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From the first synchronized sound films of the late 1920s through the end of World War II, African American music and dance styles were ubiquitous in films. Black performers, however, were marginalized, mostly limited to appearing in "specialty acts" and various types of short films, whereas stardom was reserved for Whites. Jumping the Color Line discusses vernacular jazz dance in film as a focal point of American race relations. Looking at intersections of race, gender, and class, the book examines how the racialized and gendered body in film performs, challenges, and negotiates identities and stereotypes. Arguing for the transformative and subversive potential of jazz dance performance ons...
This publication follows the history of discoveries pertaining to Portuguese travel to the New World, from the 15th century to the 1920s, with an emphasis on the events leading to the development of jazz. The diversity of cultural influences from all over the world have made the United States a treasury of improvised music. Hendler portrays the development of American music scenes in centuries past, reporting on aspects such as the background of the slave trade, particularly in the Antilles, the music of European immigrant families, and the sounds of the (Spanish-controlled) Mississippi. He sketches the musical relationships between Cuba and the United States and their influence on American popular music around 1900. The highly fashionable march music leaves its mark, as do ragtime and spirituals, all blending to form an impressive repertoire of improvised music. The reader is inspired by the richness of forms and styles and the power of the artistic performances in the prehistory of jazz.
The history of jazz dance is best understood by comparing it to a tree. The art form's roots are African. Its trunk is vernacular, shaped by European influence, and exemplified by the Charleston and the Lindy Hop. The branches are many and varied and include tap, Broadway, funk, hip-hop, Afro-Caribbean, Latin, pop, club jazz, popping, B-boying, party dances, and much more. Unique in its focus on history rather than technique, Jazz Dance offers the only overview of trends and developments since 1960. Editors Lindsay Guarino and Wendy Oliver have assembled an array of seasoned practitioners and scholars who trace the many histories of jazz dance and examine various aspects of the field, including trends, influences, training, race, gender, aesthetics, the international appeal of jazz dance, and its relationship to tap, rock, indie, black concert dance, and Latin dance. Featuring discussions of such dancers and choreographers as Bob Fosse and Katherine Dunham, as well as analyses of how the form's vocabulary differs from ballet, this complex and compelling history captures the very essence of jazz dance.
National Dance Education Organization Ruth Lovell Murray Book Award UNCG | Susan W. Stinson Book Award for Dance Education An African American art form, jazz dance has an inaccurate historical narrative that often sets Euro-American aesthetics and values at the inception of the jazz dance genealogy. The roots were systemically erased and remain widely marginalized and untaught, and the devaluation of its Africanist origins and lineage has largely gone unchallenged. Decolonizing contemporary jazz dance practice, this book examines the state of jazz dance theory, pedagogy, and choreography in the twenty-first century, recovering and affirming the lifeblood of jazz in Africanist aesthetics and ...
This text offers new ways of understanding dance on the popular screen in new scholarly arguments drawn from dance studies, performance studies, and film and media studies. Through these arguments, it demonstrates how this dance in popular film, television, and online videos can be read and considered through the different bodies and choreographies being shown.
Jazz is a music of journeys, migration, and global mobility – from the legacies of the transatlantic slave trade to global travels for escape, exchange, or putting down roots. Having migrated via changing modes of transportation and media communication, the sounds, musicians, and theories of jazz have led to today's diasporic jazz world of global and local encounters. This book features articles that deal with jazz in various geographic areas such as Japan or Israel, orchestras travelling to Egypt or invited to the USA, and so-called expatriate jazz musicians taking up residence in Europe. By sharing their research about jazz on TV, on records, and at festivals, the authors from different disciplines demonstrate how jazz studies today engage with movement in the music's past to question and shape its future. This collection of writings has its origins in the VI Rhythm Changes Conference "Jazz Journeys," which took place in Graz (Austria) and where the International Society for Jazz Research celebrated its 50th anniversary.
Scholarship on utopias in film has so far focused exclusively on dystopias – but utopias are about criticizing the present rather than telling a gripping story Utopia and Reality looks into propaganda and documentary films for depictions of better worlds. This volume brings together researchers from two fields that have so far seen little exchange – documentary studies and utopian scholarship Covers a wide range of films from Soviet avant-garde to propaganda videos for the terror organisation ISIS, and from political-activist to ecofeminist and interactive documentaries.
'Comprehensive and thorough, Utopias in Nonfiction Film takes a new direction in its surprise application to documentary that has the potential to shake up the field.'- Jane Gaines, Columbia University, USA 'Spiegel has introduced a new sub-genre to utopian studies, the documentary film. The book covers an impressive range of films, making the book one of the few truly international and comparative works in utopian studies.'- Lyman Tower Sargent, University of Missouri-St. Louis, USA "Simon Spiegel’s magisterial overview of utopian documentaries and nonfiction films is a treasure trove of information and unearths many forgotten and half-forgotten films, providing perceptive discussions of ...
From »Avatar« to danced versions of »Romeo and Juliet«, from Bollywood films to »Star Wars Uncut«: This book investigates film remakes as well as forms of remaking in other media, such as ballet and internet fan art. The case studies introduce readers to a variety of texts and remaking practices from different cultural spheres. The essays also discuss forms of remaking in relation to neighbouring phenomena like the sequel, prequel and (re-)adaptation. »Remakes and Remaking« thus provides a necessary and topical addition to the recent conceptual scholarship on intermediality, transmediality and adaptation.
A shop girl wins a newspaper competition and is transformed overnight into a transatlantic celebrity. An aristocrat swaps high society for the film studio when she 'consents' to perform in a series of films, thus legitimising acting for what some might have considered a 'low' art. Stories like these were the stuff of newspaper headlines in 1920s and reflected a 'craze' for the cinema. They also demonstrated radical changes in attitudes and values within society in the wake of World War I. Chris O'Rourke investigates the myths and material practices that grew up around film actors during the silent era. The book sheds light on issues such as the social and cultural reception of cinema, the pa...