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.

How do teachers create a classroom environment that promotes collaborative and inquiry-based approaches to learning ballet? How do teachers impart the stylistic qualities of ballet while also supporting each dancer's artistic instincts and development of a personal style? How does ballet technique education develop the versatility and creativity needed in the contemporary dance environment? Creative Ballet Teaching draws on the fields of Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis (L/BMA), dance pedagogy, and somatic education to explore these questions. Sample lesson plans, class exercises, movement explorations, and journal writing activities specifically designed for teachers bring these ideas into the studio and classroom. A complementary online manual, Creative Ballet Learning, provides students with tools for technical and artistic development, self-assessment, and reflection. Offering a practical, exciting approach, Creative Ballet Teaching is a must-read for those teaching and learning ballet.

The arts have a crucial role in empowering young people with special needs through diverse dance initiatives. Inclusive pedagogy that integrates all students in rich, equitable and just dance programmes within education frameworks is occurring alongside enabling projects by community groups and in the professional dance world where many high-profile choreographers actively seek opportunities to work across diversity to inspire creativity. Access and inclusion is increasingly the essence of projects for disenfranchised and traumatised youth who find creative expression, freedom and hope through dance. This volume foregrounds dance for young people with special needs and presents best practice scenarios in schools, communities and the professional sphere. International perspectives come from Australia, Brazil, Cambodia, Canada, Denmark, Fiji, Finland, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Norway, Papua New Guinea, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Taiwan, Timor Leste, the UK and the USA. Sections include: inclusive dance pedagogy equality, advocacy and policy changing practice for dance education community dance initiatives professional integrated collaborations

Contributions by Darrell Gerohn Baksh, Jan de Cosmo, Frances Henry, Jeff Henry, A. D. Jones, Samantha Noel, Dwaine Plaza, Philip W. Scher, and Asha St. BernardWomen are performing an ever-growing role in Caribbean Carnival. Through a feminist perspective, this volume examines the presence of women in contemporary Carnival by demonstrating not only their strength in numbers, but also the ways in which women participate in the event. While decried by traditionalists, the bikinis, beads, and feathers of "pretty mas" convey both a newly found empowerment as a gendered resistance to oppression from men. Although research on Carnivals is substantial, especially in the Americas, the Subject of women in Carnival as a topic of inquiry remains fairly new. These essays address anthropological and historical facets of women and their practices in the Trinidad Carnival, including an analysis of how women's costuming and performance have changed over time. The modern costumes, which are well within the financial means of most mas players, demonstrate the new power of women who can now afford these outfits. In discussing the commodification and erotization of Carnival, the book emphasizes the unveiling of the female body and the hip-rolling sexual movements called winin or it. Through display of their bodies, contemporary women in Carnival express a form of female resistance. Intent on enjoying and expressing themselves, they seem invigorated by their place in the economy, as well as their sexuality, defying the moral controls imposed on them. Through an array of methods in qualitative research, including interviews, participant observation, and ethnography, this volume explains the new power of women in the evolution of Carnival mas in Trinidad amid the wider Caribbean diaspora.

In the Central Himalayan region of Garhwal, the gods (devtas) enjoy dancing. Musicians - whether ritual specialists or musical specialists - are therefore an indispensable part of most entertainment and religious events. In shamanistic ceremonies, their incantations, songs and drumming 'make' the gods possess their mediums. In other contexts, such as dramatic theatrical renditions of stories of specific deities, actors 'dance' the role of their character having become possessed by the spirit of their character. Through the powerful sounds of their drumming, musicians cause the gods to dance. Music, and more particularly musical sound, is perceived in Garhwal as a powerful force. Andrew Alter examines music and musical practice in Garhwal from an analytical perspective that explores the nexus between musical sounds and performance events. He provides insight into performance practice, vocal techniques, notions of repertoire classification, instruments, ensembles, performance venues, and dance practice. However, music is not viewed simply as a system of organized sounds such as drum strokes, pitch iterations or repertoire items. Rather, in Garhwal, the music is viewed as a system of knowledge and as a system of beliefs in which meaning and spirituality become articulated through potent sound iterations. Alter makes a significant contribution to the discipline of ethnomusicology through a detailed documentation of musical practice in the context of ritual events. The book offers a traditionally thorough historical-ethnographic study of a region with the aim of integrating the local field-based case studies of musical practices within the broader Garhwali context. The work contains invaluable oral data, which has been carefully transliterated as well as translated. Alter blends a carefully detailed analysis of drumming in conjunction with the complex ritual and social contexts of this sophisticated and semantically rich musical practice.

This book also traces the evolution of the Spanish Dance technique, marked as it is by a turbulent history.
Antonio Triana was a dancer of mature artistry, dignity and power. His physical and technical achievements went beyond what is generally known about Spanish Dance. His dance presented the essence of the Spanish character and, in his choreography, he used his traditional background for his brilliant inspirations. He partnered the legendary La Argentinita, Pilar Lopez and Carmen Amaya with spirit and gallantry. Over the years he developed a very distinct method of teaching and he became one of the foremost Spanish Flamenco dancers and teachers of his time.
Rita Vega de Triana formed the Triana Ballet Espanol with her late husband. She currently teaches Hispanic dance and related subjects at the University of Texas at El Paso and directs her own school as well as performing around the United States as a guest artist and choreographer.

"From Petipa to Balanchine" addresses an important, though vastly understudied aspect of Russian modernism--the importance of the art of the past. The work more specifically discusses the development of a classical revival in Russian ballet (1880 to the middle of the 20th century) and its relation to the early 20th-century re-evaluation of "classicism" in Russian art and letters. The work provides a cultural context for the developments and innovations in Russian dance in this period, and especially in the choreography of George Balanchine.
Soviet historians are largely unfamiliar with Balanchine's work while Western dance historians fail to understand its cultural context. Tim Scholl's book fills a void that has long existed in studies of both Russian modernism and Russian ballet. His work also marks the first attempt to discuss 19th and 20th-century Russian ballet traditions as one continuous tradition.
Scholl focuses on the major works of the period, the landmark ballets that influenced the course of Russian ballet history. The book also addresses contemporaneous movements in Russian poetry and visual arts (especially architecture) which are relevant to the development of ballet modernism.
This work offers a new and potentially controversial view of the history of the period as it questions the lasting value of the choreography created for the celebrated Ballets Russes. It suggests that a return to the classical dance academy provided the only viable solution to the many difficulties faced by 20th-century choreographers.
Scholl has studied in depth the area of Russian dance, specifically, the late 19th and 20th century. Drawing upon Russian language materials, Scholl places the works of Petipa and Balanchine--"Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Les Sylphides, Apollo" and "Jewels" among them--in their proper cultural and artistic contexts.

This book includes both a description and a discussion of the methods used by Kanriye Fujima, a member of the Fujima school of Japan, to teach Nihon Buyon to primarily Japanese-Americans. Sellers-Young discusses Fujima's life as a teacher in three Pacific Northwest communities, providing an explanation of her teaching processes and contexts of performances. Incorporating the themes and images associated with the pieces, Sellers-Young discusses Fujima's vital role in the maintenance of specific Japanese cultural values. Contents: Preface; Becoming a Student; Kanriye Fujima's Life and Traditional Japanese Dance Theatre; The Movement and Its Aesthetic Base; The Students; The Studio: The Process of Teaching; The Performance Elements; Contexts of Performance; Nihon Buyo: From Japan to the Pacific Northwest; Appendices: The Dances and Program Notes of Fujinami-Kai; The Ten Most Taught Dances in Each Age Category; References; List of Illustrations; Tables and Charts.

