Skin Colored Pointes

Download or read book Skin Colored Pointes written by Nyama McCarthy-Brown and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2024-04-23 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Predominantly white casting in ballet has led many to wonder, "Where are all the black swans?" This book sheds light on female dancers of color, including thirteen primary accounts from African American, Latina, and Asian women in ballet. Topics covered include dance training, casting (and color-casting), employment, discrimination, implicit bias, success, and achievement. Dancers discuss in detail the obstacles many dancers of color face during training; considerations facing some women of color when seeking employment; performance challenges related to company work; and the teachers, parents, and community members that paved a way and widened spaces for them. Through the stories and experiences of the women featured here, models of inclusive practices and allyship are shared. The book culminates with a section providing teaching tools to support inclusive learning spaces.

Download or read book Dance Pedagogy for a Diverse World written by Nyama McCarthy-Brown and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2017-04-26 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Issues of race, class, gender and religion permeate the study of contemporary dance, resulting in cultural clashes in classrooms and studios. The first of its kind, this book provides dance educators with tools to refocus teaching methods to celebrate the pluralism of the United States. The contributors discuss how to diversify ballet technique classes and dance history courses in higher education, choreographing dance about socially charged contemporary issues, and incorporating Native American dances into the curriculum, among other topics. The application of relevant pedagogy in the dance classroom enables instructors to teach methods that reflect students' culture and affirm their experiences.

Download or read book Turning Pointe written by Chloe Angyal and published by Bold Type Books. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A reckoning with one of our most beloved art forms, whose past and present are shaped by gender, racial, and class inequities—and a look inside the fight for its future Every day, in dance studios all across America, legions of little children line up at the barre to take ballet class. This time in the studio shapes their lives, instilling lessons about gender, power, bodies, and their place in the world both in and outside of dance. In Turning Pointe, journalist Chloe Angyal captures the intense love for ballet that so many dancers feel, while also grappling with its devastating shortcomings: the power imbalance of an art form performed mostly by women, but dominated by men; the impossible standards of beauty and thinness; and the racism that keeps so many people of color out of ballet. As the rigid traditions of ballet grow increasingly out of step with the modern world, a new generation of dancers is confronting these issues head on, in the studio and on stage. For ballet to survive the twenty-first century and forge a path into a more socially just future, this reckoning is essential.

Download or read book Black Ballerinas written by Misty Copeland and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From New York Times bestselling and award-winning author and American Ballet Theatre principal dancer Misty Copeland comes an illustrated nonfiction collection celebrating dancers of color who have influenced her on and off the stage. As a young girl living in a motel with her mother and her five siblings, Misty Copeland didn’t have a lot of exposure to ballet or prominent dancers. She was sixteen when she saw a black ballerina on a magazine cover for the first time. The experience emboldened Misty and told her that she wasn’t alone—and her dream wasn’t impossible. In the years since, Misty has only learned more about the trailblazing women who made her own success possible by pushing back against repression and racism with their talent and tenacity. Misty brings these women’s stories to a new generation of readers and gives them the recognition they deserve. With an introduction from Misty about the legacy these women have had on dance and on her career itself, this book delves into the lives and careers of women of color who fundamentally changed the landscape of American ballet from the early 20th century to today.

Download or read book What Makes That Black? written by Luana and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2016 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We all can name some of the Africanist aesthetic-structures that fuel African American and American art ... Syncopation, Improvisation, Call and Response, Cool, Polyrhythm, or Innovation as an ambition- But there are many, many more. What Makes That Black? The African-American Aesthetic identifies and defines seventy-four elements of the aesthetic through text and illustration. Using the magnificent camerawork of R.J. Muna, Sharen Bradford, Jae Man Joo, Rachel Neville, James Barry Knox, and more- as they point their cameras at Alonzo King LINES Ballet, Complexions Contemporary Ballet, and jazz artists such as Cécile McLorin Salvant and Wynton Marsalis- a specific artistic consciousness or sensibility visually unfolds. Luana even joins the camera crew as she shoots Oakland Street Graffiti.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Ballet written by Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 1013 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Nearly four hundred and fifty years in, ballet still resonates-though the stages have become international, and the dancers, athletes far removed from noble amateurs. While vibrations from the form's beginnings clearly resound, much has transformed. Nowadays ballet dancers aspire to work across disciplines with choreographers who value a myriad of abilities. Dance theorists and historians make known possibilities and polemics in lieu of notating dances verbatim, and critics do the daily work of recording performance histories and interviewing artists. Ideas circulate, questions arise, and discussions about how to resist ballet's outmoded traditions take precedence. In the dance community, calls for innovation have defined palpable shifts in ballet's direction and resultantly we have arrived at a new moment in its history that is unquestionably recognized as a genre onto its own: Contemporary Ballet. An aspect of this recent discipline is that its dancemakers, more often than not, seek to reorient the viewer by celebrating what could be deemed vulnerabilities, re-construing ideals of perfection, problematizing the marginalized/mainstream dichotomy, bringing audiences closer in to observe, and letting the art become an experience rather than a distant object preciously guarded out of reach. Hence, the practice of ballet is moving to become a less-mediated and more active process in many circumstances. Performers and audiences alike are challenged, and while convention is still omnipresent, choices are being made. For some, this approach has been drawn on for decades, and for others it signifies a changing of the guard, yet however we arrive there, the conclusion is the same: Contemporary Ballet is not a style. That is to say, it is not a trend, phase, or fashionable term that will fade, rather it is a clear period in ballet's time deserved of investigation. And it is into this moment that we enter"--

Download or read book Hope in a Ballet Shoe written by Michaela DePrince and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2014-12-30 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hope in a Ballet Shoe tells the story of Michaela DePrince. Growing up in war-torn Sierra Leone, she witnesses atrocities that no child ever should. Her father is killed by rebels and her mother dies of famine. Sent to an orphanage, Michaela is mistreated and she sees the brutal murder of her favourite teacher. Michaela and her best friend are adopted by an American couple and Michaela begins to take dance lessons. But life in the States isn't without difficulties. Unfortunately, tragedy can find its way to Michaela in America, too, and her past can feel like it's haunting her. The world of ballet is a racist one, and Michaela has to fight for a place amongst the ballet elite, hearing the words 'America's not ready for a black girl ballerina.' And yet . . . Today, Michaela DePrince is an international ballet star, dancing for The Dutch National Ballet at the age of nineteen. This is a heart-breaking, inspiring autobiography by a teenager who shows us that, beyond everything, there is always hope for a better future.