Dancing With Yin And Yang

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 Corporeal Politics written by Katherine Mezur and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2020-09-03 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Corporeal Politics, leading international scholars investigate the development of dance as a deeply meaningful and complex cultural practice across time, placing special focus on the intertwining of East Asia dance and politics and the role of dance as a medium of transcultural interaction and communication across borders. Countering common narratives of dance history that emphasize the US and Europe as centers of origin and innovation, the expansive creativity of dance artists in East Asia asserts its importance as a site of critical theorization and reflection on global artistic developments in the performing arts. Through the lens of “corporeal politics”—the close attention to bodily acts in specific cultural contexts—each study in this book challenges existing dance and theater histories to re-investigate the performer's role in devising the politics and aesthetics of their performance, as well as the multidimensional impact of their lives and artistic works. Corporeal Politics addresses a wide range of performance styles and genres, including dances produced for the concert stage, as well as those presented in popular entertainments, private performance spaces, and street protests.

Download or read book Dancing the Dharma written by Susan Blakely Klein and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-03-07 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dancing the Dharma examines the theory and practice of allegory by exploring a select group of medieval Japanese noh plays and treatises. Susan Blakeley Klein demonstrates how medieval esoteric commentaries on the tenth-century poem-tale Ise monogatari (Tales of Ise) and the first imperial waka poetry anthology Kokin wakashū influenced the plots, characters, imagery, and rhetorical structure of seven plays (Maiguruma, Kuzu no hakama, Unrin’in, Oshio, Kakitsubata, Ominameshi, and Haku Rakuten) and two treatises (Zeami’s Rikugi and Zenchiku’s Meishukushū). In so doing, she shows that it was precisely the allegorical mode—vital to medieval Japanese culture as a whole—that enabled the complex layering of character and poetic landscape we typically associate with noh. Klein argues that understanding noh’s allegorical structure and paying attention to the localized historical context for individual plays are key to recovering their original function as political and religious allegories. Now viewed in the context of contemporaneous beliefs and practices of the medieval period, noh plays take on a greater range and depth of meaning and offer new insights to readers today into medieval Japan.

Download or read book Attention and Focus in Dance written by Clare Guss-West and published by Human Kinetics Publishers. This book was released on 2021 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The book presents a systematic, science-based approach to the mental work of dance, honing the skills of attention, focus, and optimal self-cueing to enhance physical and artistic performance, replenish energy, and increase stamina in dancers"--

Download or read book Polarity Therapy written by Randolph Stone and published by Polarity Therapy. This book was released on 1999 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This two-volume set by the father of Polarity Therapy--the healing science based on living energy fields--has been essential reading for many practitioners of the healing arts, especially those who employ manual techniques or energy-balancing procedures. Polarity Therapy can be used in psychotherapy, chiropractic therapy, osteopathy, many types of massage, physical therapy, dance, yoga, and other forms of bodywork.

Download or read book Dancing Into Darkness written by Sondra Horton Fraleigh and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 1999-07-15 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Butoh, also known as "dance of darkness," is a postmodern dance form that began in Japan as an effort to recover the primal body or "the body that has not been robbed," as butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata put it. Butoh has become increasingly popular in the United States and throughout the world, diversifying its aesthetic while at the same time asserting the power of its spiritual foundations. Dancing into Darkness is Sondra Horton Fraleigh's chronological diary of her deepening understanding of and appreciation for this art form as she moves from a position of aesthetic response as an audience member to that of assimilation as a student of Zen and butoh. Fraleigh witnesses her own artistic and personal transformation through essays, poems, interviews, and reflections spanning twelve years of study, much of it in Japan. Numerous performance photographs and original calligraphy by Fraleigh's Zen teacher, Shodo Akane, illuminate her words.

Download or read book The Essence of Womanhood - Re-awakening the Authentic Feminine written by Susie Heath and published by Ecademy Press. This book was released on 2008-04-14 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Heath's resource can help women reawaken their authentic femininity and to fall in love with both their real inner and outer selves.