbook, or as a stand-alone reference in a course dedicated to eurhythmics. Movement exercises are designed to enhance and work in conjunction with musical examples presented in other texts. Many exercises also provide an effective aural/sensory tool in the music theory classroom to complement verbal explanations. The approach integrates easily into any traditional college or conservatory classroom and is compatible with the following systems: fixed do, moveable do, and scale degrees. A companion website accompanies the text featuring undergraduate students performing select exercises.

A survey of the key moments in dance performance in the USA. Aimed at undergraduate students on Dance BA and BFA degrees in the United States. Deliberately takes a diverse, inclusive perspective, covering previously marginalised or overlooked figures' roles in the development of US dance.

A survey of the key moments in dance performance in the USA. Aimed at undergraduate students on Dance BA and BFA degrees in the United States. Deliberately takes a diverse, inclusive perspective, covering previously marginalised or overlooked figures' roles in the development of US dance.

An episodic account of the key trends, moments and emerging forms in the history of dance. Aimed at Dance History and World Dance units on undergraduate Dance and Dance Studies BA/BfA degrees. The only dance history textbook designed specifically for week-by-week classroom use.

An episodic account of the key trends, moments and emerging forms in the history of dance. Aimed at Dance History and World Dance units on undergraduate Dance and Dance Studies BA/BfA degrees. The only dance history textbook designed specifically for week-by-week classroom use.

This is the first comprehensive textbook on lighting design for dance productions. Illuminates the aesthetic considerations of lighting design (the "poetry") along with the tools and technology (the "nitty-gritty") to execute effective designs. Contains reflections from renowned lighting designers, including Jennifer Tipton, Beverly Emmons, Mark Stanley, Richard Dunham, and James E. Streeter.

Risk, Failure, Play illuminates the many ways in which competitive martial arts differentiate themselves from violence. Presented from the perspective of a dancer and writer, this book takes readers through the politics of everyday life as experienced through training in a range of martial arts practices such as jeet kune do, Brazilian jiu jitsu, kickboxing, Filipino martial arts, and empowerment self-defense. Author Janet OaShea shows how play gives us the ability to manage difficult realities with intelligence and demonstrates that physical play, with its immediacy and heightened risk, is particularly effective at accomplishing this task. Risk, Failure, Play also demonstrates the many ways in which physical recreation allows us to manage the complexities of our current social reality. Risk, Failure, Play intertwines personal experience with phenomenology, social psychology, dance studies, performance studies, as well as theories of play and competition in order to produce insights on pleasure, mastery, vulnerability, pain, agency, individual identity, and society. Ultimately, this book suggests that play allows us to rehearse other ways to live than the ones we see before us and challenges us to reimagine our social reality.

dance, data, multimodal communication, dancers, neuro-cognitive science, contemporary dance, intangible cultural heritage, performing arts, cognitive linguistics, embodiment, design, and creativity studies

Honest Bodies: Revolutionary Modernism in the Dances of Anna Sokolow illustrates the ways in which Sokolow's choreography circulated American modernism among Jewish and communist channels of the international Left from the 1930s-1960s in the United States, Mexico, and Israel. Drawing upon extensive archival materials, interviews, and theories from dance, Jewish, and gender studies, this book illuminates Sokolow's statements for workers' rights, anti-racism, and the human condition through her choreography for social change alongside her dancing and teaching for Martha Graham. Tracing a catalog of dances with her companies Dance Unit, La Paloma Azul, Lyric Theatre, and Anna Sokolow Dance Company, along with presenters and companies the Negro Cultural Committee, New York State Committee for the Communist Party, Federal Theatre Project, Nuevo Grupo Mexicano de Clasicas y Modernas, and Inbal Dance Theater, this book highlights Sokolow's work in conjunction with developments in ethnic definitions, diaspora, and nationalism in the US, Mexico, and Israel.