Essentials of Dance Movement Psychotherapy contributes to the global interest in embodiment approaches to psychotherapy and to the field of dance movement psychotherapy specifically. It includes recent research, innovative theories and case studies of practice providing an inclusive overview of this ever growing field. As well as original UK contributions, offerings from other nations are incorporated, making it more accessible to the dance movement psychotherapy community of practice worldwide. Helen Payne brings together well-known, experienced global experts along with rising stars from the field to offer the reader a valuable insight into the theory, research and practice of dance movement psychotherapy. The contributions reflect the breadth of developing approaches, covering subjects including: * combining dance movement psychotherapy with music therapy; * trauma and dance movement psychotherapy; * the neuroscience of dance movement psychotherapy; * the use of touch in dance movement psychotherapy; * dance movement psychotherapy and autism; * relational dance movement psychotherapy. Essentials of Dance Movement Psychotherapy will be a treasured source for anyone wishing to learn more about the psychotherapeutic use of creative movement and dance. It will be of great value to students and practitioners in the arts therapies, psychotherapy, counselling and other health and social care professions.

Indian Classical Dance and the Making of Postcolonial National Identities explores what happens when a national-cultural production is reproduced outside the immediate social, political and cultural context of its origin. Whereas most previous studies have analysed Indian classical dance in the context of Indian history and culture, this volume situates this dance practice in the longstanding trasnational linkages between India and the UK. What is the relation between the contemporary performance of Indian classical dance and the constitution of national, diasporic and multicultural identity? Where and how does Indian dance derive its productive power in the postcolonial moment? How do diasporic and nationalist representations of Indian culture intersect with depictions of British culture and politics? It is argued that classical Indian dance has become a key aspect of not only postcolonial South Asian diasporic identities, but also of British multicultural and transnational identity. Based on an extensive ethnographic study of performances of Indian classical dance in the UK, this book will be of interest to scholars of anthropology, sociology, South Asian studies, Postcolonial, Transnational and Cultural studies, and Theatre and Performance studies.

In the autumn of 1912, Rudolf Steiner presented the first eurythmy performance. It marked the revival, in modern form, of the sacred art of dance, which had been used in the ancient Mysteries to express the movements of the stars and the planets. In the years that followed, Steiner and his wife, Marie von Sivers, developed eurythmy further, broadening it beyond the artistic to encompass healing and educational elements as well. One of the pioneers of this new form of movement was the Russian anthroposophist Tatiana Kisseleff, who became a student of Steiner's and later a celebrated eurythmy teacher. In this remarkable book, available for the first time in English, Kisseleff describes the spiritual foundations of eurythmy as they were explored in Steiner's lectures and recounts the instruction she received from him. This is both an eyewitness account of the origins of eurythmy and a record of a deeply personal journey of one person's efforts to master it. The book is illustrated throughout with photographs, drawings, facsimile reproductions from notebooks and posters advertising early eurythmy performances, alongside accounts of performances of various pieces including Goethe's Faust and Rudolf Steiner's own Mystery Dramas. This is a fascinating account for eurythmists and anyone who wants to delve more deeply into eurythmy's history and development.

First Published in 1993.A complete autobiography of Evalina Palmer-Sikelianos (1874-1952), a woman of immense spiritual strength who fought for the arts against the background of war. She contributed impressively throughout her life to the revival of interest in classical Greece, the theatre and choral dance, and advocated an adherence to mythical authenticity rather than a romanticised view of Greek tragic drama.

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.

This book offers a set of eleven discipline-specific chapters from across the arts, humanities, psychology, and medicine. Each contributor considers the creative potential of error and/or ambiguity, defining these terms in the particular context of that discipline and exploring their values and applications. Themes include error in choreography, poetry, media art, healthcare, psychology, critical typography and mixed reality performance. The book emerges from a core question of how dance research and HCI can inform each other through consideration of error, ambiguity and 'messiness' as methodological tools. The digital age had heralded the possibility that error could be eradicated by the logic of computers but several chapters focus on glitch in arts practices that exploit errors in computer programmes, or even create programmes specifically to produce errors. Together, the chapters explore how error can take us somewhere different or somewhere new, to develop a new, more interesting way of working.

