Raqs sharqi, the Egyptian dance form also known as belly dance, has for generations captured imaginations around the globe. Yet its origins have been obscured by misinformation and conjecture, rooted in Orientalist attitudes about the Middle East-a widely accepted narrative suggests the dance was created in response to Western influences and desires. Drawing on an array of primary sources, the author traces the early development of raqs sharqi in the context of contemporary trends in Egyptian arts and entertainment. The dance is revealed to be a hybrid cultural expression, emerging with the formation of Egyptian national identity at the end of the 19th century, when Egypt was occupied by the British.

Gender and Dance in Modern Iran: Biopolitics on Stage investigates the ways dancing bodies have been providing evidence for competing representations of modernity, urbanism, and religiosity across the twentieth century. Focusing on the transformation of the staged dancing body, its space of performance, and spectatorial cultural ideology, this book traces the dancing body in multiple milieus of performance, including the Pahlavi era's national artistic scene and the popular cafe and cabaret stages, as well as the commercial cinematic screen and the post-revolutionary Islamized theatrical stage. It links the socio-political discourses on performance with the staged public dancer, in order to interrogate the formation of dominant categories of "modern," "high," and "artistic," and the subsequent "othering" of cultural realms that were discursively peripheralized from the "national" stage. Through the study of archival and ethnographic research as well as a diverse literature pertaining to music, theater, cinema, and popular culture, it combines a close reading of primary sources such as official documents, press materials, and program notes with visual analysis of filmic materials and imageries, as well as interviews with practitioners. It offers an original and informed exploration into the ways performing bodies and their public have been associated with binary notions of vice and virtue, morality and immorality, commitment and degeneration, chastity and eroticism, and veiled-ness and nakedness. Engaging with a range of methodological and historiographical methods, including postcolonial, performance, and feminist studies, this book is a valuable resource for students and scholars of Middle East history and Iranian studies, as well as gender studies and dance and performance studies.

This book, Evolving Synergies: Celebrating Dance in Singapore, is a noteworthy contribution to the discourse of the Singapore dance scene. It discusses the evolution of Singapore's dance landscape, and its place in the city-state's social, cultural and historical development.

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.

Kathak, the classical dance of North India, combines virtuosic footwork and dazzling spins with subtle pantomime and soft gestures. As a global practice and one of India's cultural markers, kathak dance is often presented as heir to an ancient Hindu devotional tradition in which men called Kathakas danced and told stories in temples. The dance's repertoire and movement vocabulary, however, tell a different story of syncretic origins and hybrid history - it is a dance that is both Muslim and Hindu, both devotional and entertaining, and both male and female. Kathak's multiple roots can be found in rural theatre, embodied rhythmic repertoire, and courtesan performance practice, and its history is inextricable from the history of empire, colonialism, and independence in India. Through an analysis both broad and deep of primary and secondary sources, ethnography, iconography and current performance practice, Margaret Walker undertakes a critical approach to the history of kathak dance and presents new data about hereditary performing artists, gendered contexts and practices, and postcolonial cultural reclamation. The account that emerges places kathak and the Kathaks firmly into the living context of North Indian performing arts.

Sexuality is a difficult topic for all educators. Dance teachers and educators are not immune to these educational challenges, especially given the large number of children, adolescents, and young adults who pursue dance study and performance. Most troubling is the lack of serious discourse in dance education and the development of educative strategies to promote healthy sexuality and empowered gender identities in proactive ways. This volume, focused on sexuality, gender, and identity in dance education, expands this developing area of study and investigates diverse perspectives from public schools, private sector dance studios and schools, as well as college and university dance programs. By openly bringing issues of sexuality and gender to the forefront of dance education and training, this book straightforwardly addresses critical challenges for engaged educators interested in age appropriate content, theme and costume; the hyper-sexualization of children and adolescents; sexual orientation and homophobia; the hidden curriculum of sexuality and gender; sexual identity; the impact of contemporary culture; and mass media, and sexual exploitation. The original research provides a frank discussion, highlighting practical applications and offering insights and recommendations for today's educational environment in dance. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Dance Education.