International vaudeville star and Broadway prima ballerina Jeanne Devereaux performed for millions across Europe and America in her prime. Born Jean Helman, she entered showbiz young as a trouper performing in palatial theaters and was one of the last vaudevillians surviving into the 2010s. In her final years she indulged her passion for research and writing in the Huntington Library's Rothenberg Reading Room, losing none of her intelligence and wit despite a failing memory. Drawing on interviews, show programs and her personal diary and letters, this biography illuminates the life and career of one of vaudeville's stars of stage, film and television.

The visionary choreographer and dancer Isadora Duncan (1877-1927) not only revolutionized dance in the twentieth century but blazed a path for other visionaries who would follow in her wake. While many biographies have explored Duncan's crucial role as one of the founders of modern dance, no other book has proved as critical-as both historical record and vivid evocation of a riveting life-as her autobiography. From her early enchantment with classical music and poetry to her great successes abroad, to her sensational love affairs and headline-grabbing personal tragedies, Duncan's story is a dramatic one. My Life still stands alone as "a great document, revealing the truth of her life as she understood it, without reticence or apology or compromise" (New York Herald Tribune). Now, in this fully restored edition, with its risque recollections and fervent idealism, My Life can be appreciated by a new generation.

The first book that historicizes the evolution of K-pop dance from the 1980s to the 2020s based on extensive archival research on backup dancers, trainees, idols, performance directors, and cover dancers. Vivid five-year-long (auto)ethnographic reflections, fieldwork, and interviews in CA, NY in the U.S., and Seoul, South Korea. A pioneering work that theorizes the timely topic of dance influencers on social media and its distinctive features as social media dance.

A book on dance-making, centred on practitioners with disabilities but valuable for dancers in all situations. Aimed at the huge range of dance-makers looking to make their work accessible, inclusive and diverse. A leading book in the field on this topic, now updated and expanded to reflect current trends and debates.

Floating Bones charts the author's journey into tensegrity, which begins in ballet and culminates in a model for addressing one's body as a teacher. Tensegrity flips traditional biomechanical models such that instead of support coming from the bones, the bones float, and it is the muscles and other soft connective tissue that provide support for the moving body. Using the model of tensegretic experience, Roses-Thema connects somatics, cognition, rhetoric, and reflective practices detailing the means that constructed approaching the body as a teacher. This study presents the argument for extending the models of thinking to include bodily thinking, by citing how the experiential perspective of tensegrity constructs physical evidence of the rhetorical concept, metis, where the body thinks as it moves. This book will be of great interest to students, scholars, and practitioners of dance, theater, and sociology.

This innovative work introduces the interdisciplinary field of research of kinesemiotics, offering a new adaptable model and means of analysis for understanding forms of movement-based communication, such as dance, that use a codified language shared by a community of users. It begins with a theoretical overview and review of existing literature on the main approaches to movement-based communication, specifically dance, which underpin kinesemiotics as an area of study. It reaffirms previous work which established dance as a form of embodied communication in that it encompasses a wide range of semiotic styles and forms shared by communities of "speakers." In collaboration with the English National Ballet, Maiorani employs the genre of ballet as a means through which to understand and analyse some of the key concepts of kinesemiotics, mainly that of space as a semiotic dimension and "motivated movement," or movement with meaning. Supported by automated movement recognition tools from the fields of bio-robotics engineering and computer science, Maiorani argues for ballet's capacity, when movements are projected into meaningful space, to extend beyond sequences of physical movements to become a meaning making practice. Kinesemiotics advances interdisciplinary research in the fields of social semiotics, media and communication, multimodality, linguistics, and performance studies and will be of particular interest to students and scholars in these areas.

Ideal for anyone with an interest in Hindu temple dance, Manipur dance, cross-cultural collaborations, and the globalising of Indian Classical Dance Comprehensive study of how an exceptional Hindu dance form developed on the global stage. Provides insight into the globalisation of Manipuri dance