Jasmin Vardimon's Dance Theatre offers an unusual, intimate insight into the devising and training processes of a choreographer in the midst of her practice. Libby Worth and Jasmin Vardimon take a collaborative approach to recording and exploring the working processes of Vardimon and her company, chronicling the development of specific productions rather than offering a single choreographic blueprint. Focusing on the techniques, strategies and creative activities necessitated by each project, Worth and Vardimon address: The initial 'triggers' which lead to research, expansion, and performance; The social, political and psychological content of Vardimon's work; The relationship between accessibility of content and complexity of ideas; Drawing on texts to enhance and shape a piece of dance work; The editing process, and its inherent messiness; The contribution of a company's different voices and viewpoints to the development of a production. Based on extended conversations and interviews, this highly illustrated, full -colour volume is a unique reflection on Jasmin Vardimon's vibrant, continually developing practice. It is a must-read for students and practitioners of dance and physical theatre.

Just as America was observed in French literary and political commentary, we find representations of America in French music, dance, and theatre which serve as the focus of this volume. Following the American Revolution, French authors often viewed the United States as a laboratory for the forging of new practices of liberte and egalite, in affinity with France's own Revolutionary ideals but in competition with lingering anti-American depictions of an inferior, untamed New World. The volume examines French imagining of America through musical/theatrical portrayals of the American Revolution and Republic, soundscapes of the Statue of Liberty, homages to Washington, Franklin and Lafayette and negotiations of Francophone identity in New Orleans. The subject of race features prominently in paradoxical depictions of slavery, freedom, and revolution in the United States and French Caribbean colonies of 'Amerique' and in varied interpretations of American music and gendered identity. Essays consider French constructions of the Indigenous American and Black American 'exotic' that intersect with tropes of noble, pastoral savagery, menacing barbarism and the 'civilising' potency of French culture. Such French constructions reveal both a revulsion of racial alterity and an attraction to the expressive, even subversive, freedom of Americanness. Investigations of French conceptions of America extend to critiques of American orchestral music, Gottschalk's Louisianan-Caribbean Creole works, Buffalo Bill's spectacles and the cakewalk in Paris. With scholarly contributions on music, dance, theatre and opera, the volume will be essential reading for students and scholars of these disciplines.

In this volume the author examines the place of dance in contemporary Britain. By doing so, he sets out to provide the historical, political and structural elements necessary to achieve a broad understanding of dance in society. He poses the question as to whether Britain has its own dance culture, examines the place of dance outside the theatrical environment (in schools, for example), and looks at the place of dance in the community.

British Dance, Black Routes is an outstanding collection of writings which re-reads the achievements of Black British dance artists, and places them within a broad historical, cultural and artistic context. Until now discussion of choreography by Black dance practitioners has been dominated by the work of African-American artists, facilitated by the civil rights movement. But the work produced by Black British artists has in part been within the context of Britain's colonial legacy. Ramsay Burt and Christy Adair bring together an array of leading scholars and practitioners to review the singularity and distinctiveness of the work of British-based dancers who are Black and its relation to the specificity of Black British experiences. From sub-Saharan West African and Caribbean dance forms to jazz and hip-hop, British Dance, Black Routes looks afresh at over five decades of artistic production to provide an unparalleled resource for dance students and scholars.

Anna Halprin traces the life's work of this radical dance-maker, documenting her early career as a modern dancer in the 1940s through to the development of her groundbreaking approach to dance as an accessible and life-enhancing art form. Now revised and reissued, this book: sketches the evolution of the San Francisco Dancers' Workshop, exploring Halprin's connections with the avant-garde theatre, music, visual art and architecture of the 1950s and 60s offers a detailed analysis of Halprin's work from this period provides an important historical guide to a time when dance was first explored beyond the confines of the theatre and considered as a healing art for individuals and communities. As a first step towards critical understanding, and an initial exploration before going on to further, primary research, Routledge Performance Practitioners offer unbeatable value for today's student.

