The daily life of Bonnie Bird, an American modern dancer in the 1930s, is revealed in this book. The author shares her interviews with Bonnie Bird and the intimate letters that she wrote to her family in Seattle from New York when she was working with Martha Graham between 1931 and 1937. She also had the then novice dancer Merce Cunningham among her students and the young John Cage as her accompanist. Bonnie Bird's applications of psychology led her to pioneer new concepts and techniques in dance education that have influenced generations of contemporary dance teachers. Her last 20 years were spent at London's Laban Centre for Movement and Dance, where the accomplishments of a lifetime were gathered together to extend the frontiers of dance. Bonnie Bird's own notes for teachers of contemporary dance for young people are included in this book.

A pioneer choreographer in modern American dance, Anna Sokolow has led a bewildering, active international life. Her meticulous biographer Larry Warren once looked up Anna Sokolow in a few reference books and found that she was born in three different years and that her parents were from Poland except when they were in Russia, and found many other inaccuracies. Drawing on material from nearly 100 interviews, Larry Warren has created a fascinating account and assessment of the life and work of Anna Sokolow, whose nomadic career was divided between New York, Mexico, and Israel. Setting her work on more than 70 dance companies, Anna Sokolow not only pioneered the development of a personal approach to movement, which has become part of the language of contemporary dance, but also created such masterpieces as Rooms, dealing with loneliness and alienation, and Dreams, which concerns the inner torment of victims of the Nazi Holocaust.

The aim of this publication is to deepen awareness of the body and the self through meditative movement and dance, rekindle the imagination by developing greater self-awareness, and to provide starting points to create expressive movement. The book suggests a wealth of exercises which stem from the natural movement of the body.

The aim of this publication is to deepen awareness of the body and the self through meditative movement and dance, rekindle the imagination by developing greater self-awareness, and to provide starting points to create expressive movement. The book suggests a wealth of exercises which stem from the natural movement of the body.

Dancing in Blackness is a professional dancer's personal journey over four decades, across three continents and 23 countries, and through defining moments in the story of black dance in America. In this memoir, Halifu Osumare reflects on what blackness and dance have meant to her life and international career. Osumare's story begins in 1960s San Francisco amid the Black Arts Movement, black militancy, and hippie counterculture. It was there, she says, that she chose dance as her own revolutionary statement. Osumare describes her experiences as a young black dancer in Europe teaching ""jazz ballet"" and establishing her own dance company in Copenhagen. Moving to New York City, she danced with the Rod Rodgers Dance Company and took part in integrating the programs at the Lincoln Center. After doing dance fieldwork in Ghana, Osumare returned to California and helped develop Oakland's black dance scene. Osumare introduces readers to some of the major artistic movers and shakers she collaborated with throughout her career, including Katherine Dunham, Pearl Primus, Jean-Leon Destine, Alvin Ailey, and Donald McKayle. Now a black studies scholar, Osumare uses her extraordinary experiences to reveal the overlooked ways that dance has been a vital tool in the black struggle for recognition, justice, and self-empowerment. Her memoir is the inspiring story of an accomplished dance artist who has boldly developed and proclaimed her identity as a black woman.

Alien Bodies is a fascinating examination of dance in Germany, France, and the United States during the 1920s and 1930s. Ranging across ballet and modern dance, dance in the cinema and Revue, Ramsay Burt looks at the work of European, African American, and white American artists.
Among the artists who feature are:
* Josephine Baker
* Jean Borlin
* George Balanchine
* Jean Cocteau
* Valeska Gert
* Katherine Dunham
* Fernand Leger
* Kurt Jooss
* Doris Humphrey
Concerned with how artists responded to the alienating experiences of modern life, Alien Bodies focuses on issues of:
* national and 'racial' identity
* the new spaces of modernity
* fascists uses of mass spectacles
* ritual and primitivism in modern dance
* the 'New Woman' and the slender modern body

Alien Bodies is a fascinating examination of dance in Germany, France, and the United States during the 1920s and 1930s. Ranging across ballet and modern dance, dance in the cinema and Revue, Ramsay Burt looks at the work of European, African American, and white American artists.
Among the artists who feature are:
* Josephine Baker
* Jean Borlin
* George Balanchine
* Jean Cocteau
* Valeska Gert
* Katherine Dunham
* Fernand Leger
* Kurt Jooss
* Doris Humphrey
Concerned with how artists responded to the alienating experiences of modern life, Alien Bodies focuses on issues of:
* national and 'racial' identity
* the new spaces of modernity
* fascists uses of mass spectacles
* ritual and primitivism in modern dance
* the 'New Woman' and the slender modern body

