In Landscape of the Now, author Kent De Spain takes readers on a deep journey into the underlying processes and structures of postmodern movement improvisation. Based on a series of interviews with master teachers who have developed unique approaches that are taught around the world - Steve Paxton, Simone Forti, Lisa Nelson, Deborah Hay, Nancy Stark Smith, Barbara Dilley, Anna Halprin, and Ruth Zaporah - this book offers the rare opportunity to find some clarity in what is often a complex and confusing experience. After more than 20 years of research, De Spain has created an extensive list of questions that explore issues that arise for the improviser in practice and performance as well as resources that influence movements and choices. Answers to these questions are placed side by side to create dialog and depth of understanding, and to see the range of possible approaches experienced improvisers might explore. In its nineteen chapters, Landscape of the Now delves into issues like the influence of an audience on an improviser's choices or how performers "track" and use their experience of the moment. The book also looks at the role of cognitive skills, memory, space, emotion, and the senses. One chapter offers a rare opportunity for an honest discussion of the role of various forms of spirituality in what is seen as a secular dance form. Whether read from cover to cover or pulled apart and explored a subject at a time, Landscape of the Now offers the reader a kind of map into the mysterious realm of human creativity, and the wisdom and experience of artists who have spent a lifetime exploring it.

Amidst the growing forums of kinky Jews, orthodox drag queens, and Jewish geisha girls, we find today's sexy Jewess in a host of reflexive plays with sexed-up self-display. A social phantasm with real legs, she moves boldly between neo-burlesque striptease, comedy television, ballet movies, and progressive porn to construct the 21st Century Jewish American woman through charisma and comic craft, in-your-face antics, and offensive charm. Her image redresses longstanding stereotypes of the hag, the Jewish mother, and Jewish American princess that have demeaned the Jewish woman as overly demanding, inappropriate, and unattractive across the 20th century, even as Jews assimilated into the American mainstream. But why does "sexy" work to update tropes of the Jewish woman? And how does sex link to humor in order for this update to work? Entangling questions of sexiness to race, gender, and class, The Case of the Sexy Jewess frames an embodied joke-work genre that is most often, but not always meant to be funny. In a contemporary period after the thrusts of assimilation and women's liberation movements, performances usher in new versions of old scripts with ranging consequences. At the core is the recuperative performance of identity through impersonation, and the question of its radical or conservative potential. Appropriating, re-appropriating, and mis-appropriating identity material within and beyond their midst, Sexy Jewess artists play up the failed logic of representation by mocking identity categories altogether. They act as comic chameleons, morphing between margin and center in countless number of charged caricatures. Embodying ethnic and gender positions as always already on the edge while ever more in the middle, contemporary Jewish female performers extend a comic tradition in new contexts, mobilizing progressive discourses from positions of newfound race and gender privilege.

Testing Hearing: The Making of Modern Aurality argues that the modern cultural practices of hearing and testing have emerged from a long interrelationship. Since the early nineteenth century, auditory test tools (whether organ pipes or electronic tone generators) and the results of hearing tests have fed back into instrument calibration, human training, architecture, and the creation of new musical sounds. Hearing tests received a further boost around 1900 as a result of injury compensation laws and state and professional demands for aptitude testing in schools, conservatories, the military, and other fields. Applied at large scale, tests of seemingly small measure-of auditory acuity, of hearing range-helped redefine the modern concept of hearing as such. During the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the epistemic function of hearing expanded. Hearing took on the dual role of test object and test instrument; in the latter case, human hearing became a gauge by which to evaluate or regulate materials, nonhuman organisms, equipment, and technological systems. This book considers both the testing of hearing and testing with hearing to explore the co-creation of modern epistemic and auditory cultures. The book's twelve contributors trace the design of ever more specific tests for the arts, education and communication, colonial and military applications, sociopolitical and industrial endeavors. Together, they demonstrate that testing as such became an enduring and wide-ranging cultural technique in the modern period, one that is situated between histories of scientific experimentation and many fields of application.

Seven men. Ten years. 48 million Twitter followers. 27 billion YouTube views. 30 billion Spotify streams. Sold out world tours. BTS are a global phenomenon – this is their story. Fully revised and updated for a second time, this edition of the bestselling biography is the definitive account of BTS’s journey from their trainee days to the explosive global breakthroughs of ‘Dynamite’ and ‘Butter’, their retrospective compilation album Proof and their blossoming solo endeavours, exploring how this group of guys from South Korea have taken over the world. RM, Jin, SUGA, j-hope, Jimin, V and Jungkook can sing, dance and rap, and write and produce their own music too. From humble beginnings at a small agency to topping charts all over the world, their story is truly incredible, and testament to the amazing talent and hard work of each of the members. Their dedicated fanbase, ARMY, have supported them through thick and thin, celebrating triumphs alongside their idols and pushing them to ever-greater heights. Extensively researched, and written in an upbeat and accessible style, this unofficial biography interweaves the backstories of each of the members with the narrative of the band as a whole, their modest debut and their astonishing rise to fame in their home country and beyond. It also includes 8 pages of full colour photographs of the band performing, posing and having fun.

Drawing on interviews and behind-the-scenes anecdotes alongside stunning photography, celebrate 50 years of U2 with this definitive retrospective.

From the bustling streets of Dublin in 1976 to the grandest arenas on the planet, follow U2's extraordinary ascent as they transform from a group of ambitious young musicians into global music icons.

Music journalist Bradley Morgan delves deep into the band's early days, offering an intimate look at their formation and the roots of their distinctive sound. From Boy to The Joshua Tree to Achtung Baby and beyond, witness how each album marked a creative evolution and cemented their status as musical pioneers.

But this beautifully illustrated book goes beyond the music. It explores U2's profound commitment to social activism and their tireless efforts to make the world a better place. From Live Aid to Amnesty International, U2's impact on global issues is as significant as their musical legacy.

This retrospective also offers readers a rare glimpse into the personal lives and relationships of the band members. Get to know Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. as individuals, as friends, and as the driving forces behind U2's enduring success.

It's a book that will captivate die-hard fans and newcomers alike, providing fresh insights into the band's artistry, vision and resilience.