Dancing on Violent Ground

Dancing on Violent Ground PDF Author: Arabella Stanger
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810144107
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
The politics of theater dance is commonly theorized in relation to bodily freedom, resistance, agitation, or repair. This book questions those utopian imaginaries, arguing that the visions and sensations of canonical Euro-American choreographies carry hidden forms of racial violence, not in the sense of the physical or psychological traumas arising in the practice of these arts but through the histories of social domination that materially underwrite them. Developing a new theory of choreographic space, Arabella Stanger shows how embodied forms of hope promised in ballet and progressive dance modernisms conceal and depend on spatial operations of imperial, colonial, and racial subjection. Stanger unearths dance’s violent ground by interrogating the expansionist fantasies of Marius Petipa’s imperial ballet, settler colonial and corporate land practices in the modern dance of Martha Graham and George Balanchine, reactionary discourses of the human in Rudolf von Laban’s and Oskar Schlemmer’s movement geometries; Merce Cunningham’s experimentalism as a white settler fantasy of the land of the free, and the imperial amnesia of Boris Charmatz’s interventions into metropolitan museums. Drawing on materialist thought, critical race theory, and indigenous studies, Stanger ultimately advocates for dance studies to adopt a position of “critical negativity,” an analytical attitude attuned to how dance’s exuberant modeling of certain forms of life might provide cover for life-negating practices. Bold in its arguments and rigorous in its critique, Dancing on Violent Ground asks how performance scholars can develop a practice of thinking hopefully, without expunging history from their site of analysis.

Dancing on Violent Ground

Dancing on Violent Ground PDF Author: Arabella Stanger
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810144107
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 301

Get Book

Book Description
The politics of theater dance is commonly theorized in relation to bodily freedom, resistance, agitation, or repair. This book questions those utopian imaginaries, arguing that the visions and sensations of canonical Euro-American choreographies carry hidden forms of racial violence, not in the sense of the physical or psychological traumas arising in the practice of these arts but through the histories of social domination that materially underwrite them. Developing a new theory of choreographic space, Arabella Stanger shows how embodied forms of hope promised in ballet and progressive dance modernisms conceal and depend on spatial operations of imperial, colonial, and racial subjection. Stanger unearths dance’s violent ground by interrogating the expansionist fantasies of Marius Petipa’s imperial ballet, settler colonial and corporate land practices in the modern dance of Martha Graham and George Balanchine, reactionary discourses of the human in Rudolf von Laban’s and Oskar Schlemmer’s movement geometries; Merce Cunningham’s experimentalism as a white settler fantasy of the land of the free, and the imperial amnesia of Boris Charmatz’s interventions into metropolitan museums. Drawing on materialist thought, critical race theory, and indigenous studies, Stanger ultimately advocates for dance studies to adopt a position of “critical negativity,” an analytical attitude attuned to how dance’s exuberant modeling of certain forms of life might provide cover for life-negating practices. Bold in its arguments and rigorous in its critique, Dancing on Violent Ground asks how performance scholars can develop a practice of thinking hopefully, without expunging history from their site of analysis.

Dancing Indigenous Worlds

Dancing Indigenous Worlds PDF Author: Jacqueline Shea Murphy
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452967954
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 491

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Book Description
The vital role of dance in enacting the embodied experiences of Indigenous peoples In Dancing Indigenous Worlds, Jacqueline Shea Murphy brings contemporary Indigenous dance makers into the spotlight, putting critical dance studies and Indigenous studies in conversation with one another in fresh and exciting new ways. Exploring Indigenous dance from North America and Aotearoa (New Zealand), she shows how dance artists communicate Indigenous ways of being, as well as generate a political force, engaging Indigenous understandings and histories. Following specific dance works over time, Shea Murphy interweaves analysis, personal narrative, and written contributions from multiple dance artists, demonstrating dance’s crucial work in asserting and enacting Indigenous worldviews and the embodied experiences of Indigenous peoples. As Shea Murphy asserts, these dance-making practices can not only disrupt the structures that European colonization feeds upon and strives to maintain, but they can also recalibrate contemporary dance. Based on more than twenty years of relationship building and research, Shea Murphy’s work contributes to growing, and largely underreported, discourses on decolonizing dance studies, and the geopolitical, gendered, racial, and relational meanings that dance theorizes and negotiates. She also includes discussions about the ethics of writing about Indigenous knowledge and peoples as a non-Indigenous scholar, and models approaches for doing so within structures of ongoing reciprocal, respectful, responsible action.

