Using the literary work of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the founder of the Italian Futurist movement and an early associate of Mussolini, the author explores the point of contact between a ”p rogressive” aesthetic practice and a “reactionary” political ideology.

Using the literary work of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the founder of the Italian Futurist movement and an early associate of Mussolini, the author explores the point of contact between a ”p rogressive” aesthetic practice and a “reactionary” political ideology.

Social Choreography links dance and the aesthetics of everyday movement to ideas about social order. By examining a continuum of bodily motions--from walking, stumbling, and laughter to more formal dance movements--Andrew Hewitt demonstrates how choreography has served not only as metaphor for modernity but also as a structuring blueprint for thinking about and shaping modern social organization. Bringing dance history and critical theory together, he argues that ideology needs to be understood as something embodied and practiced, not just as an abstract from of consciousness. In the process, he provides a powerful exposition of Marxist debates about the relation of ideology and aesthetics and a demonstration of how theoretically engaging with bodies in motion can reorient those debates. twentieth and considers dance performers and social theorists in Germany, Britain, France, and the United States. Analyzing the arguments of writers including Friedrich Schiller, Theodor Adorno, Hans Brandenburg, Ernst Bloch, and Siegfried Kracauer, he reveals in their thinking about the movement of bodies a shift from an understanding of play as the condition of human freedom to one prioritizing labor as either the realization or alienation of embodied human potential. Whether considering understandings of the Charleston, Isadora Duncan, Nijinsky, or the famous British chorus line, the Tiller Girls, Hewitt foregrounds gender as he uses dance and everyday movement to rethink the relationship of aesthetics and social order.

The debut feature of British actor Richard Ayoade, this coming-of-age comedy follows 15-year-old Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts) in his dual quest to keep his family together and to lose his virginity before his 16th birthday. Set in Swansea, the film charts Oliver's growing concerns about the relationship between his father, Lloyd (Noah Taylor), a depressive and recently-unemployed marine biologist, and his mother (Sally Hawkins), who appears to be harbouring a crush on fawning new age guru Graham (Paddy Considine). Meanwhile, Oliver ponders how to broach the sticky subject of sex with his eczema-prone, pyromaniac girlfriend Jordana (Yasmin Paige).