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Books > Arts & Architecture > Performing arts > Dance
In the first full-length study of the English dancer-actress Hester Santlow, Moira Goff focuses on her unusual career at Drury Lane between 1706 and 1733. Goff charts Santlow's repertoire and makes extensive use of archival resources to investigate both her dancing and acting skills. Santlow made a unique contribution to the development of dance on the London stage, through her dancing roles in dance dramas by John Weaver and pantomimes by John Thurmond and Roger, as well as the virtuoso dances created for her by Mr. Isaac and Anthony L'Abbe. Goff examines Santlow's fascinating personal life, including her relationships with the politician James Craggs the Younger and the Drury Lane actor-manager Barton Booth. Santlow was unusual in making the transition from successful dancer-actress to independent and respectable widow. Goff also traces her life after retirement as her daughter's family rose from the gentry towards the aristocracy. This book will be of interest to dance and theatre historians, to women's studies scholars, and to all who are engaged with ongoing debates on the lives and careers of women on the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century stage.
Focusing on Politics, Gender, and Identities, a group of international dance scholars provide a broad overview of new methodological approaches - with specific case studies - and how they can be applied to the study of ballet and modern dance. With an introduction exploring the history of dance studies and the development of central themes and areas of concerns in the field, the book is then divided into three parts:
Exploring contemporary analytical approaches to understanding performance traditions, Dance Discourses' pedagogical structure makes it ideal for courses in performing arts and humanities.
Focusing on politics, gender, and identities, a group of international dance scholars provide a broad overview of new methodological approaches - with specific case studies - and how they can be applied to the study of ballet and modern dance. With an introduction exploring the history of dance studies and the development of central themes and areas of concerns in the field, the book is then divided into three parts: politics explores 'Ausdruckstanz' - an expressive dance tradition first formulated in the 1920s by dancer Mary Wigman and carried forward in the work of Pina Bausch and others gender examines eighteenth century theatrical dance - a time when elaborate sets, costumes, and plots examined racial and sexual stereotypes identity is concerned with modern dance. Exploring contemporary analytical approaches to understanding performance traditions, Dance Discourses' pedagogical structure makes it ideal for courses in performing arts and humanities.
Dance intersects with ethnicity in a powerful variety of ways and at a broad set of venues. Dance practices and attitudes about ethnicity have sometimes been the source of outright discord, as when African Americans were - and sometimes still are - told that their bodies are 'not right' for ballet, when Anglo Americans painted their faces black to perform in minstrel shows, when 19th century Christian missionaries banned the performance of particular native dance traditions throughout much of Polynesia, and when the Spanish conquistadors and church officials banned sacred Aztec dance rituals. More recently, dance performances became a locus of ethnic disunity in the former Yugoslavia as the Serbs of Bosnia attended dance concerts but only applauded for the Serbian dances, presaging the violent disintegration of that failed state. The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Ethnicity brings together scholars from across the globe in an investigation of what it means to define oneself in an ethnic category and how this category is performed and represented by dance as an ethnicity. Newly-commissioned for the volume, the chapters of the book place a reflective lens on dance and its context to examine the role of dance as performed embodiment of the historical moments and associated lived identities. In bringing modern dance and ballet into the conversation alongside forms more often considered ethnic, the chapters ask the reader to contemplate previous categories of folk, ethnic, classical, and modern. From this standpoint, the book considers how dance maintains, challenges, resists or in some cases evolves new forms of identity based on prior categories. Ultimately, the goal of the book is to acknowledge the depth of research that has been undertaken and to promote continued research and conceptualization of dance and its role in the creation of ethnicity. Dance and ethnicity is an increasingly active area of scholarly inquiry in dance studies and ethnomusicology alike and the need is great for serious scholarship to shape the contours of these debates. The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Ethnicity provides an authoritative and up-to-date survey of original research from leading experts which will set the tone for future scholarly conversation.
Movements of Interweaving is a rich collection of essays exploring the concept of interweaving performance cultures in the realms of movement, dance, and corporeality. Focusing on dance performances as well as on scenarios of cultural movements on a global scale, it not only challenges the concept of intercultural dance performances, but through its innovative approach also calls attention to the specific qualities of "interweaving" as a form of movement itself. Divided into four sections, this volume features an international team of scholars together developing a new critical perspective on the cultural practices of movement, travel and migration in and beyond dance.