The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Ballet

The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Ballet PDF Author: Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190871512
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 848

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Book Description
In distinction to many extant histories of ballet, The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Ballet prioritizes connections between ballet communities as it interweaves chapters by scholars, critics, choreographers, and working professional dancers. The book looks at the many ways ballet functions as a global practice in the 21st century, providing new perspectives on ballet's past, present, and future. As an effort to dismantle the linearity of academic canons, the fifty-three chapters within provide multiple entry points for readers to engage in balletic discourse. With an emphasis on composition and process alongside dances created, and the assertion that contemporary ballet is a definitive era, the book carves out space for critical inquiry. Many of the chapters consider whether or not ballet can reconcile its past and actually become present, while others see ballet as flexible and willing to be remolded at the hands of those with tools to do so.

Antiracism in Ballet Teaching

Antiracism in Ballet Teaching PDF Author: Kate Mattingly
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1003803393
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
This new collection of essays and interviews assembles research on teaching methods, choreographic processes, and archival material that challenges systemic exclusions and provides practitioners with accessible steps to creating more equitable teaching environments, curricula, classes, and artistic settings. Antiracism in Ballet Teaching gives readers a wealth of options for addressing and dismantling racialized biases in ballet teaching, as well as in approaches to leadership and choreography. Chapters are organized into three sections - Identities, Pedagogies, and Futurities - that illuminate evolving approaches to choreographing and teaching ballet, shine light on artists, teachers, and dancers who are lesser known/less visible in a racialized canon, and amplify the importance of holistic practices that integrate ballet history with technique and choreography. Chapter authors include award-winning studio owners, as well as acclaimed choreographers, educators, and scholars. The collection ends with interviews featuring ballet company directors (Robert Garland and Alonzo King), world-renowned scholars (Clare Croft, Thomas F. DeFrantz, Brenda Dixon Gottschild), sought-after choreographers (Jennifer Archibald and Claudia Schreier), and beloved educators (Keesha Beckford, Tai Jimenez, and Endalyn Taylor). This is an essential resource for anyone teaching or learning to teach ballet in the Twenty First Century.

Women’s Empowerment in India

Women’s Empowerment in India PDF Author: Anjoo Sharan Upadhyaya
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1003861342
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
The volume brings together readings describing a range of less-traversed aspects and transferences of women’s rights and struggles in India and develops a comprehensive understanding of the interface between women’s activism and politics. The book documents and discusses diverse ways in which Indian women have struggled for empowerment, political voice and representation, and rallied against injustice and discrimination. Against the backdrop of women’s assertion of rights and negotiations for empowerment, the chapters in this volume explore diverse facets of collective agency, and emanations of women’s politico-legal struggles against stereotypes of gender and class in post-independence India. While the donor-driven international community has been eager to celebrate the successes of its global normative agenda-setting and ‘best practices’ approach, this book - based primarily on field research by the contributors - showcases authentic local ownership and women’s own agency, taking seriously the need to understand the cultural context and pay attention to intersectionality. It presents various examples of women’s activism for change, reflecting on the quotidian struggles and dynamic assertions of voice and political power, within and outside of formal political institutions. The book is a contribution to the debate about agency and ownership as key aspects of empowerment, highlighting women who defy dominant narratives. It will be an essential read for students and academics of political science, gender studies, sociology and social sciences, and cultural studies. It will also be of interest to readers interested in the history of women’s movements and their participation in national and local politics in India.

Dancing in the Glory of Monsters

Dancing in the Glory of Monsters PDF Author: Jason Stearns
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1610391594
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Book Description
A "tremendous," "intrepid" history of the devastating war in the heart of Africa's Congo, with first-hand accounts of the continent's worst conflict in modern times. At the heart of Africa is the Congo, a country the size of Western Europe, bordering nine other nations, that since 1996 has been wracked by a brutal war in which millions have died. In Dancing in the Glory of Monsters, renowned political activist and researcher Jason K. Stearns has written a compelling and deeply-reported narrative of how Congo became a failed state that collapsed into a war of retaliatory massacres. Stearns brilliantly describes the key perpetrators, many of whom he met personally, and highlights the nature of the political system that brought these people to power, as well as the moral decisions with which the war confronted them. Now updated with a new introduction, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters tells the full story of Africa's Great War.

