Professional dance is an exciting but demanding career to choose, and the dancer of today needs to be physically prepared for the stress on the body that a performing life entails. Pilates and Conditioning for Dancers is a practical guide to exercises designed specifically for dance students and professionals alike. The focus on how to choose exercises that suit the individual offers dancers the freedom to optimize their performance potential in a flexible environment. Key topics covered are Core Control; Turnout; The Healthy Spine; Footwork; Jumping and Landing. This new book covers each area of the body, relating the exercises closely to dance technique and providing movement solutions for dancers of al styles and at all stages of their performing career.

The first monograph on the work of British choreographer Jonathan Burrows, this book examines his artistic practice and poetics as articulated through his choreographic works, his writings and his contributions to current performance debates. It considers the contexts, principles and modalities of his choreography, from his early pieces in the 1980s to his latest collaborative projects, providing detailed analyses of his dances and reflecting on his unique choreomusical partnership with composer Matteo Fargion. Known for its emphasis on gesture and humour, and characterised by compositional clarity and rhythmical patterns, Burrows' artistic work takes the language of choreography to its limits and engages in a paradoxical, and hence transformative, relationship with dance's historical and normative structures. Exploring the ways in which Burrows and Fargion's poetics articulates movement, performative presence and the collaborative process in a 'minor' register, this study conceptualises the work as a politically compelling practice that destabilises major traditions from a minoritarian position.

Dance Studies in China is a collection of articles selected from issues of the Journal of Beijing Dance Academy, translated for an English-speaking audience. Beijing Dance Academy is a full-time institution of higher learning with commitment to developing excellent professional dancers, choreographers and dance researchers. This collection includes an interview with Shen Wei, the Chinese-American choreographer, painter and director living in New York City, USA. Founded in 1954, the former Beijing Dance School was the first professional dance school ever established since the founding of People's Republic of China. Beijing Dance Academy (BDA) officially established in 1978, it provides BA and MA degrees and has become the only institution of higher learning for professional dance education in China, as well as the largest prestigious dance school with comprehensive concentrations in the world. In recent years, BDA has committed to develop its research profile specialising in dance, the Journal of Beijing Dance Academy is one of such outcomes. The Academy is also actively engaging with international collaboration. The Intellect China Library is a series of new English translations of the latest scholarship in Chinese that have not previously been available. Subjects covered include visual arts, performing arts, popular culture, media and the broader creative industries. The series aims to foster intellectual debate and to promote closer cross-cultural knowledge exchange by introducing unique Chinese scholarship and ideas to our readers.

This book presents an analysis of how the grassroots movement of Guangchang Wu or 'square dance' in China has become a national phenomenon. Through oral narratives offering rich descriptions of lived encounters, the experiences of those involved in leading, organizing, teaching and learning Guangchang Wu are revealed. Through these narratives, this book serves to understand the leadership practices occurring and how this dance practice is deeply rooted in the complexities of China's rapid economic development, acceleration of urbanisation, and the desire for a healthier and more communal lifestyle.

Eleanor Powell began her notable career at age 12, with an appearance at a supper show at an Atlantic City hotel. As a teenager, she moved to vaudeville and Broadway, where producers insisted that the classically trained dancer study tap. With minimal training, she became the queen of tap dancing in the 1930s and 1940s, with MGM casting her in some of the best-loved musicals of all time. This book details her life and career.

A concise biography overviews the principal events in the life and work of Eleanor Powell. The chapters that follow are devoted to her work in particular media, such as film, radio, and television. Each chapter contains entries for her productions, which provide cast and credit information, plot synopses, criticism, and excerpts from reviews. Appendices provide additional information about her life, and an annotated bibliography summarizes the many writings by and about her.

Because dance materializes through and for people, because we learn to dance from others and often present dance to others, the moment of its transmission is one of dance's central and defining features. Valuing Dance looks at the occasion when dancing passes from one person to another as an act of exchange, one that is redolent with symbolic meanings, including those associated with its history and all the labor that has gone into its making. It examines two ways that dance can be exchanged, as commodity and as gift, reflecting on how each establishes dance's relative worth and merit differently. When and why do we give dance? Where and to whom do we sell it? How are such acts of exchange rationalized and justified? Valuing Dance poses these questions in order to contribute to a conversation around what dance is, what it does, and why it matters.

