Moving History/Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader / Edition 1

by Ann Dils, Ann Cooper Albright

Overview

A comprehensive and multifaceted anthology of dance history — ideal for the classroom.

This new collection of essays surveys the history of dance in an innovative and wide-ranging fashion. Editors Dils and Albright address the current dearth of comprehensive teaching material in the dance history field through the creation of a multifaceted, non-linear, yet well-structured and comprehensive survey of select moments in the development of both American and World dance. This book is illustrated with over 50 photographs, and would make an ideal text for undergraduate classes in dance ethnography, criticism or appreciation, as well as dance history—particularly those with a cross-cultural, contemporary, or an American focus.

The reader is organized into four thematic sections which allow for varied and individualized course use: Thinking about Dance History: Theories and Practices, World Dance Traditions, America Dancing, and Contemporary Dance: Global Contexts. The editors have structured the readings with the understanding that contemporary theory has thoroughly questioned the discursive construction of history and the resultant canonization of certain dances, texts and points of view. The historical readings are presented in a way that encourages thoughtful analysis and allows the opportunity for critical engagement with the text.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780819564139
Publisher:	Wesleyan University Press
Publication date:	10/19/2001
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	544
Product dimensions:	8.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 1.30(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

ANN DILS is a professor of dance at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and coeditor of Dance, Place, and Identity. ANN COOPER ALBRIGHT is chair of the Dance Department at Oberlin College, coeditor of Taken by Surprise, and author of Choreographing Difference, Traces of Light, and Modern Gestures.

Table of Contents

Ann Dils and Ann Cooper Albright: First Steps: Moving into the Study of Dance History
Section 1 — Thinking About Dance History: Theory and Practices
Kent C. Bloomer & Charles W. Moore: Some Twentieth-Century Models of Sense Perception
Deborah Jowitt: Writing Beneath the Surface
Joan Acocella: Imagining Dance
Millicent Hodson: Searching for Nijinsky's Sacre
Deidre Sklar: Five Premises for a Culturally Sensitive Approach to Dance
Joann Kealiinohomoku: An Anthropologist Looks at Ballet as a Form of Ethnic Dance
Ramsay Burt: The Trouble with the Male Dancer
Ann Cooper Albright: Strategic Abilities: Negotiating the Disabled Body in Dance
Sally Ann Ness: Dancing in the Field: Notes from Memory
Section 2 — World Dance Traditions
Erika Bourgignon: Trance and Ecstatic Dance
Avanthi Meduri: Bharatha Natyam — What Are You?
Lisa Doolittle and Heather Elton: Medicine of the Brave
Shawna Helland: The Belly Dance: Ancient Ritual to Cabaret Performance
Karin van Nieuwkerk: Changing Images and Shifting Identities: Female Performers in Egypt
Kariamu Welsh Asante: Commonalities in African Dance: An Aesthetic Foundation
Z. S. Strother: Invention and Re-invention in the Traditional Arts
Barbara Browning: Headspin: Capoeira's Ironic Inversions
Lee Kyong-hee: Epitome of Korean Folk Dance
Judy Van Zile: The Many Faces of Korean Dance
Mark Franko: Writing Dancing
Catherine Turocy: Beyond La Danse Noble: Conventions in Choreography and Dance Performance at the Time of Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie
Lynn Garafola: The Travesty Dancer in Nineteenth-Century Ballet
Susan Allene Manning and Melissa Benson: Interrupted Continuities: Modern Dance in Germany
Section 3 — America Dancing
Sharyn R. Udall: The Irresistible Other: Hopi Ritual Drama and Euro-American Audiences
Marian Hannah Winter: Juba and American Minstrelsy
Jane Desmond: Dancing Out the Difference: Cultural Imperialism and Ruth St. Denis's "Radha" of 1906
Julie Malnig: Two-Stepping to Glory
Ann Daly: The Natural Body
Deborah Jowitt: Form as the Image of Human Perfectibility and Natural Order
Marcia B. Siegel: The Harsh and Splendid Heroines of Martha Graham
Ellen Graff: The Dance is a Weapon
Nancy Reynolds: In His Image: Diaghilev and Lincoln Kirstein
Brenda Dixon Gottschild: Stripping the Emperor: The Africanist Presence in American Concert Dance
Thomas DeFrantz: Simmering Passivity: The Black Male Body in Concert Dance
Sally Banes: Choreographic Methods of the Judson Dance Theater
Deborah Jowitt: Chance Heroes. Merce Cunningham
Section 4 — Contemporary Dance: Global Contexts
Cynthia Jean Cohen Bull (aka Novak): Looking at Movement as Culture: Contact Improvisation to Disco
Peter Ryan: 10,000 Jams Later: Contact Improvisation in Canada 1974–95
Bonnie Sue Stein: Butoh: "Twenty Years Ago We Were Crazy, Dirty and Mad"
Steve Paxton: Improvisation Is a Word for Something That Can't Keep a Name •Kathleen Foreman: Dancing on the Endangered List: Aesthetics and Politics of Indigenous Dance in the Philippines
Ananya Chatterjea: Chandralekha: Negotiating the Female Body and Movement in Cultural/Political Signification
Uttara Coorlawala: Ananya and Chandralekha — A Response to "Chandralekha: Negotiating the Female Body and Movement in Cultural/Political Signification"
Ann Cooper Albright: Embodying History: Epic Narrative and Cultural Identity in African-American Dance
Susan Foster: Simply (?) the Doing of it, Like Two Arms Going Round and Round
Richard Povall: A Little Technology Is a Dangerous Thing
Lisa Marie Naugle: Technique/Technology/Technique
Ann Dils: Absent/Presence