La Nijinska is the first biography of twentieth-century ballet's premier female choreographer. Overshadowed in life and legend by her brother Vaslav Nijinsky, Bronislava Nijinska had a far longer and more productive career. An architect of twentieth-century neoclassicism, she experienced the transformative power of the Russian Revolution and created her greatest work - Les Noces - under the influence of its avant-garde. Many of her ballets rested on the probing of gender boundaries, a mistrust of conventional gender roles, and the heightening of the ballerina's technical and artistic prowess. A prominent member of Russia Abroad, she worked with leading figures of twentieth-century art, music, and ballet, including Stravinsky, Diaghilev, Poulenc, Alexandra Exter, Natalia Goncharova, Frederick Ashton, Alicia Markova, and Maria Tallchief. She was also a remarkable dancer in her own right with a bravura technique and powerful stage presence that enabled her to perform an unusually broad repertory. Finally, she was the author of an acclaimed volume of memoirs in addition to a major treatise on movement. Nijinska's career sheds new light on the modern history of ballet and of modernism more generally, recuperating the memory of lost works and forgotten artists, many of them women. But it also reveals the sexism pervasive in the upper echelons of the early and mid-twentieth-century ballet world, barriers that women choreographers still confront.

First Published in 1997. This is Volume 3, Part 2 in the Choreography and Dance journal and looks at the dance and the theatre of Kurt Jooss, in context of his times of birth, his evolution of as an artist, Jooss as a teacher and his ballets.

Dance's Duet with the Camera: Motion Pictures is a collection of essays written by various authors on the relationship between live dance and film. Chapters cover a range of topics that explore dance film, contemporary dance with film on stage, dance as an ideal medium to be captured by 3D images and videodance as kin to site-specific choreography. This book explores the ways in which early practitioners such as Loie Fuller and Maya Deren began a conversation between media that has continued to evolve and yet still retains certain unanswered questions. Methodology for this conversation includes dance historical approaches as well as mechanical considerations. The camera is a partner, a disembodied portion of self that looks in order to reflect on, to mirror, or to presage movement. This conversation includes issues of sexuality, race, and mixed ability. Bodies and lenses share equal billing.

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.

While studying the theory and contemporary impact of 'embodied' viewing, this book celebrates the emergence and development of Visual Studies as a major subject of research and teaching in the field of Hispanic Studies within the UK over the last thirty years. By exploring current routes of investigation, as well as analysing future pathways for study in the field, seven highly distinguished Spanish and Latin American scholars examine their own entry into Visual Studies, and discuss the major trends and changes which occurred in the field as matters of the visual gradually became embedded in higher-education curricula and research trajectories. Each scholar also lays out a current research project, or interest, concerning Spain or Latin America within the visual field. The projects variously explore different media - including film, sculpture, photography, dance, and performance art - spread across a wide array of geographical locales, including Mexico, Cuba, mainland Spain, and the Canary Islands. Offering a map of current and future research in the field, this book provides the first history of visual studies within UK Hispanism. It will be of lasting value to a wide range of scholars and advanced students of Spanish and Latin American cultural, visual, and film studies. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Bulletin of Spanish Studies.

Driven by facts and hard data, this volume reveals how gender dynamics affect the lives of dancers, choreographers, directors, students, educators, and others who are involved in the world of dance. It unpacks real issues that matter-not just to dance communities but also to broader societal trends in the West. In these studies, dancers and dance scholars take readers into classrooms, rehearsals, performances, festivals, competitions, college dance departments, and company administrations. They ask incisive questions and analyze data to learn about the role of gender in attitudes, stereotypes, pedagogy, funding inequities, representation, casting, and body image. Dance is an important part of our larger cultural fabric, and this volume adds powerful findings to today's discussions about living in a gendered society.

On America will respond to the powerful presence in contemporary culture of aesthetic forms and political strategies derived from North America. Counterpointing Letters from Europe, this book will address the use and abuse of images of and from North America, the deconstruction in performance theory and practice of North American art, film and performance, and the presentation of America as genre and fiction.

This book considers dancer, teacher, and choreographer Mary Wigman, a leading innovator in Expressionist dance whose radical explorations of movement and dance theory are credited with expanding the scope of dance as a theatrical art. Now reissued, this book combines: a full account of Wigman's life and work an analysis of her key ideas detailed discussion of her aesthetic theories, including the use of space as an "invisible partner" and the transcendent nature of performance a commentary on her key works, including Hexentanz and The Seven Dances of Life an extensive collection of practical exercises designed to provide an understanding of Wigman's choreographic principles and her uniquely immersive approach to dance. As a first step towards critical understanding, and as an initial exploration before going on to further, primary research, Routledge Performance Practitioners are unbeatable value for today's student.