This book strives to unmask the racial inequity at the root of the emergence of modern physical culture systems in the US Progressive Era (1890s-1920s). This book focuses on physical culture - systematic, non-competitive exercise performed under the direction of an expert - because tracing how people practiced physical culture in the Progressive Era, especially middle- and upper-class white women, reveals how modes of popular performance, institutional regulation, and ideologies of individualism and motherhood combined to sublimate whiteness beneath the veneer of liberal progressivism and reform. The sites in this book give the fullest picture of the different strata of physical culture for white women during that time and demonstrate the unracialization of whiteness through physical culture practices. By illuminating the ways in which whiteness in the US became a default identity category absorbed into the "universal" ideals of culture, arts, and sciences, the author shows how physical culture circulated as a popular performance form with its own conventions, audience, and promised profitability. Finally, the chapters reveal troubling connections between the daily habits physical culturists promoted and the eugenics movement's drive towards more reproductively efficient white bodies. By examining these written, visual, and embodied texts, the author insists on a closer scrutiny of the implicit whiteness of physical culture and forwards it as a crucial site of analysis for performance scholars interested in how corporeality is marshaled by and able to contest local and global systems of power.

The Early Stuart Masque: Dance, Costume, and Music studies the complex impact of movements, costumes, words, scenes, music, and special effects in English illusionistic theatre of the Renaissance. Drawing on a massive amount of documentary evidence relating to English productions as well as spectacle in France, Italy, Germany, and the Ottoman Empire, the book elucidates professional ballet, theatre management, and dramatic performance at the early Stuart court. Individual studies take a fresh look at works by Ben Jonson, Samuel Daniel, Thomas Carew, John Milton, William Davenant, and others, showing how court poets collaborated with tailors, designers, technicians, choreographers, and aristocratic as well as professional performers to create a dazzling event. Based on extensive archival research on the households of Queen Anne and Queen Henrietta Maria, special chapters highlight the artistic and financial control of Stuart queens over their masques and pastorals. Many plates and figures from German, Austrian, French, and English archives illustrate accessibly-written introductions to costume conventions, early dance styles, male and female performers, the dramatic symbolism of colors, and stage design in performance. With splendid costumes and choreographies, masques once appealed to the five senses. A tribute to their colorful brilliance, this book seeks to recover a lost dimension of performance culture in early modern England.

By the 1920s, much of the world was 'dance mad,' as dancers from Buenos Aires to Tokyo, from Manchester to Johannesburg and from Chelyabinsk to Auckland, engaged in the Charleston, the foxtrot and a whole host of other fashionable dances. Worlds of social dancing examines how these dance cultures spread around the globe at this time and how they were altered to suit local tastes. As it looks at dance as a 'social world', the book explores the social and personal relationships established in encounters on dance floors on all continents. It also acknowledges the impact of radio and (sound) film as well as the contribution of dance teachers, musicians and other entertainment professionals to the making of the new dance culture. -- .

This revised third edition of The Male Dancer updates and enlarges a seminal book that has established itself as the definitive study of the performance of masculinities in twentieth century modernist and contemporary choreography. In this authoritative and lively study, Ramsay Burt presents close readings of dance works from key moments of social and political change in the norms around gender and sexuality. The book's argument that prejudices against male dancers are rooted in our ideas about the male body and behaviour has been extended to take into account recent interdisciplinary discussions about whiteness, intersectionality, disability studies, and female masculinities. As well as analysing works by canonical figures like Nijinsky, Graham, Cunningham, and Bausch, it also examines the work of lesser-known figures like Michio Ito and Eleo Pomare, as well as choreographers who have recently emerged internationally like Germaine Acogny and Trajal Harrell. The Male Dancer has proven to be essential reading for anyone interested in dance and the cultural representation of gender. By reflecting on the latest studies in theory, performance, and practice, Burt has thoroughly updated this important book to include dance works from the last ten years and has renewed its timeliness for the 2020s.