What People are Saying About This

Candace Feck

"Unparalleled in its diversity of material, approaches and ideas. Nowhere else can a dance educator find a selection of readings of this magnitude in any single format. An extremely important, urgently needed shift in the current accessibility of dance history scholarship."
— Candace Feck, Department of Dance, Ohio State University

From the Publisher

"Unparalleled in its diversity of material, approaches and ideas. Nowhere else can a dance educator find a selection of readings of this magnitude in any single format. An extremely important, urgently needed shift in the current accessibility of dance history scholarship."—Candace Feck, Department of Dance, Ohio State University

""Unparalleled in its diversity of material, approaches and ideas. Nowhere else can a dance educator find a selection of readings of this magnitude in any single format. An extremely important, urgently needed shift in the current accessibility of dance history scholarship.""—Candace Feck, Department of Dance, Ohio State University

""A very significant contribution to the field of dance history. This reader will fill a widely recognized gap in the teaching material available to dance history instructors.""—Tricia Henry Young, Department of Dance, Florida State University

Editorial Reviews

"A useful source for academic dance programs . . . Conceived as an alternative to the usual photocopied packet handed out in many university dance classes, this book presents a wide assortment of material in one volume. It also makes a much-needed contribution to dance scholarship."—Library Journal

"Unparalleled in its diversity of material, approaches and ideas. Nowhere else can a dance educator find a selection of readings of this magnitude in any single format. An extremely important, urgently needed shift in the current accessibility of dance history scholarship."—Candace Feck, Department of Dance, Ohio State University

""Unparalleled in its diversity of material, approaches and ideas. Nowhere else can a dance educator find a selection of readings of this magnitude in any single format. An extremely important, urgently needed shift in the current accessibility of dance history scholarship.""—Candace Feck, Department of Dance, Ohio State University

""A very significant contribution to the field of dance history. This reader will fill a widely recognized gap in the teaching material available to dance history instructors.""—Tricia Henry Young, Department of Dance, Florida State University

From the Publisher

Albright (dance, Oberlin Coll.; Choreographing Difference: The Body and Identity in Contemporary Dance) and Dils (dance, Univ. of North Carolina) have compiled an eclectic selection of articles on the world of dance, covering historical, theoretical, and international perspectives. A useful source for academic dance programs, the book includes professors, choreographers, anthropologists, and others among its contributors. "The Belly Dance: Ancient Ritual to Cabaret Performance" and "The Harsh and Splendid Heroines of Martha Graham" are a few representative essays in a book that places a strong emphasis on dance traditions from around the world. Conceived as an alternative to the usual photocopied packet handed out in many university dance classes, this book presents a wide assortment of material in one volume. It also makes a much-needed contribution to dance scholarship. Recommended for academic libraries and specialized collections. Barbara Kundanis, Batavia P.L., IL Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal