Originally published in 1932, this is a wonderfully detailed guide to ballroom dancing by the then reigning world champion dancer. The book covers everything that is essential in connection with ballroom dancing, from a detailed description of the standardised figures down to the finer points which proclaim the expert dancer. It is a book that will make its appeal both to the novice and to the experienced or professional performer. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Hesperides Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork. Contents Include - A Complete Syllabus for a Ballroom Examination - General Knowledge Questions and Answers - The Slow Foxtrot - The Waltz - The Quick Step - The Tango - Charts Giving a Complete Description of Every Standing Figure

Across spatial, bodily, and ethical domains, music and dance both emerge from and give rise to intimate collaboration. This theoretically rich collection takes an ethnographic approach to understanding the collective dimension of sound and movement in everyday life, drawing on genres and practices in contexts as diverse as Japanese shakuhachi playing, Peruvian huayno, and the Greek goth scene. Highlighting the sheer physicality of the ethnographic encounter, as well as the forms of sociality that gradually emerge between self and other, each contribution demonstrates how dance and music open up pathways and give shape to life trajectories that are neither predetermined nor teleological, but generative.

What world has been constructed for dancing through the use of the term 'world dance'? What kinds of worlds do we as scholars create for a given dance when we undertake to describe and analyze it? This book endeavours to make new epistemological space for the analysis of the world's dance by offering a variety of new analytic approaches.

Choreographic Dwellings explores performance practices that extend the remit of the choreographic. Covering walking practices, site-specific and nomadic performance that explore the movement potentials of everyday environments, parkour and art installation, it offers a reframing of the topologically kinaesthetic experience of the choreographic.

This exciting new and original collection locates dance within the spectrum of urban life in late modernity, through a range of theoretical perspectives. It highlights a diversity of dance forms and styles that can be witnessed in and around contemporary urban spaces: from dance halls to raves and the club striptease; from set dancing to ballroom dancing, to hip hop and swing, and to ice dance shows; from the ballet class, to fitness aerobics; and 'art' dance which situates itself in a dynamic relation to the city.

Dance is more than an aesthetic of life - dance embodies life. This is evident from the social history of jive, the marketing of trans-national ballet, ritual healing dances in Italy or folk dances performed for tourists in Mexico, Panama and Canada. Dance often captures those essential dimensions of social life that cannot be easily put into words. What are the flows and movements of dance carried by migrants and tourists? How is dance used to shape nationalist ideology? What are the connections between dance and ethnicity, gender, health, globalization and nationalism, capitalism and post-colonialism? Through innovative and wide-ranging case studies, the contributors explore the central role dance plays in culture as leisure commodity, cultural heritage, cultural aesthetic or cathartic social movement.

Helene Neveu Kringelbach is an Oxford Diaspora Programme Researcher at the University of Oxford. Her current research interests include dance and musical theatre in West Africa and beyond, contemporary choreography in Africa and transnational families across Senegal and Europe.

Jonathan Skinner is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology in the School of History and Anthropology, Queen's University Belfast. He is the author of Before the Volcano: Reverberations of Identity on Montserrat (Arawak Publications 2004) and co-editor of Great Expectations: Imagination and Anticipation in Tourism (Berghahn Books 2011).

This book examines the globalization of belly dance and the distinct dancing communities that have evolved from it. The history of belly dance has taken place within the global flow of sojourners, immigrants, entrepreneurs, and tourists from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. In some cases, the dance is transferred to new communities within the gender normative structure of its original location in North Africa and the Middle East. Belly dance also has become part of popular culture's Orientalist infused discourse. The consequence of this discourse has been a global revision of the solo dances of North Africa and the Middle East into new genres that are still part of the larger belly dance community but are distinct in form and meaning from the dance as practiced within communities in North Africa and the Middle East.

Dancing at the crossroads used to be young peoples opportunity to meet and enjoy themselves on mild summer evenings in the countryside in Ireland until this practice was banned by law, the Public Dance Halls Act in 1935. Now a key metaphor in Irish cultural and political life, dancing at the crossroads also crystallizes the argument of this book: Irish dance, from Riverdance (the commercial show) and competitive dancing to dance theatre, conveys that Ireland is to be found in a crossroads situation with a firm base in a distinctly Irish tradition which is also becoming a prominent part of European modernity. Helena Wulff is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at Stockholm University. Publications include Twenty Girls (Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1988), Ballet across Borders (Berg, 1998), Youth Cultures (co-edited with Vered Amit-Talai, Routledge, 1995), New Technologies at Work (co-edited with Christina Garsten, Berg, 2003). Her research focusses on dance, visual culture, and Ireland."