This book explores the therapeutic use of touch, focusing on an in-depth case study of work in an NHS setting with a client with learning disabilities, and situating this within a wide theoretical context. This is a unique and influential study illustrating the impact of touch in dance movement psychotherapy and laying the ground for a theory on the use of touch in Dance Movement Psychotherapy (DMP). The case study illustrates the impact of touch upon the therapeutic relationship with the use of video transcription and descriptive reflexive accounts of the session content. The case analysis sections establish the ground for a paradigm shift, and for emergent theory and methods in support of the use of touch in Dance Movement Psychotherapy and other contexts. The role touch takes is beyond its affect, which expands our understanding of its potency as an intervention. The writing is embedded in many years of practice-led-research in the field of dance and somatic practices, in particular Body-Mind Centering (R) and Contact Improvisation, in which touching and being touched is met with curiosity as a place of insight and revelation, beyond the bounds of taboo and social diktat. The study considers the philosophical landscape of both touch and non-touch. This book explores and reflects upon the use of touch, considering the wider context and socially imposed perceptions that would prevent touch from taking place - including philosophical and social discourses. Through telling the story of a client case, the book offers a wealth of thought-provoking content to inspire continued dialogue. Key strengths of this book are the depth, warmth and perceptiveness of the case history, and the way in which this is successfully linked with theory. Particular attention is paid to embodied cognition and exosystemic theory, the two leading developments of current thinking. With the ethical, practical and philosophical content, the book will be of interest to psychotherapists, health and social care practitioners, as well as arts in health practitioners and beneficiaries in educational programs and settings. Primary readership will be among DMP psychotherapists, body psychotherapists, drama therapists, Body Mind Centering (R) practitioners, arts in health practitioners, people working with clients with learning disabilities and any practitioner and researcher interested in understanding the role touch may play in the psychotherapeutic encounter.

Kellom Tomlinson was one of the most important figures in the history of dance in England in the early 18th century. This treatise, The Art of Dancing, completed by 1724 but due to high production costs not published until 1735, is the only substantial English work of its kind not derived from a French original. Tomlinson was one of the most prolific of the dancing masters working in England at this time, although details of his life and career are few. He was born c. 1693 and was apprenticed between 1707 and 1714 to the well-known and highly regarded dancing master Thomas Caverley. During this time he was also instructed in dancing 'in the theatrical way' by Rene Cherrier, a French dancer and teacher who performed frequently in London. Although there is no record of Tomlinson as a performer himself, he was associated from 1715 with the professional theatre, particularly that in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and also began at that time to establish himself as a dancing master to the nobility and gentry. In this treatise, in two parts, Tomlinson sets forth the principles of Baroque dance. The book is divided into two parts: part one contains detailed written descriptions of twenty nine steps; book two discusses the minuet, including four methods of performing the minuet step. The present facsimile reprint also includes six dances, in the Feuillet notation system, published by Tomlinson between 1715 and 1720: The Passpied Round O, The Shepherdess, The Submission, The Prince Eugene, The Address, and the Gavot (sic).

A broad-ranging account of women's roles and experience in dance, which demolishes the myth that dance is a female art form by demonstrating the way in which it is dominated by male managers, choreographers and directors. While most dancers are women, for the most part they interpret male-constructed images rather than create their own. This is not inevitable, however, the author argues; dance is a possible arena for feminist practice and women's liberation.

In Choreographing Agonism, author Goran Petrovic Lotina offers new insight into the connections between politics and performance. Exploring the political and philosophical roots of a number of recent leftist civil movements, Petrovic Lotina forcefully argues for a re-imagining of artistic performance as an instrument of democracy capable of contesting a dominant politics. Inspired by post-Marxist theories of discourse theory, hegemony, conflict, and pluralism, and using tension as a guiding philosophical, political, and artistic force, the book expands the politico-philosophical debate on theories of performance. It offers both scholars and practitioners of performance a thought-provoking analysis of the ways in which artistic performance can be viewed politically as 'agonistic choreo-political practice,' a powerful strategy for mobilising alternative ways of living together and invigorating democracy. Choreographing Agonism makes a bold and innovative contribution to the discussion of political and philosophical thought in the field of Performance Studies.

