What is it about musical theatre that audiences find entertaining? What are the features that lead to its ability to stimulate emotional attachment, to move and to give pleasure? Beginning from the passion musical theatre performances arouse and their ubiquity in London's West End and on Broadway this book explores the ways in which musical theatre reaches out to and involves its audiences. It investigates how pleasure is stimulated by vocal, musical and spectacular performances. Early discussions centre on the construction of the composed text, but then attention is given to performance and audience response. Musical theatre contains disruptions and dissonances in its multiple texts, it allows gaps for audiences to read playfully. This combines with the voluptuous sensations of embodied emotion, contagiously and viscerally shared between audience and stage, and augmented through the presence of voice and music. A number of features are discovered in the construction of musical theatre performance texts that allow them to engage the intense emotional attachment of their audiences and so achieve enormous popularity. In doing this, the book challenges the conception of musical theatre as 'only entertainment'. Entertainment instead becomes a desirable, ephemeral and playful concept.

Unbecoming Rhythms develops a new framework to understand how temporality is performed in contemporary dance. It combines an in-depth analysis of the choreographic practices of Jonathan Burrows & Matteo Fargion, Ivana Muller, Mette Edvardsen and Marten Spangberg with a close study of the philosophical work of Bergson, Deleuze and Bachelard.

How can various technologies, from the more conventional to the very new, be used to archive, share and understand dance movement? How can they become part of new ways of creating dance? What does this tell us about the ways in which technology is part of how we make sense and think? Well-known choreographers and dance collectives including William Forsythe, Siohban Davis, Merce Cunningham, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and BADco. have initiated projects to investigate these questions, and in so doing have inaugurated a new era for dance archives, education, research and creation. Their work draws attention to the intimate relationship between the technologies we use and the ways in which we think, perceive, and make sense. Transmission in Motion examines these extraordinary projects 'from the inside', presenting in-depth analyses by the practitioners, artists and collectives involved in their development. These studies are framed by scholarly reflection, illuminating the significance of these projects in the context of current debates on dance, the (multi-media) archive, immaterial cultural heritage and copyright, embodied cognition, education, media culture and the knowledge society.

How can various technologies, from the more conventional to the very new, be used to archive, share and understand dance movement? How can they become part of new ways of creating dance? What does this tell us about the ways in which technology is part of how we make sense and think? Well-known choreographers and dance collectives including William Forsythe, Siohban Davis, Merce Cunningham, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and BADco. have initiated projects to investigate these questions, and in so doing have inaugurated a new era for dance archives, education, research and creation. Their work draws attention to the intimate relationship between the technologies we use and the ways in which we think, perceive, and make sense. Transmission in Motion examines these extraordinary projects 'from the inside', presenting in-depth analyses by the practitioners, artists and collectives involved in their development. These studies are framed by scholarly reflection, illuminating the significance of these projects in the context of current debates on dance, the (multi-media) archive, immaterial cultural heritage and copyright, embodied cognition, education, media culture and the knowledge society.

The union of the two royal houses - the Habsburgs and the Bourbons - in the early seventeenth century illustrates the extent to which marriage was a tool of government in Renaissance Europe, and festivals a manifestation of power and cultural superiority. With contributions from scholars representing a range of disciplines, this volume provides an all-round view of the sequence of festivals and events surrounding the dynastic marriages which were agreed upon in 1612 but not celebrated until 1615 owing to the constant interruption of festivities by protestant uprisings. The occasion inspired an extraordinary range of records from exchanges of political pamphlets, descriptions of festivities, visual materials, the music of songs and ballets, and the impressions of witnesses and participants. The study of these remarkable sources shows how a team of scholars from diverse disciplines can bring into focus again the creative genius of artists: painters, architects and costume designers, musicians and poets, experts in equestrianism, in pyrotechnics, and in the use of symbolic languages. Their artistic efforts were staged against a background of intense political diplomacy and continuing civil strife; and yet, the determination of Marie de Medicis and her advisers and of the Duke of Lerma brought to a triumphant conclusion negotiations and spectacular commemorations whose legacy was to inform festival art throughout European courts for decades. In addition to printed and manuscript sources, the volume identifies ways of giving future researchers access to festival texts and studies through digitization, making the book both an in-depth analysis of a particular occasion and a blueprint for future engagement with digital festival resources.