This book renews thinking about the moving body by drawing on dance practice and performance from across the world. Eighteen internationally recognised scholars show how dance can challenge our thoughts and feelings about our own and other cultures, our emotions and prejudices, and our sense of public and private space. In so doing, they offer a multi-layered response to ideas of affect and emotion, culture and politics, and ultimately, the place of dance and art itself within society. The chapters in this collection arise from a number of different political and historical contexts. By teasing out their detail and situating dance within them, art is given a political charge. That charge is informed by the work of Michel Foucault, Stuart Hall, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Ranciere and Luce Irigaray as well as their forebears such as Spinoza, Plato and Freud. Taken together, Choreography and Corporeality: RELAY in Motion puts thought into motion, without forgetting its origins in the social world.

Some of the earliest dance treatises come from Italy and were written in the second half of the 15th century by dancing masters working at the Courts of the great ruling families of Northern Italy such as the d'Estes, Gonzagas and Medici. For the first time we have descriptions of the social dances performed at these courts, though the writers often assume a prior knowledge of technique and leave out much that we would like to know today. Although Antonio Cornazano was not a dancing master, he was an enthusiastic amateur, and his work gives us valuable insights into the interpretation of steps such as saltarelli and piva, as well as some poetically descriptive detail on style, presentation, and technique. Most of these early Italian sources are only available in manuscript form, and up to now none have been translated in full. This book will therefore be an invaluable addition to the library of all dance scholars and historians, as well as being of great interest to dance students wanting to know more about the origins of their art.

Examining performers from the ancient Mediterranean world to the modern Islamic Middle East, including India and Pakistan, Shay explores the careers, artistic performances, and legacies of these individuals who were forced to produce entertainment and art for, and have sex with, any and all patrons.

How did Caribbean rituals helped form new currents in the performing and visual arts of the United States? This book answers this question through an examination of the Caribbean-inspired dance creations of dancer/choreographer Katherine Dunham and the experimental films of avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren.

Dance on the American Musical Theatre Stage: A History chronicles the development of dance, with an emphasis on musicals and the Broadway stage, in the United States from its colonial beginnings to performances of the present day. This book explores the fascinating tug-and-pull between the European classical, folk and social dance imports and America's indigenous dance forms as they met and collided on the popular musical theatre stage. The historical background influenced a specific musical theatre movement vocabulary and a unique choreographic approach that is recognizable today as Broadway style dancing. Throughout the book, a cultural context is woven into the history to reveal how the competing values within American culture, and its attempts as a nation to define and redefine itself, played out through developments in dance on the musical theatre stage. This book is central to the conversation on how dance influences and reflects society, and will be of interest to students and scholars of Musical Theatre, Theatre Studies, Dance and Cultural History.

Chronicles the development of Western ballet focusing on the social and cultural forces which influenced the dancer's art.

Internationally traveled and familiar with salons and personalities of the dance world, we find a stroll through the years as Dorothy Dean Stevens gives us glimpses of personal encounters with leading dancers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

She begins by tracing her ancestors settling in the west; on through her early years, then to her entrance into the hallowed halls of European Ballet and the continued ties with leading dancers. Early in her life she studied at Cornish School of the Arts and later with Eugene Lorin. Such notables as Adolf Bolm, and Dimitri Romanoff, instructed in her dance studio in Monterey California. Sucessful dancers such as Frank Bourman, and Michael Smuin, who later founded the Smuin Ballet in San Francisco, taught for a time at Dorothy's studio.

She also covers the development of the cultural arts, tracing theater and talent that existed in the central California region of the Monterey Peninsula. But there is more to her life than this; travel and adventure, business and pleasure all woven into a tale of her life. Dorothy dances through joys and sorrows to the encore years in which her family, once again, takes the spot light.

Dance has proliferated in movies, television, Internet, and retail spaces while the spiritual power of dance has also been linked with mass consumption. Walter marries the cultural studies of dance and the religious aspects of dance in an exploration of consumption rituals, including rituals of being persuaded to buy products that include dance.

"Bringing the study of Chinese theatre into the 21st-century, Lei discusses ways in which traditional art can survive and thrive in the age of modernization and globalization. Building on her previous work, this new book focuses on various forms of Chinese "opera" in locations around the Pacific Rim, including Hong Kong, Taiwan and California"--