This "what is"-rather than "how to"- volume proposes a theoretical framework for understanding dance leadership for dancers, leaders, and students of both domains, illustrated by portraits of leaders in action in India, South Africa, UK, US, Brazil and Canada. What is dance leadership? Who practices it, in what setting, and why? Through performance, choreography, teaching, writing, organizing and directing, the dance leaders portrayed herein instigate change and forward movement. Illustrating all that is unique about leading in dance, and by extension the other arts, readers can engage with such wide-ranging issues as: Does the practice of leading require followers? How does one individual's dance movement act on others in a group? What does 'social engagement' mean for artists? Is the pursuit of art and culture a human right?

This Companion documents and celebrates artistic journeys within the framework of rich and complex cultural heritages and traditional dance practices of the Asia-Pacific region. It presents various dance forms from Australia, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and the South Pacific. Drawing on extensive research and decades of performative experience as artists, choreographers, producers, teachers, and critics, the authors approach issues of dance and cultural diversity from a theoretical perspective while at the same time exploring change, process, and transformation through dance. The book discusses themes such as tradition, contemporization, interdisciplinarity, dance education, youth dance, dance networks, curatorial practices, and evolving performative practices of dance companies and independents. It also looks at regional networking, curating dance festivals and spaces that foster collaboration, regional cooperation, and cultural exchange, which are essential features of dance in Asia and the Pacific. This collection will be of interest to students and researchers of pedagogy, choreography, community dance practice, theatre and performance studies, social and cultural studies, aesthetics, interdisciplinary arts, and more. It will be an invaluable resource for artists and practitioners working in dance schools and communities.

Examining corporeal expressions of indigenousness from an historical perspective, this book highlights the development of cultural hybridity in New Zealand via the popular performing arts, contributing new understandings of racial, ethnic, and gender identities through performance. The author offers an insightful and welcome examination of New Zealand performing arts via case studies of drama, music, and dance, performed both domestically and internationally. As these examples show, notions of modern New Zealand were shaped and understood in the creation and reception of popular culture. Highlighting embodied indigenous cultures of the past provides a new interpretation of the development of New Zealand's cultural history and adds an unexplored dimension in understanding the relationships between M?ori (indigenous New Zealander) and P?keh? (non-M?ori) throughout the late nineteenth and into the early twentieth centuries.

How is the politics of Blackness figured in the flamenco dancing body? What does flamenco dance tell us about the construction of race in the Atlantic world? Sonidos Negros traces how, in the span between 1492 and 1933, the vanquished Moor became Black, and how this figure, enacted in terms of a minstrelized Gitano, paradoxically came to represent Spain itself. The imagined Gypsy about which flamenco imagery turns dances on a knife's edge delineating Christian and non-Christian, White and Black worlds. This figure's subversive teetering undermines Spain's symbolic linkage of religion with race, a prime weapon of conquest. Flamenco's Sonidos Negros live in this precarious balance, amid the purposeful confusion and ruckus cloaking embodied resistance, the lament for what has been lost, and the values and aspirations of those rendered imperceptible by enslavement and colonization.

This volume brings a critical lens to dance and culture within North East India. Through case studies, firsthand accounts, and interviews, it explores unique folk dances of Indigenous communities of North East India that reflect diverse journeys, lifestyles, and connections within their ethnic groups, marking almost every ritual and festival.

