The Body, Dance and Cultural Theory

Author: Helen Thomas
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1137487771
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Book Description
This book takes its point of departure from the overwhelming interest in theories of the body and performativity in sociology and cultural studies in recent years. It explores a variety of ways of looking at dance as a social and artistic (bodily) practice as a means of generating insights into the politics of identity and difference as they are situated and traced through representations of the body and bodily practices. These issues are addressed through a series of case studies.

Meaning in Motion

Author: Jane Desmond
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822319429
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 412

Book Description
On dance and culture

Of the Presence of the Body

Author: André Lepecki
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
ISBN: 9780819566126
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Book Description
Writing at the dynamic intersection of dance and performance studies.

Bodies of the Text

Author: Ellen W. Goellner
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813521275
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
Dance and literary studies have traditionally been at odds: dancers and dance critics have understood academic analysis to be overly invested in the mind at the expense of body signification; literary critics and theorists have seen dance studies as anti-theoretical, even anti-intellectual. Bodies of the Text is the first book-length study of the interconnections between the two arts and the body of writing about them. The essays, by scholar-critics of dance and literature, explore dances actual and fictional to offer powerful new insights into issues of gender, race, ethnicity, popular culture, feminist aesthetics, historical "embodiment," identity politics, and narrativity. The general introduction traces the genealogy of dance studies in the academy to suggest why critical and theoretical attention to dance--and dance's challenges to writing--is both compelling and overdue. A milestone in interdisciplinary studies, Bodies of the Text opens both its fields to new inquiry, new theoretical precision, and to new readers and writers.

Cultural Bodies

Author: Helen Thomas
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470776943
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Book Description
Cultural Bodies: Ethnography and Theory is a unique collection that integrates two increasingly key areas of social and cultural research: the body and ethnography. Breaks new ground in an area of study that continues to be a central theme of debate and research across the humanities and social sciences Draws on ethnography as a useful means of exploring our everyday social and cultural environments Constitutes an important step in developing two key areas of study, the body and ethnography, and the relationship between them Brings together an international and multi-disciplinary team of scholars

Dance as Text

Author: Mark Franko
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199794014
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Book Description
Dance as Text: Ideologies of the Baroque Body is a historical and theoretical examination of French court ballet of the late Renaissance and early baroque. Franko's analysis blends archival research with critical and cultural theory in order to resituate the burlesque tradition in its politically volatile context. He reveals the ideological tensions underlying experiments with autonomous dance in the early modern.

The Aging Body in Dance

Author: Nanako Nakajima
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1315515326
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 195

Book Description
What does it mean to be able to move? The Aging Body in Dance brings together leading scholars and artists from a range of backgrounds to investigate cultural ideas of movement and beauty, expressiveness and agility. Contributors focus on Euro-American and Japanese attitudes towards aging and performance, including studies of choreographers, dancers and directors from Yvonne Rainer, Martha Graham, Anna Halprin and Roemeo Castellucci to Kazuo Ohno and Kikuo Tomoeda. They draw a fascinating comparison between youth-oriented Western cultures and dance cultures like Japan’s, where aging performers are celebrated as part of the country’s living heritage. The first cross-cultural study of its kind, The Aging Body in Dance offers a vital resource for scholars and practitioners interested in global dance cultures and their differing responses to the world's aging population.

Choreographing Difference

Author: Ann Cooper Albright
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
ISBN: 9780819569912
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Book Description
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.

Dance and the Corporeal Uncanny

Author: Philipa Rothfield
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000079678
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Book Description
Dance and the Corporeal Uncanny takes the philosophy of the body into the field of dance, through the lens of subjectivity and via its critique. It draws on dance and performance as its dedicated field of practice to articulate a philosophy of agency and movement. It is organized around two conceptual paradigms - one phenomenological (via Merleau-Ponty), the other an interpretation of Nietzschean philosophy, mediated through the work of Deleuze. The book draws on dance studies, cultural critique, ethnography and postcolonial theory, seeking an interdisciplinary audience in philosophy, dance and cultural studies.

The Body

Author: Mike Featherstone
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 9780803984134
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 420

Book Description
This challenging volume reasserts the centrality of the body within social theory as a means to understanding the complex interrelations between nature, culture and society. The importance of a theoretical understanding of the body to social and cultural analysis of contemporary societies is demonstrated through specific case studies.