As war is declared can The Variety Girls keep smiling through...Cleethorpes - September 1939 Struggling to keep their spirits up as the reality of war hits home and theatres are closed, friends Jessie Delaney and Frances O'Leary search for work to see them through until they can sing and dance again. Frances, once upon a time followed her dreams of becoming a dancer but soon found herself with a broken heart and a precious secret when her lover abandoned her. Keeping her secret from her friends grows more difficult as time passes and their friendship grows.. But with her lover returning to England from a successful tour of America, how long will it be before the truth comes to light? Secrets aren't good for anyone and Frances isn't the only one hiding things from her friends. Ginny Thomspon, another Variety Girl is hoping for the best. But is hope enough? Can the Variety Girls pull together to help each other through the tough times or will their secrets tear them apart? A gritty and heart-warming saga perfect for readers of Elaine Everest, Nancy Revell and Pam Howes. Praise for Tracy Baines: 'A charming, heart-warming saga about ambition, hard work and courage in the cut and thrust of a world often driven by jealousy and spite'. Rosie Clarke 'Immerse yourself in the exciting, evocative world of Wartime musical theatre. I highly recommend this book.' Fenella Miller 'An emotional, entertaining read that had me gripped!' Sheila Riley 'An absorbing and poignant saga. I loved it from the very beginning and would highly recommend it...' Elaine Roberts 'Terrific - beautifully written. The book twinkles. A well-crafted and satisfying story' Maisie Thomas 'A pleasure from start to finish.' Glenda Young '...you will have to read this well-researched song and dance of a novel in great gulps as I did' Annie Clark 'I just loved this book! Molly Walton The Variety Girls is terrific - beautifully written & with an unusual background. The stage costumes twinkle with sequins and the book twinkles with tiny details of theatre life that add depth and atmosphere to this well-crafted and satisfying story. Maisie Thomas, The Railway Girls 'A pleasure from start to finish.' Glenda Young, Belle of the Backstreets '...you will have to read this well-researched song and dance of a novel in great gulps as I did' Milly Adams 'an evocative, busy, entertaining read, which has well balanced touches of humour, vying with angst, and of course, more than a dollop of tension.' Margaret Graham, Frost Magazine 'Characterisation is one of the book's strong points - the individual characters stay in your mind long after you finish the story.' Barbara Dynes, The Voice

Dancing Bodies of Devotion: Fluid Gestures in Bharata Natyam examines how Bharata Natyam, a traditionally Hindu storytelling dance form, moves across religious boundaries through both incorporating choreography on Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, and Jain themes and the pluralistic identities of participants. Dancers traverse religious boundaries by reformulating an aesthetic foundation based on performative rather than solely textual understandings of rasa, conventionally defined as a formula for how to physically craft emotion on stage. Through the ethnographic case studies of this volume, dancers of Bharata Natyam innovatively demonstrate how the rasa of devotion (bhakti rasa), surprisingly absent from classic dance-related texts, serves as the pivotal framework for expanding on their own interreligious thematic and interpretive possibilities. In contemporary Bharata Natyam, bhakti rasa is not just about enhancing religious experience; instead, these dancers choreographically adapt various religious identities and ideas in order to emphasize pluralistic cultural and ethical dimensions in their work. Through the dancing body, multiple religious and secular interpretations fluidly co-exist.

A far-reaching examination of exoticism, cultural internationalism and modernism's encounters with Indonesian tradition, "Performing Otherness "examines how Indonesia entered world stages through imperialism as an antimodern phantasm and through nationalism became a means of intercultural communication and cultural diplomacy.

Musical Intimacies and Indigenous Imaginaries explores several styles performed in the vital aboriginal musical scene in the western Canadian province of Manitoba, focusing on fiddling, country music, Christian hymnody, and step dancing. In considering these genres and the contexts in which they are performed, author Byron Dueck outlines a compelling theory of musical publics, examines the complex, overlapping social orientations of contemporary musicians, and shows how music and dance play a central role in a distinctive indigenous public culture.
Dueck considers a wide range of contemporary aboriginal performances and venues--urban and rural, secular and sacred, large and small. Such gatherings create opportunities for the expression of distinctive modes of northern Algonquian sociability and for the creative extension of indigenous publicness. In examining these interstitial sites--at once places of intimate interaction and spaces oriented to imagined audiences--this volume considers how Manitoban aboriginal musicians engage with audiences both immediate and unknown; how they negotiate the possibilities mass mediation affords; and how, in doing so, they extend and elaborate indigenous sociability.
Musical Intimacies brings theories of public culture from anthropology and literary criticism into musicological and ethnomusicological discussions while introducing productive new ways of understanding North American indigenous engagement with mass mediation. It is a unique work that will appeal to students and scholars of popular music, musicology, music theory, anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies. It will be necessary reading for students of American ethnomusicology, First Nations and Native American studies, and Canadian music studies.

This book asks important questions about making performance through the means of collaboration and co-created practice. It argues that we can align ethics and aesthetics with collaborative performance to realise the importance of being in association with one another, and being engaged through our shared imaginations. Evident in the examples of practice visited in this study is the attention given by a number of practitioners to the development of shared, co-operative modes of creation. Here, we can appreciate ethical work as being relational, forged in association with the others as we cultivate ideas that matter. In looking at a range of work from practitioners including Meg Stuart, Rosemary Lee, Deufert&Philschke and Fevered Sleep, Considering Ethics in Dance, Theatre and Performance explores ways that we rehearse by attending to ethics, aesthetics and co-creation. In learning to listen, to observe, to co-operate and to negotiate, these practitioners reveal the ways that they bring their work into existence through the transmission of shared meaning.