Representing the first comprehensive analysis of Gaga and Ohad Naharin's aesthetic approach, this book follows the sensual and mental emphases of the movement research practiced by dancers of the Batsheva Dance Company. Considering the body as a means of expression, Embodied Philosophy in Dance deciphers forms of meaning in dance as a medium for perception and realization within the body. In doing so, the book addresses embodied philosophies of mind, hermeneutics, pragmatism, and social theories in order to illuminate the perceptual experience of dancing. It also reveals the interconnections between physical and mental processes of reasoning and explores the nature of physical intelligence.

The collective volume seeks to respond to these questions by exploring crip time in disability performance as both a concept and a phenomenon. Out of time has many different meanings, amongst them outmoded, out of step, under time pressure, no time left, or simply delayed. In the disability context it may also refer to resistant attitudes of living in "crip time" that contradict time as a linear process with a more or less predictable future. According to Alison Kafer, "crip time bends the clock to meet disabled bodies and minds." What does this mean in the disability arts? What new concepts of accessibility, crip futures, and crip resistance can be staged or created by disability performance? And how does the notion of "out of time" connect crip time with pandemic time in disability performance? The book tackles the topic from two angles: on the one hand from a theoretical point of view that connects performance analysis with crip and performance theory, on the other hand from a practice-based perspective of disability artists who develop new concepts and dramaturgies of crip time based on their own lived experiences and observations in the field of the performing and disability arts. The book gathers different types of text genres, forms and styles that mirror the diversity of their authors. Besides theoretical and academic chapters on disability performance the book also includes essays, poems, dramatic texts, and choreographic concepts that reflect upon the alternative knowledge in the disability arts.

Risk, Failure, Play illuminates the many ways in which competitive martial arts differentiate themselves from violence. Presented from the perspective of a dancer and writer, this book takes readers through the politics of everyday life as experienced through training in a range of martial arts practices such as jeet kune do, Brazilian jiu jitsu, kickboxing, Filipino martial arts, and empowerment self-defense. Author Janet OaShea shows how play gives us the ability to manage difficult realities with intelligence and demonstrates that physical play, with its immediacy and heightened risk, is particularly effective at accomplishing this task. Risk, Failure, Play also demonstrates the many ways in which physical recreation allows us to manage the complexities of our current social reality. Risk, Failure, Play intertwines personal experience with phenomenology, social psychology, dance studies, performance studies, as well as theories of play and competition in order to produce insights on pleasure, mastery, vulnerability, pain, agency, individual identity, and society. Ultimately, this book suggests that play allows us to rehearse other ways to live than the ones we see before us and challenges us to reimagine our social reality.

This anthology examines maternity in contemporary performance at the intersection of a wide range of topics from nationhood to mental health, queer parenting, embodied dramaturgy, cultural practice, and immigration. Across the breadth of these themes, we interrogate the cultural implications and politics of how we script, perform, receive, and define mothers, challenging many of the normalizing and patriarchal tropes associated with the mother-as-character. This book includes critical essays examining twenty-first century dramatic literature, first-hand ethnographic accounts of motherhood in practice, interviews, feminist manifestos, and artist reflections. In its deliberately curated variety, this collection seeks to resist homogeneity and offer instead a range of approaches to key questions: what versions of motherhood get staged, and why? And what do dramatic representations tell us about the role of mothers in our own fraught contemporary moment? This collection will be of great interest to those in academia who are teaching, researching, or studying in the fields of Theatre and Performance Studies, American Studies, and Feminist and Gender Studies.

This book is a collection of essays that capture the artistic voices at play during a staging process. Situating familiar practices such as reimagining, reenactment and recreation alongside the related and often intersecting processes of transmission, translation and transformation, it features deep insights into selected dances from directors, performers, and close associates of choreographers. The breadth of practice on offer illustrates the capacity of dance as a medium to adapt successfully to diverse approaches and, further, that there is a growing appetite amongst audiences for seeing dances from the near and far past. This study spans a century, from Rudolf Laban's Dancing Drumstick (1913) to Robert Cohan's Sigh (2015), and examines works by Mary Wigman, Madge Atkinson (Natural Movement), Doris Humphrey, Martha Graham, Yvonne Rainer and Rosemary Butcher, an eclectic mix that crosses time and borders.