This early work on dancing is a fascinating read for any dance enthusiast or historian, and contains much information that is still useful and practical today. Contents Include: Dedication; Author's Preface; Introduction; The History of Latin-American Dancing in this Country; List of Abbreviations Used; the Rumba; The Samba; The Paso Doble; The Jive (Swing); The Blues Jive; The Congo; Examination Work; Latin-American Dances for Class Teaching; The Training of Medallists in the Latin-American Dancers; Music for Latin-American Dances; The Character of the Latin-American Dances and How to Obtain It; Postscript; and Index. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
The function of dance in Latin/o American culture is the focus of the essays collected in Everynight Life. The contributors interpret how Latin/o culture expresses itself through dance, approaching the material from the varying perspectives of literary, cultural, dance, performance, queer, and feminist studies. Viewing dance as privileged sites of identity formation and cultural resistance in Latin/o America, Everynight Life translates the motion of bodies into speech, and the gestures of dance into a provocative socio-political grammar. This anthology looks at many modes of dance--including salsa, merengue, cumbia, rumba, mambo, tango, samba, and norteño--as models for the interplay of cultural memory and regional conflict. Barbara Browning's essay on capoeira, for instance, demonstrates how dance has been used as a literal form of resistance, while José Piedra explores the meanings conveyed by women of color dancing the rumba. Pieces such as Gustavo Perez Fírmat's "I Came, I Saw, I Conga'd" and Jorge Salessi's "Medics, Crooks, and Tango Queens" illustrate the lively scope of this volume's subject matter. Contributors. Barbara Browning, Celeste Fraser Delgado, Jane C. Desmond, Mayra Santos Febres, Juan Carlos Quintero Herencia, Josh Kun, Ana M. López, José Esteban Muñoz, José Piedra, Gustavo Perez Fírmat, Augusto C. Puleo, David Román, Jorge Salessi, Alberto Sandoval
This book is both a handbook for defining and completing a research project, and an astute introduction to the neglected history and changeable philosophy of modern social science.
Queer Dance challenges social norms and enacts queer coalition across the LGBTQ community. The book joins forces with feminist, anti-racist, and anti-colonial work to consider how bodies are forces of social change.
“Latin America” is a concept firmly entrenched in its philosophical, moral, and historical meanings. And yet, Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo argues in this landmark book, it is an obsolescent racial-cultural idea that ought to have vanished long ago with the banishment of racial theory. Latin America: The Allure and Power of an Idea makes this case persuasively. Tenorio-Trillo builds the book on three interlocking steps: first, an intellectual history of the concept of Latin America in its natural historical habitat—mid-nineteenth-century redefinitions of empire and the cultural, political, and economic intellectualism; second, a serious and uncompromising critique of the current “Latin Americanism”—which circulates in United States–based humanities and social sciences; and, third, accepting that we might actually be stuck with “Latin America,” Tenorio-Trillo charts a path forward for the writing and teaching of Latin American history. Accessible and forceful, rich in historical research and specificity, the book offers a distinctive, conceptual history of Latin America and its many connections and intersections of political and intellectual significance. Tenorio-Trillo’s book is a masterpiece of interdisciplinary scholarship.
This 387 page handbook includes a compendium of 68 salsa dance positions illustrated with 330 figures, an annotated curated list of 84 links to free online lessons from expert instructors, and a comprehensive dictionary of salsa dance terminology. A salsa dance combination is comprised of two or more salsa dance patterns, each pattern covering two bars of music. Every salsa dance pattern begins and ends in a dance position. One can view the salsa dance pattern as the artful transition from a start position to an end position over eight beats of music. Because salsa dance is made up of combinations, and combinations are made up of patterns, one can view salsa dance as an aesthetically pleasing progression through a series of dance positions over the course of a song. Expert salsa dancers know how to get into and out of myriad salsa dance positions in interesting ways. Knowing how to do this can help increase your salsa dance repertoire. This is facilitated by knowing your dance positions. Learn how to break down elaborate salsa combinations into individual components by name. This allows you to pick up new patterns more quickly. It also makes it easier to remember a pattern or combination you learned previously. This will help you to learn from other dancers. The second book in this series shows how to break down combinations into patterns. To best understand combinations and patterns, first know your positions. To truly know your positions, be able to identify them and call them by name. This handbook will show you how to do that. The key insight is that every pattern begins with a start position, and finishes with an end position. This handbook enumerates those positions and teaches the names. Once you learn the position names you will be able to write down a combination in terms of its patterns, by giving the start and end position of each pattern in the combination. This handbook will help you identify common elements of LA Style salsa dance by name. When you have the vocabulary to describe the building blocks, you can understand what you see on the dance floor. You’ll be able to break down a combination into component patterns. You’ll be able to identify the positions that make up a pattern. Then you will then be able to compose new patterns of your own. Salsa dance elements covered in this handbook include steps, handholds, turns, combs, arm and leg stylings, positions, patterns, and combinations. Handholds covered include left to right hold, right to left hold, parallel hold, handshake hold, reverse handshake hold, cross hold, and reverse cross hold. Turns covered include cross body lead, reverse cross body lead, single right turn, single left turn, inside turn, outside turn, and enchufa turn. Positions covered include apart positions, open position, closed position, half open position, handshake hold, hammerlock, half Hammerlock, cross hold, reverse cross hold, neck loop, arm hook, cuddle, butterfly, sombrero, and wraps.
