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 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.

In this study, Josefine Wikstroem challenges a concept of performance that makes no difference between art and non-art and argues for a new concept. This book confronts and criticises the way in which the dominating concept of performance has been used in art theory and performance and dance studies. Through an analysis of 1960s performance practices, Wikstroem focuses specifically on task-dance and event-score practices and provides an examination of the key philosophical concepts that are inseparable from such a concept of art and are necessary for the reconstruction of a critical concept of performance, such as "practice", "experience", "object", "abstraction" and "structure". This book will be of great interest to scholars, students and practitioners across dance, performance art, aesthetics and art theory.

History, Art politics, African, African American, Performance

Dance, Reggae spiritual ritual practices cultural studies Jamaican/Caribbean culture Music

Dance, USA, Mexico, Dance festival, Japanese, cultural studies, heritage, Butoh

The Art of Tango offers a systematic exploration of the performance, arrangement and composition of the universally popular tango. The author discusses traditional practices, the De Caro school and the pioneering oeuvre of four celebrated innovators: Pugliese, Salgan, Piazzolla and Beytelmann. With an in-depth focus on both reception and practice, the volume and its companion website featuring supplementary audio-visual materials analyse, decode, compare and discuss literature, scores and recordings to provide a deeper understanding of tango's artistic concepts, characteristics and techniques. River Plate tango is explored through the lens of artistic research, combining the study of oral traditions and written sources. In addition to a detailed examination of the various approaches to tango by the musicians featured in this book, three compositions by the author embodying creative applications of the research findings are discussed. The volume offers numerous tools for developing skills in practice, inspiring new musical output and the continuation of research endeavours in the field. Illustrating the many possibilities of this musical language that has captivated musicians and audiences worldwide, this book is a valuable resource for everyone with an interest in tango, whether they be composers, performers, arrangers, teachers, music lovers or scholars in the field of popular music studies.

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.

theatre, philosophy, new materialism, environmental humanities, gesture, and the ontology of response.

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.

aesthetic objects, performance, art, Aesthetic, theatre, live art, sociology cultural studies and cultural geography.

The Artist and Academia explores the relationship between artistic and academic ways of knowing. Historically, these have often been presented as opposites; the former characterized as passionate and intuitive and the latter portrayed as systematic and rigorous. Recent scholarship presents a more complex picture. Artistic knowledge demands high levels of skill and rigor, while academic research requires creativity and innovative thinking. This edited collection brings together leading artists and scholars (as well as artist-scholars) to offer a variety of philosophical, educational, experiential, reflexive and imaginative perspectives on the artist and academia. The contributions include in-depth, scholarly discussions on the nature of knowledge and creativity, as well as personal artistic statements from musicians, dancers, actors and writers. Additionally, it explores both the mediational and subversive spaces created by the meeting of artistic and academic traditions. While the book addresses global themes by global writers, its core case study is an educational experiment called the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at the University of Limerick in Ireland. Established in 1994, it set out to reconfigure the place of the artist in the context of contemporary higher education. The material is clustered into three parts. Part One and Part Two explore the artist as mediator, educator and subversive in academia. Grounded in close-to-practice research, Part Three concludes the volume with a set of case studies from the Irish World Academy. Artistic and academic knowledge come together in this unique set of pieces to explore the development of more inclusive and imaginative pedagogical values.

This monograph presents a specific experience of modernity within the context of Indian dance by looking at the transcultural journey of Indian dancer / choreographer Uday Shankar (1900b - 1977d). His popularity in Europe and America as an Oriental male dancer in the first half of the 20th century, and his worldwide recognition as the Ambassador of Indian culture, are brought into a historiographical perspective within the cultural and social reforms of early twentieth century India. By exploring his artistic journey beyond India in the period between the two world wars, and his experience of dance making, presentational technique and representation of India through various phases of his life, a path is forged to understanding the emergence of modernity in Indian dance.

Dance Legacies of Scotland compiles a collage of references portraying percussive Scottish dancing and explains what influenced a wide disappearance of hard-shoe steps from contemporary Scottish practices. Mats Melin and Jennifer Schoonover explore the historical references describing percussive dancing to illustrate how widespread the practice was, giving some glimpses of what it looked and sounded like. The authors also explain what influenced a wide disappearance of hard-shoe steps from Scottish dancing practices. Their research draws together fieldwork, references from historical sources in English, Scots, and Scottish Gaelic, and insights drawn from the authors' practical knowledge of dances. They portray the complex network of dance dialects that existed in parallel across Scotland, and share how remnants of this vibrant tradition have endured in Scotland and the Scottish diaspora to the present day. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of Dance and Music and its relationship to the history and culture of Scotland.

dancehall, dance and performance studies, sociology, cultural geography, anthropology, post-colonial studies, diaspora studies, musicology, and gender studies.

This book is a study of Salpuri-Chum, a traditional Korean dance for expelling evil spirits. The authors explore the origins and practice of Salpuri-Chum. The ancient Korean people viewed their misfortunes as coming from evil spirits; therefore, they wanted to expel the evil spirits to recover their happiness. The music for Salpuri-Chum is called Sinawi rhythm. It has no sheet music and lacks the concept of metronomic technique. In this rhythm, the dancer becomes a conductor. Salpuri-Chum is an artistic performance that resolves the people's sorrow. In many cases, it is a form of sublimation. It is also an effort to transform the pain of reality into beauty, based on the Korean people's characteristic merriment. It presents itself, then, as a form of immanence. Moreover, Salpuri-Chum is unique in its use of a piece of white fabric. The fabric, as a symbol of the Korean people's ego ideal, signifies Salpuri-Chum's focus as a dance for resolving their misfortunes.

Chinese Theatre: An Illustrated History Through Nuoxi and Mulianxi is the first book in any language entirely devoted to a historical inquiry into Chinese theatre through Nuoxi and Mulianxi, the two most representative and predominant forms of Chinese temple theatre. Volume Two is a continuation of the historical inquiry into Chinese theatre with focus shifted from Mulian storytelling to Mulian story-acting. Thus, this volume traces the historical trajectory of xiqu from Northern dramas to Southern dramas and from elite court theatre to mass regional theatre with pivotal forms and functions of Mulianxi examined, explicated and illustrated in association with the development of corresponding genres of xiqu. In so doing, every aspect of Mulianxi is considered not in the margins of xiqu but in and of itself. While this volume is primarily concerned with Mulianxi, references are also made to other forms of Chinese performing arts and temple theatre, Nuoxi in particular, as Mulianxi has been performed since the twelfth century as, or in company with, Nuoxi, to cleanse the community of evil spirits and epidemic diseases. This is an interdisciplinary book project that is aimed to help researchers and students of theatre history understand the ritual origins of Chinese theatre and the dynamic relationships among myth, ritual, religion and theatre.

Chinese Theatre: An Illustrated History Through Nuoxi and Mulianxi is the first book in any language entirely devoted to a historical inquiry into Chinese theatre through Nuoxi and Mulianxi, the two most representative and predominant forms of Chinese temple theatre. With a view to evaluating the role of temple theatre in the development of xiqu or traditional Chinese theatre and drama from myth to ritual to ritual drama to drama, Volume One provides a panoramic perspective that allows every aspect of Nuoxi to be considered, not in the margins of xiqu but in and of itself. Thus, this volume traces xiqu history from its shamanic roots in exorcism rituals of Nuo to various forms of ritual and theatrical performance presented at temple fairs, during community and calendrical festivals or for ceremonial functions over the course of imperial history, and into the twenty-first century, followed by an exploration of the scriptural origins and oral traditions of Mulianxi, with pivotal forms and functions of Nuoxi and Mulian storytelling, examined, explicated and illustrated in association with the development of corresponding genres of Chines performance literature and performing arts. This is an interdisciplinary book project that is aimed to help researchers and students of theatre history understand the ritual origins of Chinese theatre and the dynamic relationships among myth, ritual, religion, and theatre.

This volume explores the history of dance on the historically black college and university (HBCU) campus, casting a first light on the historical practices and current state of college dance program practice in HBCUs. The author addresses how HBCU dance programs developed their institutional visions and missions in a manner that offers students an experience of American higher education in dance, while honoring how the African diaspora persists in and through these experiences. Chapters illustrate how both Western and African diaspora dances have persisted, integrated through curriculum and practice, and present a model for culturally inclusive histories, traditions, and practices that reflect Western and African diasporas in ongoing dialogue and negotiation on the HBCU campus today.

This revised third edition of The Male Dancer updates and enlarges a seminal book that has established itself as the definitive study of the performance of masculinities in twentieth century modernist and contemporary choreography. In this authoritative and lively study, Ramsay Burt presents close readings of dance works from key moments of social and political change in the norms around gender and sexuality. The book's argument that prejudices against male dancers are rooted in our ideas about the male body and behaviour has been extended to take into account recent interdisciplinary discussions about whiteness, intersectionality, disability studies, and female masculinities. As well as analysing works by canonical figures like Nijinsky, Graham, Cunningham, and Bausch, it also examines the work of lesser-known figures like Michio Ito and Eleo Pomare, as well as choreographers who have recently emerged internationally like Germaine Acogny and Trajal Harrell. The Male Dancer has proven to be essential reading for anyone interested in dance and the cultural representation of gender. By reflecting on the latest studies in theory, performance, and practice, Burt has thoroughly updated this important book to include dance works from the last ten years and has renewed its timeliness for the 2020s.

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.

Tango and the Dancing Body in Istanbul explores the expansion of social Argentine tango dancing among Muslim actors in Turkey, pioneered in Istanbul despite the conservative rule of the Justice and Development Party (JDP) and Tayyip Erdogan. In this book, Melin Levent Yuna questions why a dance that appears to publicly represent an erotic relationship finds space to expand and increase dramatically in the number of contemporary Turkish Muslim tango dancers, particularly during a conservative rule. Even during the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, tango dance classes, gatherings, and messages flourished on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Zoom. Urban Turkey and its tango dance performances provide one symbol and example of how neoliberal capitalism could go hand in hand with conservatism by becoming a bridge between Europe and the Middle East. This study largely focuses on the dancers' perspective while presenting the policies of Erdogan. It presents the social characteristics of the tango dancers, the meanings they attach to their bodies and their dance as well as what this dance reflects about them - besides the policies of the Justice and Development Party. The book approaches the tango dance and its dancing body in terms of layers of meaning systems in a neoliberal and conservative context. This study will be of great interest to students and scholars in dance, anthropology, cultural studies, and performance studies.

Dancers create 'civic culture' as performances for public consumption, but also as vernaculars connecting individuals who may have little in common. Examining performance and the construction of culturally diverse communities the book suggests that amateur and concert dance can teach us how to live and work productively together.

Scottish Dance Beyond 1805 presents a history of Scottish music and dance over the last 200 years, with a focus on sources originating in Aberdeenshire, when steps could be adapted in any way the dancer pleased. The book explains the major changes in the way that dance was taught and performed by chronicling the shift from individual dancing masters to professional, licensed members of regulatory societies. This ethnographical study assesses how dances such as the Highland Fling have been altered and how standardisation has affected contemporary Highland dance and music, by examining the experience of dancers and pipers. It considers reactions to regulation and standardisation through the introduction to Scotland of percussive step dance and caller-facilitated ceilidh dancing. Today's Highland dancing is a standardised and international form of dance. This book tells the story of what changed over the last 200 years and why. It unfolds through a series of colourful characters, through the dances they taught and the music they danced to and through the story of one dance in particular, the Highland Fling. It considers how Scottish dance reflected changes in Scottish society and culture. The book will be of interest to scholars and postgraduates in the fields of Dance History, Ethnomusicology, Ethnochoreology, Ethnology and Folklore, Cultural History, Scottish Studies and Scottish Traditional Music as well as to teachers, judges and practitioners of Highland dancing and to those interested in the history of Scottish dance, music and culture.