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There has long been a need to introduce performing-arts enthusiasts and students to the fascinating field of iconography, both as manifested in art history and in its more pragmatic or applied forms. Yet relatively little systematic effort has been made to collect and interpret centuries of such visual evidence in the light of the best available art-historical information, combined with corroborating textual documentation and insights from the histories of performance disciplines. Aspiring iconographers of the performing arts need to be aware that there are often several levels of interpretation which great works of visual art will sustain. This book explores these levels of interpretation: ...
When the eighteenth-century choreographer Jean-Georges Noverre sought to develop what is now known as modern ballet, he turned to ancient pantomime as his source of inspiration; and when Isadora Duncan and her contemporaries looked for alternatives to the strictures of classical ballet, they looked to ancient Greek vases for models for what they termed 'natural' movement. This is the first book to examine systematically the long history of the impact of ideas about ancient Greek and Roman dance on modern theatrical and choreographic practices. With contributions from eminent classical scholars, dance historians, theatre specialists, modern literary critics, and art historians, as well as from contemporary practitioners, it offers a very wide conspectus on an under-explored but central aspect of classical reception, dance and theatre history, and the history of ideas.
This book is not another history of the dance in ancient Greece, but wants to lay the groundwork on which such a history should properly be build. The three preliminary studies offered here are, first, an extensive historiography of the subject which seeks to illuminate where we stand at present in reference to the large amount of work done on ancient Greek dance for the past 500 years. Secondly, an exercise in source criticism, embracing both texts and imagery, in order to establish the limits to which we can push any investigation, and thirdly, an attempt at model building to provide an explicit theoretical framework for future research. This is the first time that some of the approaches of the new dance scholarship which has arisen during the past few decades have been systematically applied to the dancing of the ancient world.
The history of dance theory has never been told. Writers in every age have theorized prescriptively, according to their own needs and ideals, and theorists themselves having continually asserted the lack of any pre-existing dance theory. Dance Theory: Source Readings from Two Millenia of Western Dance revives and reintegrates dance theory as a field of historical dance studies, presenting a coherent reading of the interaction of theory and practice during two millennia of dance history. In fifty-five selected readings with explanatory text, this book follows the various constructions of dance theories as they have morphed and evolved in time, from ancient Greece to the twenty-first century. ...
Part artistic study, part intimate memoir, this book illuminates the technique and repertory of American dancer Isadora Duncan (1877-1927) and her enduring legacy from the perspective of an artist and scholar who has reconstructed and performed her work for 35 years. Providing an overview of modern activities and trends in the teaching and performance of Duncan's dance, the author describes her own work directing The Isadora Duncan Dance Ensemble, the company that sought to implement Duncan's mission to create not a school of dance but "a school of life."
In this updated and extended edition of The Greek Sense of Theatre, scholar and practitioner J.Michael Walton revises and expands his visual approach to the theatre of classical Athens. From the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides to the old and new comedies of Aristophanes and Menander, he argues that while Greek drama is seen now as a performance-based rather than a strictly literary medium, more attention should still be paid to the nature of stage image and masked acting as part of this conception.
This Oxford Companion to the ancient classical world is aimed at the general reader interested in learning more about the very bedrock of Western culture, covering such topics as history, morals, mythology, medicine and social life.
This handbook brings together genres, aesthetics, cultural practices and historical movements that provide insight into humanist concerns at the crossroads of dance and theatre, broadening the horizons of scholarship in the performing arts and moving the fields closer together.
First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Sir Thomas Fairfax, not Oliver Cromwell, was creator and commander of Parliament's New Model Army from 1645 to1650. Although Fairfax emerged as England's most successful commander of the 1640s, this book challenges the orthodoxy that he was purely a military figure, showing how he was not apolitical or disinterested in politics. The book combines narrative and thematic approaches to explore the wider issues of popular allegiance, puritan religion, concepts of honour, image, reputation, memory, gender, literature, and Fairfax's relationship with Cromwell. 'Black Tom' delivers a groundbreaking examination of the transformative experience of the English revolution from the viewpoint of one of its leading, yet most neglected, participants. It is the first modern academic study of Fairfax, making it essential reading for university students as well as historians of the seventeenth century. Its accessible style will appeal to a wider audience of those interested in the civil wars and interregnum more generally.