Why Did You Come If You Leave Again? Volume 1

Why Did You Come If You Leave Again? Volume 1 PDF Author: Conradin Perner
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1514410850
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 453

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Book Description
The book Why Did You Come If You Leave Again? is an ethnographers personal account of the five years he spent in one of the remotest parts of Africa. In the authors comprehensive monograph (eight volumes published by Schwabe) about the Anyuak, a little-known tribe in South Sudan, there was no space left for a portrait of the person who did the fieldwork, his professional and personal itinerary, his experiences and attitudes, his relationship with the local peoplelet alone for all the adventures he lived when crossing the wilderness and when struggling to stay alive. The travel autobiography sheds light on the long and tedious process of ethnographic fieldwork; it is both personal and profound, varying between moments of actions and reflections and eventually leading to an intimate encounter with an African culture. The many riveting stories told in the book are signposts of a spiritual, psychological, philosophical, and physically exhausting expedition through arid savannah, flooded plains, and compact walls of elephant grass to the spiritual home of a courageous people who have created in the middle of wilderness a center of humanity. Though the narrative is essentially about the discovery of a foreign culture, it also relates the exploration of the ethnographers own identity in an environment that didnt offer any possibility to escape. The book is about thirst, starvation, loneliness and lightening, sickness and death, joy and deliverance, snakes and spirits, shadow, spittle and footprints, and eventually about the authors quest for meaning, beauty, and understanding of the world. The memoir tells a saga about forlornness, hope, and achievement, and last but not least, growing friendships as the only reward for struggle and pain. The researchers autobiography is captivating for the soul and the mind. It is funny, sad, informative, inspiring, and poetic.

Muscle Works

Muscle Works PDF Author: Broderick D.V. Chow
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810147386
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
Men’s fitness as a performance—from nineteenth-century theatrical exhibitions to health and wellness practices today This book recounts the story of fitness culture from its beginnings as spectacles of strongmen, weightlifters, acrobats, and wrestlers to its legitimization in the twentieth-century in the form of competitive sports and health and wellness practices. Broderick D. V. Chow shows how these modes of display contribute to the construction and deconstruction of definitions of masculinity. Attending to its theatrical origins, Chow argues for a more nuanced understanding of fitness culture, one informed by the legacies of self-described Strongest Man in the World Eugen Sandow and the history of fakery in strongman performance; the philosophy of weightlifter George Hackenschmidt and the performances of martial artist Bruce Lee; and the intersections of fatigue, resistance training, and whiteness. Muscle Works: Physical Culture and the Performance of Masculinity moves beyond the gym and across the archive, working out techniques, poses, and performances to consider how, as gendered subjects, we inhabit and make worlds through our bodies.

Slow Dance on the Killing Ground

Slow Dance on the Killing Ground PDF Author: William Hanley
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service Inc
ISBN: 9780822210436
Category : African Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 84

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Book Description
THE STORY: As the curtain rises, a poor, dusty shop with its dirty window obscuring the dark hos-tile night, with its mean little counter, and with its juke box glaring vulgarly from the side, the storekeeper is taking inventory. The door is flung

Why Did You Come If You Leave Again?

Why Did You Come If You Leave Again? PDF Author: Conradin Perner
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1524571873
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 753

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Book Description
The book Why Did You Come If You Leave Again? is an ethnographers personal account of the five years he spent in one of the remotest parts of Africa. In the authors comprehensive monograph (eight volumes published by Schwabe) about the Anyuak, a little-known tribe in South Sudan, there was no space left for a portrait of the person who did the fieldwork, his professional and personal itinerary, his experiences and attitudes, his relationship with the local peoplelet alone for all the adventures he lived when crossing the wilderness and when struggling to stay alive. The travel autobiography sheds light on the long and tedious process of ethnographic fieldwork; it is both personal and profound, varying between moments of actions and reflections and eventually leading to an intimate encounter with an African culture. The many riveting stories told in the book are signposts of a spiritual, psychological, philosophical, and physically exhausting expedition through arid savannah, flooded plains, and compact walls of elephant grass to the spiritual home of a courageous people who have created in the middle of wilderness a center of humanity. Though the narrative is essentially about the discovery of a foreign culture, it also relates the exploration of the ethnographers own identity in an environment that didnt offer any possibility to escape. The book is about thirst, starvation, loneliness and lightening, sickness and death, joy and deliverance, snakes and spirits, shadow, spittle and footprints, and eventually about the authors quest for meaning, beauty, and understanding of the world. The memoir tells a saga about forlornness, hope, and achievement, and last but not least, growing friendships as the only reward for struggle and pain. The researchers autobiography is captivating for the soul and the mind. It is funny, sad, informative, inspiring, and poetic.