In popular thought, Christianity is often figured as being opposed to dance. Conventional scholarship traces this controversy back to the Middle Ages. Throughout the medieval era, the Latin Church denounced and prohibited dancing in religious and secular realms, often aligning it with demonic intervention, lust, pride, and sacrilege. Historical sources, however, suggest that medieval dance was a complex and ambivalent phenomenon. During the High and Late Middle Ages, Western theologians, liturgists, and mystics not only tolerated dance; they transformed it into a dynamic component of religious thought and practice. This book investigates how dance became a legitimate form of devotion in Christian culture. Sacred dance functioned to gloss scripture, frame spiritual experience, and imagine the afterlife. Invoking numerous manuscript and visual sources (biblical commentaries, sermons, saints' lives, ecclesiastical statutes, mystical treatises, vernacular literature, and iconography), this book highlights how medieval dance helped shape religious identity and social stratification. Moreover, this book shows the political dimension of dance, which worked in the service of Christendom, conversion, and social cohesion. In Ringleaders of Redemption, Kathryn Dickason reveals a long tradition of sacred dance in Christianity, one that the professionalization and secularization of Renaissance dance obscured, and one that the Reformation silenced and suppressed.

This beautiful new book guides readers with intermediate to advanced level sewing skills toward the successful creation of costumes for theatrical or dance performances, and for re-enactments and interactive fiction. Nearly 250 beautiful color photographs and detailed line drawings of many types of costumes, along with solid design principles, provide a wealth of easy to understand information and how-to instructions. Practical tips concerning theatrical production teams, lines of authority, budgets, scheduling, and post-production storage of costumes are included. An annotated bibliography and a resource guide are both useful references.

The "Language of Dance" series publishes key works that cover a range of dance styles and periods. Through selection of appropriate movement description, these pieces have been translated into labanotation, the highly developed method of analyzing and recording movement.;Whatever form of dance a pupil may choose, there are certain skills such as strength, co-ordination, elasticity and the ability to move rhythmically, that all must acquire. This book uses easily understood notated exercises as a means of teaching these skills within the language of dance. Exercises defining a range of dynamic qualities are linked into a series of sequences that allow students to develop the relationship between exercises and choreographed movement. The exercises are supplemented by photographs and a cassette composed and recorded by Jess Meeker, Shawn's original composer.

Early hip hop film musicals have either been expunged from cinema history or excoriated in brief passages by critics and other writers. "Hip Hop on Film" reclaims and reexamines productions such as "Breakin'" (1984), " Beat Street" (1984), and "Krush Groove" (1985) in order to illuminate Hollywood's fascinating efforts to incorporate this nascent urban culture into conventional narrative forms. Such films presented musical conventions against the backdrop of graffiti-splattered trains and abandoned tenements in urban communities of color, setting the stage for radical social and political transformations. Hip hop musicals are also part of the broader history of teen cinema, and films such as Charlie Ahearn's "Wild Style" (1983) are here examined alongside other contemporary youth-oriented productions. As suburban teen films banished parents and children to the margins of narrative action, hip hop musicals, by contrast, presented inclusive and unconventional filial groupings that included all members of the neighborhood. These alternative social configurations directly referenced specific urban social problems, which affected the stability of inner city families following diminished governmental assistance in communities of color during the 1980s.

Breakdancing, a central element of hip hop musicals, is also reconsidered. It gained widespread acclaim at the same time that these films entered the theaters, but the nation's newly discovered dance form was embattled--caught between a multitude of institutional entities such as the ballet academy, advertising culture, and dance publications that vied to control its meaning, particularly in relation to delineations of gender. As street-trained breakers were enticed to join the world of professional ballet, this newly forged relationship was recast by dance promoters as a way to invigorate and "remasculinize" European dance, while young women simultaneously critiqued conventional masculinities through an appropriation of breakdance. These multiple and volatile histories influenced the first wave of hip hop films, and even structured the sleeper hit "Flashdance" (1983). This forgotten, ignored, and maligned cinema is not only an important aspect of hip hop history, but is also central to the histories of teen film, the postclassical musical, and even institutional dance. Kimberley Monteyne places these films within the wider context of their cultural antecedents and reconsiders the genre's influence.

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.