The author presents the method of research and creation in dance and theater in Brazil, called Bailarino-Pesquisador-Interprete (Dancer-Researcher-Performer, BPI), which was created by the author herself. Through field research of ritual and Brazilian popular manifestations the author formulates a proposal for body work. She analyzes dance as an activity in which several bodies are integrated to generate knowledge in the sensitive, the perceptible and human relationships from direct contact with the surrounding reality. BPI aims to build a flexible and individualized body, in which the subject has room to develop. It emphasizes the need for a more responsible contact with certain Brazilian cultural segments so that stereotypes of a dance based on an ethnocentric view are not reinforced.

The first English-language monograph on the French dancer and model, Cleo de Merode and the Rise of Modern Celebrity Culture explores the haunting legacy of this intriguing and glamorous figure, an international celebrity at the dawn of modern celebrity culture. Situating Merode at a pivotal moment in the history of fame and visual culture, this study analyzes how technological and societal changes led to our star-struck modernity. Merode was one of the earliest examples of fame born from mass visual culture, as newly available postcards circulated her image around the globe. Through Merode, Michael D. Garval illuminates broader trends of the Belle A0/00poque: persistent statue fetishism within a vibrant monumental culture, rampant exoticism amid unprecedented colonial expansion, the rapid growth of the illustrated press, the rise of female show business personalities, the advent of cinema and x-rays, and a burgeoning sense of new visual possibilities. The volume examines how Merode heralded modern celebrity icons; problematizes the status of women and women's bodies under intense public scrutiny; and exposes the paradoxes of a society captivated by a mass media-driven dream of intimacy from afar.Cleo de Merode and the Rise of Modern Celebrity Culture probes the neglected prehistory of a visual culture obsessed with celebrities and their images.

The guitar-based music known as bachata was born in the marginalized barrios of the Dominican Republic in the early 1960s, although it has constantly evolved to better represent the current realities of its fans and musicians. Carried to the United States with Dominican migrants, bachata became increasingly popular among the younger generations of Dominican Americans in the 1990s and 2000s. This generation of artists reshaped bachata by blending multiple genres with Spanish and English to reflect their multicultural and multilingual realities. The thirty-one artists included in this interview book share personal and collective insights into how their modern bachata provides an intimate representation of what it means to be Dominican, Latino, multicultural, and bilingual in a transnational setting.

Flamenco Music and National Identity in Spain explores the efforts of the current government in southern Spain to establish flamenco music as a significant patrimonial symbol and marker of cultural identity. Further, it aims to demonstrate that these Andalusian efforts form part of the ambitious project of rethinking the nation-state of Spain, and of reconsidering the nature of national identity. A salient theme in this book is that the development of notions of style and identity are mediated by social institutions. Specifically, the book documents the development of flamenco's musical style by tracing the genre's development, between 1880 and 1980, and demonstrating the manner in which the now conventional characterization of the flamenco style was mediated by krausist, modernist, and journalist institutions. Just as importantly, it identifies two recent institutional forces, that of audio recording and cinema, that promote a concept of musical style that sharply contrasts with the conventional notion. By emphasizing the importance of forward-looking notions of style and identity, Flamenco Music and National Identity in Spain makes a strong case for advancing the Spanish experiment in nation-building, but also for re-thinking nationalism and cultural identity on a global scale.

The author takes a new approach to teaching notation through movement exercises, thus enlarging the scope of the book to teachers of movement and choreography as well as the traditional dance notation students. Updated and enlarged to reflect the most recent scholarship and through a series of exercises, this book guides students through: movement, stillness, timing, shaping, accents travelling direction, flexion and extension rotations, revolutions and turns supporting balance relationships. All of these movements are related to notation, so the student learns how to notate and describe the movements as they are performed.

Maurice Ravel, as composer and scenario writer, collaborated with some of the greatest ballet directors, choreographers, designers and dancers of his time, including Diaghilev, Ida Rubinstein, Benois and Nijinsky. In this book, the first study dedicated to Ravel's ballets, Deborah Mawer explores these relationships and argues that ballet music should not be regarded in isolation from its associated arts. Indeed, Ravel's views on ballet and other stage works privilege a synthesized aesthetic. The first chapter establishes a historical and critical context for Ravel's scores, engaging en route with multimedia theory. Six main ballets from Daphnis et Chloe through to Bolero are considered holistically alongside themes such as childhood fantasy, waltzing and neoclassicism. Each work is examined in terms of its evolution, premiere, critical reception and reinterpretation through to the present; new findings result from primary-source research, undertaken especially in Paris. The final chapter discusses the reasons for Ravel's collaborations and the strengths and weaknesses of his interpersonal relations. Mawer emphasizes the importance of the performative dimension in realizing Ravel's achievement, and proposes that the composer's large-scale oeuvre can, in a sense, be viewed as a balletic undertaking. In so doing, this book adds significantly to current research interest in artistic production and interplay in early twentieth-century Paris.

