Dance has been connected to the practices and ideologies that have shaped notions of a Nordic region for more than a century and it is ingrained into the culture and society of the region. This book investigates different dance phenomena that have either engaged with or dismantled notions of Nordicness. Looking to the motion of dancers and dance forms between different locations, organizations and networks of individuals, its authors discuss social dancing, as well as historical processes associated with collaborations in folk dance and theatre dance. They consider how similarities and differences between the Nordic countries may be discerned, for instance in patterns of reception at the arrival of dance forms from outside the Nordic countries - and vice versa, how dance from the Nordic countries is received in other parts of the world, as seen for example in the Nordic Cool Festival at the Kennedy Centre in 2013. The book opens a rare window into Nordic culture seen through the prism of dance. While it grants the reader new insights into the critical role of dance in the formation and imagining of a region, it also raises questions about the interplay between dance practices and politics.

Celebrating the diversity of dance across the South Pacific, this volume studies the various experiences, motivations and aims for dance, emerging from the voices of dance professionals in the islands. In particular, it focuses on the interplay of cultures and pathways of migration as people move across the region discovering new routes and connections.

Unlike collections of essays which focus on a single century or whose authors are drawn from a single discipline, this collection reflects the myriad performance options available to London audiences, offering readers a composite portrait of the music, drama, and dance productions that characterized this rich period. Just as the performing arts were deeply interrelated, the essays presented here, by scholars from a range of fields, engage in dialogue with others in the volume. The opening section examines a famous series of 1701 performances based on the competition between composers to set William Congreve's masque The Judgment of Paris to music. The essays in the central section (the 'mainpiece') showcase performers and productions on the London stage from a variety of perspectives, including English 'tastes' in art and music, the use of dance, the depiction of madness and masculinity in both spoken and musical performances, and genres and modes in the context of contemporary criticism and theatrical practice. A brief afterpiece looks at comic pieces in relation to satire, parody and homage. By bringing together work by scholars of music, dance, and drama, this cross-disciplinary collection illuminates the interconnecting strands that shaped a vibrant theatrical world.

Dance saved my life. It helped me survive and escape after sixteen years under the Regime of a Psychopathic Dictator - my father." Within the South African Apartheid Regime, Denise was locked into domestic slavery - a box within a box. She was only allowed to go to school, ballet and her parent's places of work when it suited him: to create an impression of normality. Like the Austrian Fritzl girl, she had to play his sick game and fight him off every day. The boxer needed a sparring partner. If he had the money to build a soundproof cellar she may well have found herself in one...but the invisible walls and chains were there. He was obsessed with Hitler and ran their home like a Brown Shirt concentration camp. Every day was hell, a constant threat of death. But she found coping strategies...She wore the mask, educated herself and danced using humour to still the pain. Denise created a miraculous and inspiring self-transformation to become a ballerina, community worker and reformer. But all the while she had her dark, obsessed 'Phantom of the Ballet' waiting in the wings...She shares her timeous story of survival and dancing into success - out of extreme abuse and poverty within a Depression and harsh Patriarchy. She also offers funny African Theatre anecdotes, travel notes on Scotland, early film scripts - and the thought provoking ponderings of outrageous friend, Jasmine Rose. Throughout her 40-year career, first as amateur then professional, Denise has worked as a dance performer, director, choreographer, producer, entertainment consultant, community artist and educator. She created Butterfly Haven Castle - a centre for Youth and Survivors and was the mentor and initiator of the first Chapters of the International Network, Free the Children in South Africa. For years, Ms. Stephani has worked as the director of the BYCIA Dance and Mixed Media Company. She creates educational programmess and workshops to teach others to use dance and the arts as tools for citizenship and to overcome personal issues.

A series of interviews with some of the foremost dancers in twentieth-century ballet, Never Far from Dancing reflects on the paths that their careers have taken since they retired from the stage. Barbara Newman has expertly edited each of her interviews to read as a monologue, addressing every aspect of ballet, from its styles and technical demands to its personalities, its celebrated roles and, most of all, to what happens when the dancing stops. While ballet invites all manner of writing from critics, admirers and academics, the thoughts and experiences of the dancers themselves are seldom recorded. Here, those who scaled the heights of their art hand down their wisdom and recount lives spent in this most enduring of art forms.

A series of interviews with some of the foremost dancers in twentieth-century ballet, Never Far from Dancing reflects on the paths that their careers have taken since they retired from the stage. Barbara Newman has expertly edited each of her interviews to read as a monologue, addressing every aspect of ballet, from its styles and technical demands to its personalities, its celebrated roles and, most of all, to what happens when the dancing stops. While ballet invites all manner of writing from critics, admirers and academics, the thoughts and experiences of the dancers themselves are seldom recorded. Here, those who scaled the heights of their art hand down their wisdom and recount lives spent in this most enduring of art forms.

This book investigates how Pragmatist philosophy as a philosophical method contributes to the understanding and practice of interdisciplinary dance research. It uses the author's own practice-based research project, Later Rain, to illustrate this. Later Rain is a post-dramatic dance theater work that engages primarily with issues in the philosophy of religion and socio-political philosophy. It focuses on ecstatic states that arise in Appalachian charismatic Pentecostal church services, states characterized by dancing, paroxysms, shouting, and speaking in tongues (glossolalia). Research for this work is interdisciplinary as it draws on studio practice, ethnographic field work, cultural history, Pentecostal history and theology, folk aesthetics, anthropological understandings of ecstatic religious rituals, and dance history regarding acclaimed works that have sought to present aspects of religious ecstasy on stage; Doris Humphrey's The Shakers (1931), Mark Godden's Angels in the Architecture (2012), Martha Clarke's Angel Reapers (2015) and Ralph Lemon's Geography trilogy (2005). The project thereby demonstrates a process model of dance philosophy, showing how philosophy and dance artistry intertwine in a specific creative process.

Determined, imperious, flighty, charming, Beryl McBurnie was born in Trinidad and went to New York in the early 1940s to study dance and drama. She also made a name for herself as a dancer and singer, Belle Rosette. But she turned her back on the bright lights to return to Trinidad. There she continued the work she had begun before World War II, researching and performing the dances of the Caribbean, especially those that drew on African traditions. She was part of an anticolonial movement that recognized the unique culture of the country and the region and eventually led Trinidad and Tobago to independence. Artistically, McBurnie's work influenced dancers throughout the region and beyond. She also devoted years to building the Little Carib Theatre. Intended as a home for folk dance, it also housed Derek Walcott's Theatre Workshop and became a crucible for the performing arts. This book portrays the woman, explores the influences that shaped McBurnie and those whom she influenced in turn, and tells of her struggle to realize a vision she nurtured for decades.

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.

Social dance was ubiquitous in interwar Britain. The social mingling and expression made possible through non-theatrical participatory dancing in couples and groups inspired heated commentary, both vociferous and subtle. By drawing attention to the ways social dance accrued meaning in interwar Britain, Rishona Zimring redefines and brings needed attention to a phenomenon that has been overshadowed by other developments in the history of dance. Social dance, Zimring argues, haunted the interwar imagination, as illustrated in trends such as folk revivalism and the rise of therapeutic dance education. She brings to light the powerful figurative importance of popular music and dance both in the aftermath of war, and during Britain's entrance into cosmopolitan modernity and the modernization of gender relations. Analyzing paintings, films, memoirs, a ballet production, and archival documents, in addition to writings by Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, Vivienne Eliot, and T.S. Eliot, to name just a few, Zimring provides crucial insights into the experience, observation, and representation of social dance during a time of cultural transition and recuperation. Social dance was pivotal in the construction of modern British society as well as the aesthetics of some of the period's most prominent intellectuals.

The idea that morris dancing captures the essence of ancient Englishness, inherently carefree and merry, has been present for over 400 years. The Ancient English Morris Dance traces the history of those attitudes, from the dance's introduction to England in the fifteenth century, through the contention of the Reformation and Civil War, during which morris dancing and maypoles became potent symbols of the older ways of living. Thereafter it developed and diversified, neglected and disdained, until antiquaries began to take an interest in its history, leading to its re-invention as emblematic of Victorian concepts of Merrie England in the nineteenth century. The quest for authentic understanding of what that meant led to its revival at the beginning of the twentieth century, but that was predicated on the perception of it as part of England's declining rural past, to the neglect of the one area (the industrial north-west) where it continued to flourish. The revival led in turn to its further evolution into the multitude of forms and styles in which it may be encountered today.

How do I get a job as a dancer? Where and when should I train? How can I protect my body from injury? How do I become a choreographer? These and many more such questions asked by young or aspiring dancers are answered in this book - the most revealing and instructive book yet on what it means to be a dancer. Here is advice from some of the best dancers and choreographers in the world, crossing the fields of ballet, contemporary, South Asian dance, musical theatre and hip hop, and covering subjects both motivational and mundane, from tapping into your own reserves of creativity and resilience, to the important matter of when to eat your pre-show banana. The twenty-five experts in these pages have performed with the likes of the Royal Ballet, English National Ballet, Rambert, Matthew Bourne's New Adventures and BalletBoyz; they range from stars of the West End stage to TV talent-show successes and Kylie's backing dancers - as well as some of Britain's leading choreographers. They are Carlos Acosta, Matthew Bourne, Teneisha Bonner, Darcey Bussell, Lauren Cuthbertson, Maxine Doyle, Tommy Franzen, Adam Garcia, Jonathan Goddard, Matthew Golding, Melissa Hamilton, Wayne McGregor, Steven McRae, Stephen Mear, Cassa Pancho, Seeta Patel, Arlene Phillips, Arthur Pita, Kate Prince, Matthew Rees, Tamara Rojo, Kenrick 'H2O' Sandy, Hofesh Shechter, Aaron Sillis and Marlon 'Swoosh' Wallen.

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.

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.

Dance is the art least susceptible to preservation since its embodied, kinaesthetic nature has proven difficult to capture in notation and even in still or moving images. However, frameworks have been established and guidance made available for keeping dances, performances, and choreographers' legacies alive so that the dancers of today and tomorrow can experience and learn from the dances and dancers of the past. In this volume, a range of voices address the issue of dance preservation through memory, artistic choice, interpretation, imagery and notation, as well as looking at relevant archives, legal structures, documentation and artefacts. The intertwining of dance preservation and creativity is a core theme discussed throughout this text, pointing to the essential continuity of dance history and dance innovation. The demands of preservation stretch across time, geographies, institutions and interpersonal connections, and this book focuses on the fascinating web that supports the fragile yet urgent effort to sustain our dancing heritage. The articles in this book were originally published in the journal Dance Chronicle: Studies in Dance and the Related Arts.

From Chaucer to Fitzgerald, writers have used dancing as a vital, if subtle, element in plot and character development. The ballroom, an important element of society in real life, was a backdrop to grand passions or pivotal encounters--ideal ground for commentary on the social milieu. This work presents 88 literary selections that together form a survey of social dance in England and America over a span of 500 years. Seven sections (historical time periods) provide an editorial introduction with descriptions of relevant dances, and then eight to twenty or so illuminating passages from etiquette manuals, diaries, poems, plays, essays or novels. The selections illustrate specific dances, social dance behavior or the intimate reactions of participants. One finds, for example, the ultimate downfalls of Flaubert's Emma Bovary, Hardy's Eustacia Viue, and Tolstoy's Anna Karenina are all foretold in pivotal dance scenes. The passages are selected to graphically illustrate contemporary dance or because of the impact the scene has on the plot or characters. Full indexing aids those readers interested in specific authors or works.

- A comprehensive and accessible introduction to the essential elements of choreography - practice, theory and contexts - Invaluable for any undergraduate students on Dance Studies or Dance BfA courses across the UK, US and Europe - Gives a much more current and contemporary take on the discipline than most books in this area, aimed at a younger, student audience

Throughout history, humans have used dance as a benefit for mind, body, and soul. In some cases, governments or churches have banned certain dances for a variety of reasons. This work provides an exploration of dances banned around the world, then revived by a handful of brave proponents. The sixteen case studies--ranging from Argentina's Tango and Cambodia's Royal Classical Ballet to Brazil's Samba and Ireland's Step Dance--reveal the meaning of the dance to each culture and the importance of the art form to the creation of healthy sociological and political climates. Chapters detail each dance's origins, technical steps and movements, costumes, music, and political history, providing an informative overview of the oppression of dance culture through history.

* GORGEOUSLY ILLUSTRATED: Each of the 40 cards in this oracle deck is vibrantly illustrated with original artwork; let The Snake Charmer (of VMAs fame) inspire you to face your fears, or the The Ringleader (of the "Circus" video) lead you to call the shots-these and many more Britney oracles in this one-of-a-kind set celebrate the superstar in her greatest moments from her music videos, stage performances, and more * DELUXE SET: This set includes 40 full-color illustrated cards (3 x 5 inches), shrink wrapped in an interior travel case; an 88-page, full-color illustrated paperback book (3 x 5 inches); and a keepsake magnetic closure box; cards and travel case are embedded in an interior tray * FULLY ILLUSTRATED ORACLE GUIDEBOOK: This set includes a full-color illustrated companion book to the card deck, providing the back story of each oracle and a dose of inspiration * PERFECT GIFT: This joyful, beautiful oracle deck and book set is an ideal gift for the most fabulous people in your life, for birthdays, Mother's Day, graduation, or any occasion at all * OFFICIALLY LICENSED: Set is officially licensed with Britney Brands, Inc A note on packaging: In order to help honor our planet and reduce waste, we have only shrink wrapped the interior cards, rather than the keepsake box. Please feel confident that your product is not defective or used.

