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In Sharing the Dance, Cynthia Novack considers the development of contact improvisation within its web of historical, social, and cultural contexts. This book examines the ways contact improvisers (and their surrounding communities) encode sexuality, spontaneity, and gender roles, as well as concepts of the self and society in their dancing. While focusing on the changing practice of contact improvisation through two decades of social transformation, Novack’s work incorporates the history of rock dancing and disco, the modern and experimental dance movements of Merce Cunningham, Anna Halprin, and Judson Church, among others, and a variety of other physical activities, such as martial arts, aerobics, and wrestling.
'...full credit to Thomas and Macmillan for embarking on such a worthwhile venture - Dance Research I have already found the Thomas edition of enormous value in teaching both undergraduates and postgraduates, from the perspectives of dance anthropology, ethnography and theatre dance analysis - Theresa Buckland, Department of Dance Studies, University of Surrey This unique collection of papers, written specially for this volume, explores the aspects of the ways in which dance and gender intersect in a variety of cultural contexts, from social and disco dance to performance dance, to the Hollywood musical and dances from different cultures. The contributors come from a broad range of disciplin...
"... I have used essays from the book to help dance graduate students push their thinking beyond the studio and their own physical experience and to realize the varied resources, approaches, and theoretical positions possible in writing about the body." -- Dance Research Journal "Choreographing History... assembles an impressive diversity of sites, disciplines and critical approaches... [and] includes not only historical bodies and discourses, but also the very bodies of the historians themselves." -- Parachute "This volume is not only full of gems (the very lineup of preeminent scholars is impressive), but is also a neat cross-section of the academic conventions and mannerisms of our time." -- Dance Chronicle "... [an] important step... in the ineluctable dance by postmodern historians across a bridge that spans the gaps among disciplines, between theory and practice, and betweeen present and past." -- Theatre Journal Historians of science, sexuality, the arts, and history itself focus on the body, merging the project of writing about the body with theoretical concerns in the writing of history.
A conceptual framework for understanding the development of improvised dance in late 20th-century America
Memoir & teaching handbook of dance movement practices
"Caught falling is the inside-out of Nancy Stark Smith's life through the kaleidoscope of the dance form contact improvisation. The books itself is a multifaceted crystal-fourteen years in the making." -- blurb.
Bring the Life of the Dance into the Dance of Your Life Movement Medicine is a grounding and uplifting modern meditation practice rooted in the traditions of ecstatic dance. It's suitable for anybody in a body. Everyone, no matter their age, shape or background, has a dancer inside them. This dancer has the capacity to access wisdom, vitality and creativity that we cannot access with intellect alone. The exercises in this book combine movement and meditation to guide you on a profound and transformational journey. Movement Medicine invites you to take a journey to the soul through 9 Gateways. It is informed by a wealth of healing and transformational modalities, and is designed to support yo...
In most forms of dancing, performers carry out their steps with a distance that keeps them from colliding with each other. Dancer Steve Paxton in the 1970s considered this distance a territory for investigation. His study of intentional contact resulted in a public performance in 1972 in a Soho gallery, and the name "contact improvisation" was coined for the form of unrehearsed dance he introduced. Rather than copyrighting it, Paxton allowed it to evolve and spread. In this book the author draws upon her own experience and research to explain the art of contact improvisation, in which dance partners propel movement by physical contact. They roll, fall, spiral, leap, and slip along the contou...
The popularity and profile of African dance have exploded across the African diaspora in the last fifty years. Hot Feet and Social Change presents traditionalists, neo-traditionalists, and contemporary artists, teachers, and scholars telling some of the thousands of stories lived and learned by people in the field. Concentrating on eight major cities in the United States, the essays challenges myths about African dance while demonstrating its power to awaken identity, self-worth, and community respect. These voices of experience share personal accounts of living African traditions, their first encounters with and ultimate embrace of dance, and what teaching African-based dance has meant to them and their communities. Throughout, the editors alert readers to established and ongoing research, and provide links to critical contributions by African and Caribbean dance experts. Contributors: Ausettua Amor Amenkum, Abby Carlozzo, Steven Cornelius, Yvonne Daniel, Charles “Chuck” Davis, Esailama G. A. Diouf, Indira Etwaroo, Habib Iddrisu, Julie B. Johnson, C. Kemal Nance, Halifu Osumare, Amaniyea Payne, William Serrano-Franklin, and Kariamu Welsh
In Researching Dance, an introduction to research methods in dance addressed primarily to graduate students, the editors explore dance as evolutional, defining it in view of its intrinsic participatory values, its developmental aspects, and its purposes from art to ritual, and they examine the role of theory in research. The editors have also included essays by nine dancer-scholars who examine qualitative and quantitative inquiry and delineate the most common approaches for investigating dance, raising concerns about philosophy and aesthetics, historical scholarship, movement analysis, sexual and gender identification, cultural diversity, and the resources available to students. The writers have included study questions, research exercises, and suggested readings to facilitate the book's use as a classroom text.