Modernism on Stage restores Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes to its central role in the Parisian art world of the 1910s and 1920s. During those years, the Ballets Russes' stage served as a dynamic forum for the interaction of artistic genres - dance, music and painting - in a mixed-media form inspired by Richard Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art). This interdisciplinary study combines a broad history of Diaghilev's troupe with close readings of four ballets designed by canonical modernist artists: Pablo Picasso, Sonia Delaunay, Henri Matisse, and Giorgio de Chirico. Experimental both in concept and form, these productions redefine our understanding of the interconnected worlds of the visual and performing arts, elite culture and mass entertainment in Paris between the two world wars. This volume traces the ways in which artists working with the Ballets Russes adapted painterly styles to the temporal, three-dimensional and corporeal medium of ballet. Analyzing interactions among sets, costumes, choreography, and musical accompaniment, the book establishes what the Ballets Russes' productions looked like and how audiences reacted to them. Juliet Bellow brings dance to bear upon modernist art history as more than a source of imagery or ornament: she spotlights a complex dialogue among art forms that did not preclude but rather enhanced artists' interrogation of the limits of medium.

From the ragtime one-step of the early twentieth century to the contemporary practices of youth club cultures, popular dance and music are inextricably linked. This collection reveals the intimate connections between the corporeal and the sonic in the creation, transmission and reception of popular dance and music, which is imagined here as 'bodies of sound'. The volume provokes a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary conversation that includes scholarship from Asia, Europe and the United States, which explores topics from the nineteenth century through to the present day and engages with practices at local, national and transnational levels. In Part I: Constructing the Popular, the authors explore how categories of popular music and dance are constructed and de-stabilized, and their proclivity to appropriate and re-imagine cultural forms and meanings. In Part II: Authenticity, Revival and Reinvention, the authors examine how popular forms produce and manipulate identities and meanings through their attraction to and departure from cultural traditions. In Part III: (Re)Framing Value, the authors interrogate how values are inscribed, silenced, rearticulated and capitalized through popular music and dance. And in Part IV: Politics of the Popular, the authors read the popular as a site of political negotiation and transformation.

This book of highly original essays addresses the field of movement-based and dance somatics through lenses of ethics and ecology. It is based in methods of phenomenology. A new collection of essays previously published with Intellect as journal articles, with the addition of new essays and editorial material. The text considers body-based somatic education relative to values, virtues, gender fluidity, lived experience, environmental awareness, fairness, and collective well-being. In delineating interdependent values of soma, ecology, and human movement that are newly in progress, the collection conceives links between personal development of subjective knowledge and cultural, critical, and environmental positionality. The text raises questions about defining somatics and self, gender dynamics, movement preferences, normative body conceptions, attention to feelings, inclusiveness, ethics of touch, and emotional intelligence in somatics contexts. I include these crucial concerns of somatics and ethics as relational, globally complex, and ongoing. Like much of Sondra Fraleigh's writing, these essays utilize phenomenology as a method to investigate embodied relationships-often through lenses of ethics and aesthetics. In providing some examples, the text explores specific values of gratitude, listening, and emotional intelligence in somatic bodywork and learning environments.

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.

For many people step dancing is associated mainly with the Irish step-dance stage shows, Riverdance and Lord of the Dance, which assisted both in promoting the dance form and in placing Ireland globally. But, in this book, Catherine Foley illustrates that the practice and contexts of step dancing are much more complicated and fluid. Tracing the trajectory of step dancing in Ireland, she tells its story from roots in eighteenth-century Ireland to its diverse cultural manifestations today. She examines the interrelationships between step dancing and the changing historical and cultural contexts of colonialism, nationalism, postcolonialism and globalization, and shows that step dancing is a powerful tool of embodiment and meaning that can provoke important questions relating to culture and identity through the bodies of those who perform it. Focusing on the rural European region of North Kerry in the south-west of Ireland, Catherine Foley examines three step-dance practices: one, the rural Molyneaux step-dance practice, representing the end of a relatively long-lived system of teaching by itinerant dancing masters in the region; two, RinceoirA na RA ochta, a dance school representative of the urbanized staged, competition orientated practice, cultivated by the cultural nationalist movement, the Gaelic League, established at the end of the nineteenth century, and practised today both in Ireland and abroad; and three, the stylized, commoditized, folk-theatrical practice of Siamsa TA re, the National Folk Theatre of Ireland, established in North Kerry in the 1970s. Written from an ethnochoreological perspective, Catherine Foley provides a rich historical and ethnographic account of step dancing, step dancers and cultural institutions in Ireland.

