Dancing Identity

Download or read book Dancing Identity written by Sondra Horton Fraleigh and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2004-10-31 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Combining critical analysis with personal history and poetry, Dancing Identity presents a series of interconnected essays composed over a period of fifteen years. Taken as a whole, these meditative reflections on memory and on the ways we perceive and construct our lives represent Sondra Fraleigh's journey toward self-definition as informed by art, ritual, feminism, phenomenology, poetry, autobiography, and-always-dance. Fraleigh's brilliantly inventive fusions of philosophy and movement clarify often complex philosophical issues and apply them to dance history and aesthetics. She illustrates her discussions with photographs, dance descriptions, and stories from her own past in order to bridge dance with everyday movement. Seeking to recombine the fractured and bifurcated conceptions of the body and of the senses that dominate much Western discourse, she reveals how metaphysical concepts are embodied and presented in dance, both on stage and in therapeutic settings. Examining the role of movement in personal and political experiences, Fraleigh reflects on her major influences, including Moshe Feldenkrais, Kazuo Ohno, and Twyla Tharp. She draws on such varied sources as philosophers Simone de Beauvoir and Martin Heidegger, the German expressionist dancer Mary Wigman, Japanese Butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata, Hitler, the Bomb, Miss America, Balanchine, and the goddess figure of ancient cultures. Dancing Identity offers new insights into modern life and its reconfigurations in postmodern dance.

Download or read book Dancing Cultures written by Hélène Neveu Kringelbach and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2012-10-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dance is more than an aesthetic of life – dance embodies life. This is evident from the social history of jive, the marketing of trans-national ballet, ritual healing dances in Italy or folk dances performed for tourists in Mexico, Panama and Canada. Dance often captures those essential dimensions of social life that cannot be easily put into words. What are the flows and movements of dance carried by migrants and tourists? How is dance used to shape nationalist ideology? What are the connections between dance and ethnicity, gender, health, globalization and nationalism, capitalism and post-colonialism? Through innovative and wide-ranging case studies, the contributors explore the central role dance plays in culture as leisure commodity, cultural heritage, cultural aesthetic or cathartic social movement.

Download or read book Dancing Jewish written by Rebecca Rossen and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jewish choreographers have not only been vital contributors to American modern and postmodern dance, but they have also played a critical and unacknowledged role in American Jewish culture. This book delineates this rich history, demonstrating how, over the twentieth century, dance enabled American Jews to grapple with identity, difference, cultural belonging, and pride.

Download or read book Europe Dancing written by Andree Grau and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-06 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Europe Dancing examines the dance cultures and movements which have developed in Europe since the Second World War. Nine countries are represented in this unique collaboration between European dance scholars. The contributors chart the art form, and discuss the outside influences which have shaped it. This comprehensive book explores: * questions of identity within individual countries, within Europe, and in relation to the USA * the East/West cultural division * the development of state subsidy for dance * the rise of contemporary dance as an 'alternative' genre * the implications for dance of political, economic and social change. Useful historical charts are included to trace significant dance and political events throughout the twentieth century in each country. Never before has this information been gathered together in one place. This book is essential reading for everyone interested in dance and its growth and development in recent years.

Download or read book Choreographing Difference written by Ann Cooper Albright and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2010-06-01 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The choreographies of Bill T. Jones, Cleveland Ballet Dancing Wheels, Zab Maboungou, David Dorfman, Marie Chouinard, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, and others, have helped establish dance as a crucial discourse of the 90s. These dancers, Ann Cooper Albright argues, are asking the audience to see the body as a source of cultural identity — a physical presence that moves with and through its gendered, racial, and social meanings. Through her articulate and nuanced analysis of contemporary choreography, Albright shows how the dancing body shifts conventions of representation and provides a critical example of the dialectical relationship between cultures and the bodies that inhabit them. As a dancer, feminist, and philosopher, Albright turns to the material experience of bodies, not just the body as a figure or metaphor, to understand how cultural representation becomes embedded in the body. In arguing for the intelligence of bodies, Choreographing Difference is itself a testimonial, giving voice to some important political, moral, and artistic questions of our time. Ebook Edition Note: All images have been redacted.

Download or read book Dancing from Past to Present written by Theresa Jill Buckland and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 2007-03-19 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking collection combines ethnographic and historic strategies to reveal how dance plays crucial cultural roles in various regions of the world, including Tonga, Java, Bosnia-Herzegovina, New Mexico, India, Korea, Macedonia, and England. The essays find a balance between past and present and examine how dance and bodily practices are core identity and cultural creators. Reaching beyond the typically Eurocentric view of dance, Dancing from Past to Present opens a world of debate over the role dance plays in forming and expressing cultural identities around the world.

Download or read book Dancing Fear and Desire written by Stavros Stavrou Karayanni and published by Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press. This book was released on 2009-08-03 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout centuries of European colonial domination, the bodies of Middle Eastern dancers, male and female, move sumptuously and seductively across the pages of Western travel journals, evoking desire and derision, admiration and disdain, allure and revulsion. This profound ambivalence forms the axis of an investigation into Middle Eastern dance—an investigation that extends to contemporary belly dance. Stavros Stavrou Karayanni, through historical investigation, theoretical analysis, and personal reflection, explores how Middle Eastern dance actively engages race, sex, and national identity. Close readings of colonial travel narratives, an examination of Oscar Wilde’s Salome, and analyses of treatises about Greek dance, reveal the intricate ways in which this controversial dance has been shaped by Eurocentric models that define and control identity performance.