Now re-issued, this compact book unravels the contribution of one of modern theatre's most charismatic innovators. Hijikata Tatsumi and Ohno Kazuo combines: * an account of the founding of Japanese butoh through the partnership of Hijikata and Ohno, extending to the larger story of butoh's international assimilation * an exploration of the impact of the social and political issues of post-World War II Japan on the aesthetic development of butoh * metamorphic dance experiences that students of butoh can explore * a glossary of English and Japanese terms. As a first step towards critical understanding, and as an initial exploration before going on to further, primary research, Routledge Performance Practitioners are unbeatable value for today's student.

Dancers are top performance athletes on stage - to keep fit and healthy proper nutrition is an integral part of an optimal dance training. Nutrition for Dancers provides the principles of nutrition for dancers of all genres. Authors Liane Simmel and Eva- Maria Kraft clarify widespread nutritional mistakes and give advice on how a healthy diet can be incorporated into the everyday life of dancers.

Staging British South Asian Culture: Bollywood and Bhangra in British Theatre looks afresh at the popularity of forms and aesthetics from Bollywood films and bhangra music and dance on the British stage. From Andrew Lloyd Webber's Bombay Dreams to the finals of Britain's Got Talent, Jerri Daboo reconsiders the centrality of Bollywood and bhangra to theatre made for or about British South Asian communities. Addressing rarely discussed theatre companies such as Rifco, and phenomena such as the emergence of large- scale Bollywood revue performances, this volume goes some way towards remedying the lack of critical discourse around British South Asian theatre. A timely contribution to this growing field, Staging British South Asian Culture is essential reading for any scholar or student interested in exploring the highly contested questions of identity and representation for British South Asian communities.

This work provides a direct line into the most pressing issues in contemporary dance scholarship, as well as discussion of the ways in which which dance contributes to and creates culture. Instead of representing a single viewpoint, the essays in this volume reflect a range of perspectives. The contributors confront basic questions of definition and interpretation within dance studies, while at the same time examining broader issues, such as the body, gender, class, race, nationalism and cross-cultural exchange. Specific essays address such topics as the black male body in dance, gender and subversions in the dances of Mark Morris, race and nationalism in Martha Graham's American Document, and the history of oriental dance. The text should be of interest to historians and critics in a variety of fields. It offers students, scholars and critics of performance and culture an overview of the debates swirling within dance, as well as research articles in dance history, theory and criticism.

Moving Words provides a direct line into the most pressing issues in contemporary dance scholarship, as well as insights into ways in which dance contributes to and creates culture. Instead of representing a single viewpoint, the essays in this volume reflect a range of perspectives and represents the debates swirling within dance.
The contributors confront basic questions of definition and interpretation within dance studies, while at the same time examining broader issues, such as the body, gender, class, race, nationalism and cross-cultural exchange. Specific essays address such topics as the black male body in dance, gender and subversions in the dances of Mark Morris, race and nationalism in Martha Graham's 'American Document', and the history of oriental dance.

In "Dance, Modernity and Culture," Helen Thomas provides an original, interdisciplinary, approach to the study of dance. By examining the development of modern dance in the US during the inter-war period she develops a framework for analyzing dance from a sociological perspective.
In applying her approach to the works of St Denis, Ted Shawn, and Martha Graham, amongst others, she relates the emergence of modern dance to contemporaneous artistic developments, and locates dance within a wider social and economic context. Thus, she draws attention to the importance of popular culture in the development of modern dance, music and painting, and the crucial role women played in establishing dance as an art form. By way of exemplification, she looks at the work of Yvonne Rainer in order to demonstrate how this sociological approach might be applied to a post-modern work.
"Dance, Modernity and Culture" explores an area of art practice that has long been marginalized by sociologists of art. As an important contribution to dance scholarship this book will be essential reading for all those interested in the performing arts.

eBook available with sample pages: HB:0415087937

First published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 1988. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor and Francis, an informa company.

Despite the tremendous multi-disciplinary upsurge of interest in "the body" of late, little or no attention has been given to the moving body or rather, the moving person, a situation that is remedied by this book. For the first time, leading scholars in the anthropology of dance and human movement come together to provide a rich sample of their current work, introducing theories and methods that move well beyond the more familiar "proxemic" and "kinesic" approaches to body movement and space. Part 1 consists of ethnographic studies as diverse as Hawaiian dance and poetry, Tai Chi Chuan, Ballet and the Roman Catholic Mass, Australian Aboriginal sign language, Plains Indians sign language, and African-American movement performance. Part 2 complements this ethnographic richness by providing an in-depth commentary, together with a critical examination of several fundamental philosophical and theoretical issues that have been raised.