"A Queer History of the Ballet "is the first book-length study of
ballet's queerness. It theorizes the queer potential of the ballet
look, and provides historical analyses of queer artists and
spectatorships. It demonstrates that ballet was a crucial means of
coming to visibility, of evolving and articulating a queer
consciousness in periods when it was dangerous and illegal to be
homosexual. It also shows that ballet continues to be a key element
of the dance cultures through which queerness is explored. The book
moves from the 19th century through the post-modern era, bringing
together an important array of creative figures and movements,
including Romantic ballet; Tchaikovsky; Diaghilev; Genet; Fonteyn;
New York City Ballet; Neumeier; Bourne; Bausch; and Morris. It
discusses the making and performance history of key works,
including "La Sylphide, Giselle, Sleeping Beauty," and "Swan
Lake."
Dance Matters Too: Markets, Memories, Identities is a rich intellectual contribution to the growing field of dance studies in India. It forges new avenues of scholarly inquiry and critical engagement and opens the field in innovative ways. This volume builds on Dance Matters (2009), which mapped the interdisciplinary breadth of the field. The chapters presented here continue to underline the uniqueness of a field that is a blend of critical scholarship on aesthetics and performance with the humanities and social sciences. Including diverse material, analytical approaches and perspectives from scholars and practitioners, this multidimensional volume explores debates on dance preservation and tradition in globalizing India, multimedia choreographies and the circulation of dance via electronic media, embodiment and memory, power, democracy and bourgeoning markets, classification and censorship, and corporatization and Bollywood. This tour de force will appeal to those in dance and performance studies, cultural studies, sociology as well as to readers interested in tradition, modernity, gender and globalization.
The story behind the scandalous first performance of one of the most influential works in the history of music, as part of the stunning Landmark Library series. On 29 May 1913, at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees in Paris, a new ballet by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky, received its premiere. Many of the cultural big names of Paris were there, or were rumoured to have been there: Debussy, Ravel, Proust, Gertrude Stein, Picasso. When the curtain rose on a cast of frenziedly stamping dancers, a near-riot ensued, ensuring the evening would enter the folklore of modernism. While it was the dancing that triggered the mayhem, Stravinsky's score contained shocks enough, with its innovations in form, rhythm, dissonance and its sheer sonic power. The Rite of Spring would achieve recognition in its own right as a concert piece, and is now seen as one of the most influential works of the 20th century. Gillian Moore explores the cultural climate that created The Rite, tells the story of the creation of the music and the ballet and provides a guide to the music itself, showing how a scandalous novelty of 1913 became a 21st-century concert staple. As well as considering its influence on 20th-century classical composers, she probes The Rite's impact on film music (including scores for Star Wars and Jaws); its extensive influence on jazz musicians (including Charlie Parker) and by artists as diverse as Weather Report, Joni Mitchell, Frank Zappa and The Pet Shop Boys.
Maurice Ravel, as composer and scenario writer, collaborated with some of the greatest ballet directors, choreographers, designers and dancers of his time, including Diaghilev, Ida Rubinstein, Benois and Nijinsky. In this book, the first study dedicated to Ravel's ballets, Deborah Mawer explores these relationships and argues that ballet music should not be regarded in isolation from its associated arts. Indeed, Ravel's views on ballet and other stage works privilege a synthesized aesthetic. The first chapter establishes a historical and critical context for Ravel's scores, engaging en route with multimedia theory. Six main ballets from Daphnis et Chloe through to Bolero are considered holistically alongside themes such as childhood fantasy, waltzing and neoclassicism. Each work is examined in terms of its evolution, premiere, critical reception and reinterpretation through to the present; new findings result from primary-source research, undertaken especially in Paris. The final chapter discusses the reasons for Ravel's collaborations and the strengths and weaknesses of his interpersonal relations. Mawer emphasizes the importance of the performative dimension in realizing Ravel's achievement, and proposes that the composer's large-scale oeuvre can, in a sense, be viewed as a balletic undertaking. In so doing, this book adds significantly to current research interest in artistic production and interplay in early twentieth-century Paris.
Covering fifty years of British dance, from Margot Fonteyn to innovative contemporary practitioners such as Wendy Houstoun and Nigel Charnock, Yes? No! Maybe is an innovative approach to performing and watching dance. Emilyn Claid brings her life experience and interweaves it with academic theory and historical narrative to create a dynamic approach to dance writing. Using the 1970s revolution of new dance as a hinge, Claid looks back to ballet and forward to British independent dance which is new dancea (TM)s legacy. She explores the shifts in performer-spectator relationships, and investigates questions of subjectivity, absence and presence, identity, gender, race and desire using psychoanalytical, feminist, postmodern, post-structuralist and queer theoretical perspectives. Artists and practitioners, professional performers, teachers, choreographers and theatre-goers will all find this book an informative and insightful read.
Balanchine and the Lost Muse is a dual biography of the early lives of two key figures in Russian ballet, in the crucial time surrounding the Russian revolution: famed choreographer George Balanchine and his close childhood friend, ballerina Liidia (Lidochka) Ivanova. Tracing the lives and friendship of these two dancers from years just before the 1917 Russian Revolution to Balanchine's escape from Russia in 1924, author Elizabeth Kendall sheds new light on a crucial flash point in the history of ballet-one where politics and art meet in legendary St. Petersburg, both culture and nation struggling to reconfigure themselves in the wake of the birth of modern Russia. Drawing upon extensive archival research, Kendall weaves a fascinating tale of this crucial period in the life of the man who would ultimately go on to be the most influential choreographer in modern ballet. Abandoned by his mother on the steps of the St. Petersburg Imperial Ballet Academy in 1913 at the age of nine, Balanchine spent his formative years studying the art of dance in Russia's tumultuous capital city. It was there, as he struggled to support himself while studying and performing ballet, where Balanchine met Ivanonva, the first dancer with whom he would ever compose and dance. A talented and bold dancer who grew close to the Bolshevik elite in her adolescent years, Ivanova was a source of great inspiration to Balanchine-both during their youth together, and later in life, after her tragic and mysterious death just days before she had planned to leave Russia with Balanchine and their friends in 1924. Although he would have a great number of muses, many of them lovers, the dark beauty of his dear friend Lidochka haunted much of his work for years to come. Part biography and part urban cultural history, Balanchine and the Lost Muse presents a sweeping account of the heyday of modern ballet and the culture at the heart of the unmoored ideals, futuristic visions, and human decadence that characterized the Russian Revolution.
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.
"Beyond Dance: Laban's Legacy of Movement Analysis "offers students
of dance and movement a brief introduction to the life and work of
Rudolf Laban, and how this work has been extended into the fields
of movement therapy, communications, early childhood development,
and other fields. Rudolf Laban's landmark system of movement
analysis has been applied to dance movement through both
Labanotation (his system of writing down movement) and also through
"effort-shape analysis," a system that was developed out of Laban's
work by his followers to better understand how movement occurs.
Laban's followers--notably Warren Lamb--used this as a basis to
study movement in a broader context, from how to make work more
efficient in agriculture and industry to how to better communicate
through body movement and gesture.
The only scholarly book in English dedicated to recent European
contemporary dance, "Exhausting Dance: Performance and the Politics
of Movement" examines the work of key contemporary choreographers
who have transformed the dance scene since the early 1990s in
Europe and the US.
"Dances of Shakespeare" gives a brief introduction to how to perform all of the dance styles featured in Shakespeare's plays. Designed for the practicing director, actor, or choreographer, it gives clear instruction on how to perform popular dances of Shakespeare's day, including masques, brawls, canaries, corantos, galliards, jigs, La Volta, pavans, morris dances, and roundels. Accompanied by clear illustrations, these instructions allow even the dance-challenged to quickly master enough technique to suit amateur, community, college, or semi-professional productions. Other useful features include a chronological listing of popular dances similar in spirit to those of Shakespeare's days, designed for those staging Shakespeare's work in periods other than as written, as well as an appendix list of the plays grouped by what is called for in the text: a "dance," a "masque," or a specific dance form. Dances of Shakespeare is a "must have" for all student directors and performers interested in staging Shakespeare's works.
Dance Appreciation is an exciting exploration of how to understand and think about dance in all of its various contexts. This book unfolds a brief history of dance with engaging insight into the social, cultural, aesthetic, and kinetic aspects of various forms of dance. Dedicated chapters cover ballet, modern, tap, jazz, and hip-hop dance, complete with summaries, charts, timelines, discussion questions, movement prompts, and an online companion website all designed to foster awareness of and appreciation for dance in a variety of contexts. This wealth of resources helps to uncover the fascinating history that makes this art form so diverse and entertaining, and to answer the questions of why we dance and how we dance. Written for the novice dancer as well as the more experienced dance student, Dance Appreciation enables readers to learn and think critically about dance as a form of entertainment and art.
Features important information about Dene community life in the 1960s during the crucial period immediately following the move from bush to town. Deals extensively with the traditional economy, the structure of Dene Kinship, its role in social organization, and the role of the drum dance in the social life of the community under rapidly-changing circumstances.
In dance, the choreographer creates, the dancer performs, and the viewer observes. This work is a handbook for the viewer. By presenting historical and artistic perspectives of dance, dance events are made more approachable and appreciation for the art form is heightened. The choreographic components of body language, content, structure, music, design, and interpretation are included. Also discussed is the development of critical reaction over time. Examples are drawn from Western theatrical dance and worldwide cultural variations. Terms are explained throughout the text, and an extensive bibliography gives sources in print and on tape for further study.
This book uses ethnographic research to examine the role of dance in the construction of identity in the distinctly British electronic dance music club culture of drum 'n' bass. Dancing is revealed as the central way in which drum 'n' bass clubbers construct and perform their identities, which are informed, although not defined, by the club culture's histories. The intertextual and intercultural development of drum 'n' bass musical and clubbing culture is shown to be represented in the dancing body, prompting a challenge to the discourse of cultural appropriation. Popular representations of identities are embodied by drum 'n' bass clubbers through affective transmission via the popular screen, and in this process are re-valued in their embodiment. Using a socially orientated understanding of intertextuality, the popular dancing body is shown to be heterocorporeal: containing traces of prior meaning and logic yet replete with new meaning and significance.
A definitive book for students of dance and movement studies, Labanotation is now available in a fourth edition, the first complete revision of the text since 1977. Initiated by the movement genius Rudolf Laban, and refined through fifty years of work by teachers here and abroad, Labanotation, the first wholly successful system for recording human movement, is now having the effect on ballet and other forms of dance that the prefection of music notation in the Renaissance had on the development of music. This book makes it possible to record accurately, for study and reconstruction, the great dance creations of the theater, as well as such diverse activities as time/motion studies for industry, personnel assessment and physical therapy. So comprehensive that it can indicate even facial expressions, the system is also simple enough for a child to learn easily as an integral part of athletic or dance training.
"Finding Balance: Fitness, Health, and Training for a Lifetime in
Dance "gives an overview of issues faced by all performing dancers:
injury and treatment; technique and training; fitness; nutrition
and diet; and career management. The text includes both
easy-to-read overviews of each topic and "profiles" of well known
dancers and how they have coped with these issues.
For nearly a century, the training of ballet and modern dancers has followed two divergent paths. Modern practitioners felt ballet was artificial and injurious to the body; ballet teachers felt that modern dancers lacked the rigorous discipline and control that comes only from years of progressive training. Ballet Beyond Tradition seeks to reconcile these age-old conflicts and bring a new awareness to ballet teachers of the importance of a holistic training regimen that draws on the best that modern dance and movement-studies offers.
For nearly a century, the training of ballet and modern dancers has followed two divergent paths. Modern practitioners felt ballet was artificial and injurious to the body; ballet teachers felt that modern dancers lacked the rigorous discipline and control that comes only from years of progressive training. Ballet Beyond Tradition seeks to reconcile these age-old conflicts and bring a new awareness to ballet teachers of the importance of a holistic training regimen that draws on the best that modern dance and movement-studies offers. |
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