Your Move: A New Approach to the Study of Movement and Dance establishes a fresh and original framework for looking at dance. In examining the basic elements of dance - the Alphabet of Movement - and using illustrations of movement technique and notation symbols it provides a new way to see, to teach and to choreograph dance. This book gives a list of primary actions upon which all physical activity is gased, focusing on both the functional and expressive sides of movement. It draws upon the author's broad experience in ballet, modern and ethnic dance to reinterpret movement and to shed new light on the role of movement in dance. Your Move is an important book not only for dancers but also for instructors in sport and physical therapy. Each copy of Your Move comes complete with exercise sheets, which can also be purchased separately. A teacher's guide has also been designed providing notes on each chapter, approaches to the exploration of movement, interpretation of the reading studies, additional information of motif description and answers to the exercise sheets. An optional audio cassette, with music written and recorded especially for use with the book, is also available.

Every dissertation is individual and unique - particularly for dance students, who must combine a wide range of approaches into a tailor-made research methodology. What Moves You? fosters a creative approach to dissertations and final projects. By guiding the development of a personal study program, this volume encourages dance students to take ownership of their artistic and academic work, a skill essential both to successful undergraduate study, and to making the first steps towards a career in dance. Rather than propose a prescriptive, step-by-step mantra, Charlotte Nichol and Lise Uytterhoeven draw upon contributions from students, teachers, examiners and practitioners to broaden the notion of 'research' and demystify the purpose of the dissertation.

Every dissertation is individual and unique - particularly for dance students, who must combine a wide range of approaches into a tailor-made research methodology. What Moves You? fosters a creative approach to dissertations and final projects. By guiding the development of a personal study program, this volume encourages dance students to take ownership of their artistic and academic work, a skill essential both to successful undergraduate study, and to making the first steps towards a career in dance. Rather than propose a prescriptive, step-by-step mantra, Charlotte Nichol and Lise Uytterhoeven draw upon contributions from students, teachers, examiners and practitioners to broaden the notion of 'research' and demystify the purpose of the dissertation.

Dance and Organisation is the first comprehensive work to integrate dance theory and methods into the study of management, which have developed an interest in the arts and the humanities. Dance represents dynamics and change and puts the moving body at the centre, which has been ignored and oppressed by traditional management theory. 'Being' a leader however also means to 'move' like one, and critical lessons can be learned from ballerinas and modern dancers. Leadership is a dialogue, as in the work of musicians, conductors and DJs who manage groups without words. Movement in organisational space, in a museum or a techno club can be understood as a choreography and site-specific performance. Movement also is practically used for leadership and employee development workshops and can be deployed as an organisational research method. By taking a firm interdisciplinary stance in dance studies and organisational research to explore management topics, reflecting on practitioner accounts and research projects, the book seeks to make an innovative contribution to our understanding of the moving body, generating new insights on teamwork, leadership, gender in management, organisational space, training and research methods. It comprises an important contribution to the organizational behaviour and critical management studies disciplines, and looks to push the boundaries of the academic literature.

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

First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

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.

From the vaudeville gyrations of New York Giants star pitchers Rube Marquard and Christy Mathewson, to Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra as hoofing infielders in Take Me Out to the Ball Game, to the stage and screen versions of Damn Yankees, the connection between baseball and dance is an intimate, perhaps surprising one. Covering more than a century of dancing ballplayers and baseball-inspired dance, this entertaining study examines the connection in film and television, in theatrical productions and in choreography created for some of the greatest dancers and dance companies in the world.

Social dance was ubiquitous in interwar Britain. The social mingling and expression made possible through non-theatrical participatory dancing in couples and groups inspired heated commentary, both vociferous and subtle. By drawing attention to the ways social dance accrued meaning in interwar Britain, Rishona Zimring redefines and brings needed attention to a phenomenon that has been overshadowed by other developments in the history of dance. Social dance, Zimring argues, haunted the interwar imagination, as illustrated in trends such as folk revivalism and the rise of therapeutic dance education. She brings to light the powerful figurative importance of popular music and dance both in the aftermath of war, and during Britain's entrance into cosmopolitan modernity and the modernization of gender relations. Analyzing paintings, films, memoirs, a ballet production, and archival documents, in addition to writings by Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, Vivienne Eliot, and T.S. Eliot, to name just a few, Zimring provides crucial insights into the experience, observation, and representation of social dance during a time of cultural transition and recuperation. Social dance was pivotal in the construction of modern British society as well as the aesthetics of some of the period's most prominent intellectuals.

The operatic culture of late eighteenth-century Naples represents the fullest expression of a matrix of creators, practitioners, theorists, patrons, and entrepreneurs linking aristocratic, public and religious spheres of contemporary society. The considerable resonance of 'Neapolitan' opera in Europe was verified early in the eighteenth century not only through voluminous reports offered by locals and visitors in gazettes, newspapers, correspondence or diaries, but also, and more importantly, through the rich and tangible artistic patrimony produced for local audiences and then exported to the Italian peninsula and abroad. Naples was not simply a city of entertainment, but rather a cultural epicenter and paradigm producing highly innovative and successful genres of stage drama reflecting every facet of contemporary society. Anthony R. DelDonna provides a rich study of operatic culture from 1775-1800. The book demonstrates how contemporary stage traditions, stimulated by the Enlightenment, engaged with and responded to the changing social, political, and artistic contexts of the late eighteenth century in Naples. It focuses on select yet representative compositions from different genres of opera that illuminate the diverse contemporary cultural forces shaping these works and underlining the continued innovation and European recognition of operatic culture in Naples. It also defines how the cultural milieu of Naples - aristocratic and sacred, private and public - exercises a profound yet idiosyncratic influence on the repertory studied, the creation of which could not have occurred elsewhere on the Continent.

Dance has been connected to the practices and ideologies that have shaped notions of a Nordic region for more than a century and it is ingrained into the culture and society of the region. This book investigates different dance phenomena that have either engaged with or dismantled notions of Nordicness. Looking to the motion of dancers and dance forms between different locations, organizations and networks of individuals, its authors discuss social dancing, as well as historical processes associated with collaborations in folk dance and theatre dance. They consider how similarities and differences between the Nordic countries may be discerned, for instance in patterns of reception at the arrival of dance forms from outside the Nordic countries - and vice versa, how dance from the Nordic countries is received in other parts of the world, as seen for example in the Nordic Cool Festival at the Kennedy Centre in 2013. The book opens a rare window into Nordic culture seen through the prism of dance. While it grants the reader new insights into the critical role of dance in the formation and imagining of a region, it also raises questions about the interplay between dance practices and politics.

What is it about musical theatre that audiences find entertaining? What are the features that lead to its ability to stimulate emotional attachment, to move and to give pleasure? Beginning from the passion musical theatre performances arouse and their ubiquity in London's West End and on Broadway this book explores the ways in which musical theatre reaches out to and involves its audiences. It investigates how pleasure is stimulated by vocal, musical and spectacular performances. Early discussions centre on the construction of the composed text, but then attention is given to performance and audience response. Musical theatre contains disruptions and dissonances in its multiple texts, it allows gaps for audiences to read playfully. This combines with the voluptuous sensations of embodied emotion, contagiously and viscerally shared between audience and stage, and augmented through the presence of voice and music. A number of features are discovered in the construction of musical theatre performance texts that allow them to engage the intense emotional attachment of their audiences and so achieve enormous popularity. In doing this, the book challenges the conception of musical theatre as 'only entertainment'. Entertainment instead becomes a desirable, ephemeral and playful concept.

Unbecoming Rhythms develops a new framework to understand how temporality is performed in contemporary dance. It combines an in-depth analysis of the choreographic practices of Jonathan Burrows & Matteo Fargion, Ivana Muller, Mette Edvardsen and Marten Spangberg with a close study of the philosophical work of Bergson, Deleuze and Bachelard.