While dance has always been as demanding as contact sports, intuitive boundaries distinguish the two forms of performance for men. Dance is often regarded as a feminine activity, and men who dance are frequently stereotyped as suspect, gay, or somehow unnatural. But what really happens when men dance?
When Men Dance offers a progressive vision that boldly articulates double-standards in gender construction within dance and brings hidden histories to light in a globalized debate. A first of its kind, this trenchant look at the stereotypes and realities of male dancing brings together contributions from leading and rising scholars of dance from around the world to explore what happens when men dance. The dancing male body emerges in its many contexts, from the ballet, modern, and popular dance worlds to stages in Georgian and Victorian England, Weimar Germany, India and the Middle East. The men who dance and those who analyze them tell stories that will be both familiar and surprising for insiders and outsiders alike.

In this unprecedented volume, Professor Thomas Hagood brings together the voices of key dance educators to express their views on the legacy of dance education. The book examines the values and practices dance educators live with, and what values and practices they take forward to promote or even retool and reinvent in their professional work. The book also engages in discussions of the people who embody (or have embodied) the values and practices the dance education field takes ownership of. Through working with and being exposed to teachers in the dance field, the editor and his contributors express how their learning and professional development has been inspired and shaped by their interactions with their mentors. It follows that legacy is important territory for dancers to consider as educators and as people. Such deep discussion of legacy in educational dance is not widely evidenced in existing literature. Since it is not an easy nor simple task to inventory what dance educators have absorbed from mentors with an objective or analytically aware eye, this book will serve well to expand this discussion. Critical assessment in dance education is also challenged by the fact that the field itself is very young. In analyzing legacy, the book interestingly shows that the mentors discussed may well be about people who are still very much alive. The book also addresses how dance is so culturally challenged by archetypal notions of who practices it, as well as its educational value and worth. The book presents dance scholars with many opportunities to learn new dimensions of dance history, to reflect on practices both old and new, to appreciate the values that shape their work in danceeducation, to get to know people who may not appear in the historic record, to revisit the gifts of those whom they may consider giants in the field have left, to consider the landscape of dance education as it has been shaped over time. The inclusion of the voices and contributions of some of the fields most prominent dance educators in this book and the critical issues they discuss make this book a must for every dance collection.

Originally published in 1921. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Obscure Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Every year, countless young adults from affluent, Western nations travel to Brazil to train in capoeira, the dance/martial art form that is one of the most visible strands of the Afro-Brazilian cultural tradition. In Search of Legitimacy explores why "first world" men and women leave behind their jobs, families, and friends to pursue a strenuous training regimen in a historically disparaged and marginalized practice. Using the concept of apprenticeship pilgrimage-studying with a local master at a historical point of origin-the author examines how non-Brazilian capoeiristas learn their art and claim legitimacy while navigating the complexities of wealth disparity, racial discrimination, and cultural appropriation.

This volume looks forward and re-examines present day education and pedagogical practices in music and dance in the diverse cultural environments found in Oceania. The book also identifies a key issue of how teachers face the prospect of taking a reflexive view of their own cultural legacy in music and dance education as they work from and alongside different cultural worldviews. This key issue, amongst other debates that arise, positions Intersecting Cultures as an innovative text that fills a gap in the current market with highly appropriate and fresh ideas from primary sources. The book offers commentaries that underpin and inform current pedagogy and bigger picture policy for the performing arts in education in Oceania, and in parallel ways in other countries.

This descriptive and analytic study examines how 1950s rock 'n' roll dancing illuminates the larger cultural context out of which the dancing arose. Rock 'n' Roll Dances of the 1950s provides a fresh, highly animated lens through which to observe and understand the cultural climate of 1950s America, examining, not only the steps and aesthetic qualities of rock 'n' roll dances, but also their emblematic meanings. Exploring dance as a reflection and expression of cultural trends, the book takes a sharply analytical look at rock 'n' roll dances from the birth of the genre in the mid-1950s to the decade's end. Readers will explore the emergence of teen culture in the '50s, rock 'n' roll's association with delinquency, and the controversy ignited by the physical movements of early rock 'n' roll artists. They will learn about the influence of black culture on 1950s dances and about the trendsetting TV show American Bandstand. Particularly telling for those wishing to grasp the underlying tensions of the decade is a discussion of the dance floor as a platform for racial integration. Period, archival photos A bibliography of books, articles, videos, films, and recordings documenting the history of 1950s rock 'n' roll music and dancing A detailed index allowing the book to be easily used as a reference source for research on social dance, rock 'n' roll, and American popular culture