Music was everywhere in pre-Revolutionary Williamsburg, Virginia. In 1771, plantation owner Landon Carter noted in his diary that he could hear instruments through the windows of every house in town. In taverns and private homes, at formal performances and dances and casually around the campfire, music filled the daily lives of the people of Williamsburg. While the average citizen enjoyed music during public events, the city's elite, emulating their British counterparts, spent lavishly on instruments, sheet music and private lessons and held private concerts and dances. Williamsburg's theater, the first of its kind in America, provided a venue for all Virginians and brought numerous musical acts to the stage. Drawing on contemporary newspaper accounts, this book is the first to explore how some 18th-century Williamsburg citizens experienced the growing musical world around them.

"Ancient Greek dance" traditionally evokes images of stately choruses or lively Dionysiac revels - communal acts of performance. This is the first book to look beyond the chorus to the diverse and complex representation of solo dancers in Archaic and Classical Greek literature. It argues that dancing alone signifies transgression and vulnerability in the Greek cultural imagination, as isolation from the chorus marks the separation of the individual from a range of communal social structures. It also demonstrates that the solo dancer is a powerful figure for literary exploration and experimentation, highlighting the importance of the singular dancing body in the articulation of poetic, narrative, and generic interests across Greek literature. Taking a comparative approach and engaging with current work in dance and performance studies, this book reveals the profound literary and cultural importance of the unruly solo dancer in the ancient Greek world.

Flamenco, Regionalism and Musical Heritage in Southern Spain explores the relationship between regional identity politics and flamenco in Andalusia, the southernmost autonomous community of Spain. In recent years, the Andalusian Government has embarked on an ambitious project aimed at developing flamenco as a symbol of regional identity. In 2010, flamenco was recognised as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO, a declaration that has reinvigorated institutional support for the tradition. The book draws upon ethnomusicology, political geography and heritage studies to analyse the regionalisation of flamenco within the frame of Spanish politics, while considering responses among Andalusians to these institutional measures. Drawing upon ethnographic research conducted online and in Andalusia, the book examines critically the institutional development of flamenco, challenging a fixed reading of the relationship between flamenco and regionalism. The book offers alternative readings of regionalism, exploring the ways in which competing localisms and disputed identities contribute to a fresh understanding of the flamenco tradition. Matthew Machin-Autenrieth makes a significant contribution to flamenco scholarship in particular and to the study of music, regionalism and heritage in general.

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Performing arts in most parts of Maritime Southeast Asia are seen as an entity, where music and dance, sound and movement, acoustic and tactile elements intermingle and complement each other. Although this fact is widely known and referenced, most scholarly works in the performing arts so far have either focused on "music" or "dance" rather than treating the two in combination. The authors in this book look at both aspects in performance, moreover, they focus explicitly on the interrelation between the two, on both descriptive-analytical and metaphorical levels. The book includes diverse examples of regional performing art genres from Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. All case studies are composed from the perspective of the relatively new approach and field of ethno-choreomusicology. This particular compilation gives an exemplary overview of various phenomena in movement-sound relations, and offers for the first time a thorough study of the phenomenon that is considered essential for the performing arts in Maritime Southeast Asia - the inseparability of movement and sound.

The African dancer requires complete technical mastery and must respect the precise rules handed down by the society of the Masques de Sagesse. Alphonse Tirou is from the Ouenon people of the Ivory Coast. His major study is the first written record of this oral tradition and it explains the movements, codes and meanings of the traditional African dance. It is extremely valuable reading for all those studying or interested in Africa, as dance is such an essential part of this continent's cultural heritage.A former student of the National Institute of Arts at Abidjan, Alphonse Tirou has been a senior dignitary in the Kman of the Masques de Sagesse for over twenty years. He is currently teaching at the Bloa Nam (Movements) dance school in Nmes, which he founded in 1979 and which is still the only school worldwide to research African dance.

How does the production of performance engage with the fundamental issues of our advanced neo-capitalist age? Andre Lepecki surveys a decade of experimental choreography to uncover the dual meaning of 'performance' in the twenty-first century: not just an aesthetic category, but a mode of political power. He demonstrates the enduring ability of performance to critique and subvert this power, examining this relationship through five 'singularities' in contemporary dance: thingness, animality, persistence, darkness, and solidity. Exploring the works of Mette Ingvartsen, Yvonne Rainer, Ralph Lemon, Jerome Bel and others, Lepecki uses his concept of 'singularity'-the resistance of categorization and aesthetic identification-to examine the function of dance and performance in political and artistic debate.