The first English-language monograph on the French dancer and model, Cleo de Merode and the Rise of Modern Celebrity Culture explores the haunting legacy of this intriguing and glamorous figure, an international celebrity at the dawn of modern celebrity culture. Situating Merode at a pivotal moment in the history of fame and visual culture, this study analyzes how technological and societal changes led to our star-struck modernity. Merode was one of the earliest examples of fame born from mass visual culture, as newly available postcards circulated her image around the globe. Through Merode, Michael D. Garval illuminates broader trends of the Belle A0/00poque: persistent statue fetishism within a vibrant monumental culture, rampant exoticism amid unprecedented colonial expansion, the rapid growth of the illustrated press, the rise of female show business personalities, the advent of cinema and x-rays, and a burgeoning sense of new visual possibilities. The volume examines how Merode heralded modern celebrity icons; problematizes the status of women and women's bodies under intense public scrutiny; and exposes the paradoxes of a society captivated by a mass media-driven dream of intimacy from afar.Cleo de Merode and the Rise of Modern Celebrity Culture probes the neglected prehistory of a visual culture obsessed with celebrities and their images.

Pina Bausch s work has had tremendous impact across the spectrum of late twentieth-century performance practice, helping to redefine the possibilities of what both dance and theater can be. This edited collection presents a compendium of source material and contextual essays that examine Pina Bausch's history, practice and legacy, and the development of Tanztheater as a new form, with sections including:

• Dance and theatre roots and connections;
• Bausch s developmental process;
• The creation of Tanztheater;
• Bausch s reception;
• Critical perspectives.

Interviews, reviews and major essays chart the evolution of Bausch s pioneering approach and explore this evocative new mode of performance. Edited by noted Bausch scholar, Royd Climenhaga, "The Pina Bausch Sourcebook" aims to open up Bausch s performative world for students, scholars, dance and theatre artists and audiences everywhere.

If we imagine multiple ways of being together, how might that shift choreographic practices and help us imagine ways groups assemble in more varied ways than just pairing another man with another woman? How might dancing queerly ask us to imagine futures through something other than heterosexuality and reproduction? How does challenging gender binaries always mean thinking about race, thinking about the postcolonial, about ableism? What are the arbitrary rules structuring dance in all its arenas, whether concert and social or commercial and competition, and how do we see those invisible structures and work to disrupt them? Queer Dance brings together artists and scholars in a multi-platformed project-book, accompanying website, and live performance series to ask, "How does dancing queerly progressively challenge us?" The artists and scholars whose writing appears in the book and whose performances and filmed interviews appear online stage a range of genders and sexualities that challenge and destabilize social norms. Engaging with dance making, dance scholarship, queer studies, and other fields, Queer Dance asks how identities, communities, and artmaking and scholarly practices might consider what queer work the body does and can do. There is great power in claiming queerness in the press of bodies touching or in the exceeding of the body best measured in sweat and exhaustion. How does queerness exist in the realm of affect and touch, and what then might we explore about queerness through these pleasurable and complex bodily ways of knowing?

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER One of the world's legendary artists and bestselling author of The Creative Habit shares her secrets-from insight to action-for harnessing vitality, finding purpose as you age, and expanding one's possibilities over the course of a lifetime in her newest New York Times bestseller Keep It Moving. At seventy-eight, Twyla Tharp is revered not only for the dances she makes-but for her astounding regime of exercise and nonstop engagement. She is famed for religiously hitting the gym each morning at daybreak, and utilizing that energy to propel her breakneck schedule as a teacher, writer, creator, and lecturer. This book grew out of the question she was asked most frequently: "How do you keep working?" Keep It Moving is a series of no-nonsense mediations on how to live with purpose as time passes. From the details of how she stays motivated to the stages of her evolving fitness routine, Tharp models how fulfillment depends not on fortune-but on attitude, possible for anyone willing to try and keep trying. Culling anecdotes from Twyla's life and the lives of other luminaries, each chapter is accompanied by a small exercise that will help anyone develop a more hopeful and energetic approach to the everyday. Twyla will tell you what the beauty-fitness-wellness industry won't: chasing youth is a losing proposition. Instead, Keep It Moving focuses you on what's here and where you're going-the book for anyone who wishes to maintain their prime for life.

Ukrainian dance is remarkably enduring in its popularity and still performed in numerous cultural contexts. This text unpacks the complex world of this ethnic dance, with special attention to the differences between vival dance (which requires being fully engaged in the present moment) and reflective dance (dance connected explicitly to the past). Most Ukrainian vival dances have been performed by peasants in traditional village settings, for recreational and ritual purposes. Reflective Ukrainian dances are performed more self-consciously as part of a living heritage. Further sub-groups are examined, including national dances, recreational/educational dances, and spectacular dances on stage.