An often overlooked segment of Maine (and American) history is the story of women in the working class dance industries. Generally looked upon with a gasp of shock, burlesque and vaudeville dancing, and later taxi dancing and marathon dancing, were often the only way for women to survive (In taxi dancing, men paid women by the dance; while marathon dancing was a contest and women tried to outlast each other on the dance floor.) In turn-of-the-20th-century Maine, this new form of dancing was taking off, as it was elsewhere in the country. Historian Trudy Irene Scee explores the dance industries of Maine, how they were effected by national events, and how events in Maine effected national trends. She explores the difficulties women faced at that time and how they turned to new forms of entertainment to make money and pay for food and shelter. The focus of the book centers on the 1910s through the 1970s, but extends back into the 1800s, largely exploring the dance halls of the nineteenth century (be they saloons with hurdy-gurdy girls and the like, or dance halls with women performing the early forms of taxi- and belly dancing), and includes a chapter on belly dancing and other forms of dance entertainment in Maine in the 1980s to early 2000s. The newest form of dance-striptease dancing-is not be examined specifically, but is discussed as it pertains to the other dance forms. The book forms a unique look at one segment of Maine history and is a terrific addition to the literature on women's issues.

This book is a fictional tale about the actions of a group of boys who attended three years at Leeman Elementary School.

Every entertainer can be creative, and any entertainer can learn to be more creative. Using examples and thought provokers this book guides you through an exploration of the creative process so you can consciously use it more effectively. Writing your own material allows you to express your unique personality, take full advantage of your abilities, and connect more fully with your audience. This process will help you generate more ideas, and then turn them into reality. This book, the first of a trilogy, will help you come closer to achieving your potential as a variety artist.

In 1860, the great Danish choreographer and ballert-master August Bournonville wrote a series of eight public letters expressing his views on many aspects of ballet in his time, ranging from artistic and moral considerations to cultural comment and practical advice. Brimming with vision, opinion and wit, these provocative writings provide an important and fascinating insight into the world of nineteenth-century Romantic ballet, as viewed by one of its foremost exponents.

Creating a sensation with her risque nightclub act and strolls down the Champs Elysees, pet cheetah in tow, Josephine Baker lives on in popular memory as the banana-skirted siren of Jazz Age Paris. In Josephine Baker and the Rainbow Tribe, Matthew Pratt Guterl brings out a little known side of the celebrated personality, showing how her ambitions of later years were even more daring and subversive than the youthful exploits that made her the first African American superstar. Her performing days numbered, Baker settled down in a sixteenth-century chateau she named Les Milandes, in the south of France. Then, in 1953, she did something completely unexpected and, in the context of racially sensitive times, outrageous. Adopting twelve children from around the globe, she transformed her estate into a theme park, complete with rides, hotels, a collective farm, and singing and dancing. The main attraction was her Rainbow Tribe, the family of the future, which showcased children of all skin colors, nations, and religions living together in harmony. Les Milandes attracted an adoring public eager to spend money on a utopian vision, and to worship at the feet of Josephine, mother of the world. Alerting readers to some of the contradictions at the heart of the Rainbow Tribe project--its undertow of child exploitation and megalomania in particular--Guterl concludes that Baker was a serious and determined activist who believed she could make a positive difference by creating a family out of the troublesome material of race.

Salsa is both an American and transnational phenomenon, however women in salsa have been neglected. To explore how female singers negotiate issues of gender, race, and nation through their performances, Poey engages with the ways they problematize the idea of the nation and facilitate their musical performances' movement across multiple borders.

Gregorio Lambranzi was an Italian dancing master, working in Venice in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. His New and Curious School of Theatrical Dancing, originally published in two parts in Nuremberg in 1716, gives details of more than one hundred theatrical dances of the time, with the emphasis on the comic and grotesque, many drawn from Commedia dell'arte characters. Also included are dances suggested by various professions and trades, and dances representing sports and pastimes. Each dance is illustrated by a full page engraving by Johann Georg Puschner and accompanied by a melody line of the music used and suggestions for steps. Lambranzi's work thus provides a unique record of theatrical dancing of his period. Unlike the Dover paperback edition this is a laminated hardback edition, reproducing the original cover design and with the plates printed one to a page.

A reprint of a notation score. It provides a facsimile of Louis Pecour's 17th-century dance manual in Feuillet notation.