This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)-a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries-and the generous support of Duke University. A portrait of the game of capoeira and its practice across borders. Originating in the Black Atlantic world as a fusion of dance and martial art, capoeira was a marginalized practice for much of its history. Today it is globally popular. This ethnographic memoir weaves together the history of capoeira, recent transformations in the practice, and personal insights from author Katya Wesolowski's thirty years of experience as a capoeirista.Capoeira Connections follows Wesolowski's journey from novice to instructor while drawing on her decades of research as an anthropologist in Brazil, Angola, Europe, and the United States. In a story of local practice and global flow, Wesolowski offers an intimate portrait of the game and what it means in people's lives. She reveals camaraderie and conviviality in the capoeira ring as well as tensions and ruptures involving race, gender, and competing claims over how this artful play should be practiced. Capoeira brings people together and yet is never free of histories of struggle, and these too play out in the game's encounters. In her at once clear-sighted and hopeful analysis, Wesolowski ultimately argues that capoeira offers opportunities for connection, dialogue, and collaboration in a world that is increasingly fractured. In doing so, capoeira can transform lives, create social spheres, and shape mobile futures. Publication of this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

First published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Edwyna ""Salt"" Evelyn and Jewel ""Pepper"" Welch learned to tap dance on street corners in New York and Philadelphia. By the 1940s, they were black show business headliners, playing Harlem's Apollo Theater with the likes of Count Basie, Fats Waller and Earl ""Fatha"" Hines. Their exuberant men's-style tap performed in men's attire earned the respect of their male peers and the acclaim of audiences, though they were paid less than black male dancers. Based on extensive interviews with Salt and Pepper, this book chronicles for the first time the lives and careers of two overlooked performers who succeeded despite the racism, sexism and homophobia of the Big Band era.

Both Buddhism and dance invite the practitioner into present-moment embodiment. The rise of Western Buddhism, sacred dance and dance/movement therapy, along with the mindfulness meditation boom, has created opportunities for Buddhism to inform dance aesthetics and for Buddhist practice to be shaped by dance. This collection of new essays documents the innovative work being done at the intersection of Buddhism and dance. The contributors-scholars, choreographers and Buddhist masters-discuss movement, performance, ritual and theory, among other topics. The final section provides a variety of guided practices.

First published in 1991. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Gender and Dance in Modern Iran: Biopolitics on Stage investigates the ways dancing bodies have been providing evidence for competing representations of modernity, urbanism, and religiosity across the twentieth century. Focusing on the transformation of the staged dancing body, its space of performance, and spectatorial cultural ideology, this book traces the dancing body in multiple milieus of performance, including the Pahlavi era's national artistic scene and the popular cafe and cabaret stages, as well as the commercial cinematic screen and the post-revolutionary Islamized theatrical stage. It links the socio-political discourses on performance with the staged public dancer, in order to interrogate the formation of dominant categories of "modern," "high," and "artistic," and the subsequent "othering" of cultural realms that were discursively peripheralized from the "national" stage. Through the study of archival and ethnographic research as well as a diverse literature pertaining to music, theater, cinema, and popular culture, it combines a close reading of primary sources such as official documents, press materials, and program notes with visual analysis of filmic materials and imageries, as well as interviews with practitioners. It offers an original and informed exploration into the ways performing bodies and their public have been associated with binary notions of vice and virtue, morality and immorality, commitment and degeneration, chastity and eroticism, and veiled-ness and nakedness. Engaging with a range of methodological and historiographical methods, including postcolonial, performance, and feminist studies, this book is a valuable resource for students and scholars of Middle East history and Iranian studies, as well as gender studies and dance and performance studies.

Originally published in 1983 the first edition rapidly established itself as a core student text. Now fully revised and up-dated it remains the only book to address the rationale, process, techniques and methodologies specific to the study of dance history. For the main body of the text which covers historical studies of dance in its traditional and performance contexts, the editors have brought together a team of internationally known dance historians. Roger Copeland and Deborah Jowitt each take a controversial look at the modern American dance. Kenneth Archer and Millicent Hodson explain the processes they use when reconstructing 'lost' ballets, and Theresa Buckland and Georgina Gore write on traditional dance in England and West Africa respectively. With other contributions on social dance, ballet, early European modern dance and feminist perspectives on dance history this book offers a multitude of starting points for studying dance history as well as presenting examples of dance writing at its very best. Dance History will be an essential purchase for all students of dance.