Examining photographs, illustrations, films and live performances, Peta Tait presents an extraordinary survey of 140 years of trapeze acts and the cultural identities that are presented by bodies in fast, physical aerial movement.
Body Show/s: Australian Viewings of Live Performance asks: in what ways do physical bodies in live performance present vital and compelling expressions of ideas? This collection contains critical analyses of cultural spectacle and social identity by eighteen major Australian scholars and practitioners. It discusses and describes bodies in contemporary performance, theatre, visual art and dance; in circus and ethnographic shows; in performance training, butoh and wrestling; at gay and lesbian dance parties; and in relation to digital images. It explores historical and theoretical issues of gender and postcoloniality, technology, and the location of bodies in architectural, social and virtual spaces. Artistes and groups discussed include Sydney Front, Open City, The Performance Space, Meryl Tankard’s Australian Dance Theatre, Chrissie Parrott, the Bell Shakespeare Company, Tess De Quincey, Yumi Umiumare, Gilgul Theatre, Lyndal Jones, Stelarc, Death Defying Theatre, colonial circus, ethnographic displays, the horse as performer, and wrestling legends Gorgeous George and Ravishing Ricky Rude.
Investigating a range of influential movement training practices, this ambitious book considers the significance of professional training to performers and their bodies. Performance training approaches are examined within their wider social and cultural contexts, illuminating their evolution in response to the changing context of theatre practice and production. Adopting a rigorous critical angle, Mark Evans' approach is at the cutting-edge of Theatre scholarship, drawing on interviews with recognised practitioners and considering the implications for movement and the body in the digital age. Engaging and enlightening, this is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students of Theatre, Drama and Performance wishing to understand and contextualise the theories behind performance training.
Focusing on the body in every chapter, this book examines the changing meanings and profound significance of the physical form among the Anglo-Saxons from 1880 to 1920. They formed an imaginary—but, in many ways, quite real—community that ruled much of the world. Among them, racism became more virulent. To probe the importance of the body, this book brings together for the first time the many areas in which the physical form was newly or more extensively featured, from photography through literature, frontier wars, violent sports, and the global circus. Sex, sexuality, concepts of gender including women’s possibilities in all areas of life, and the meanings of race and of civilization figured regularly in Anglo discussions. Black people challenged racism by presenting their own photos of respectable folk. As all this unfolded, Anglo men and women faced the problem of maintaining civilized control vs. the need to express uninhibited feeling. With these issues in mind, it is evident that the origins of today’s debates about race and gender lie in the late nineteenth century.
Body and Nation interrogates the connections among the body, the nation, and the world in twentieth-century U.S. history. The idea that bodies and bodily characteristics are heavily freighted with values that are often linked to political and social spheres remains underdeveloped in the histories of America's relations with the rest of the world. Attentive to diverse state and nonstate actors, the contributors provide historically grounded insights into the transnational dimensions of biopolitics. Their subjects range from the regulation of prostitution in the Philippines by the U.S. Army to Cold War ideals of American feminine beauty, and from "body counts" as metrics of military success to cultural representations of Mexican migrants in the United States as public health threats. By considering bodies as complex, fluctuating, and interrelated sites of meaning, the contributors to this collection offer new insights into the workings of both soft and hard power. Contributors. Frank Costigliola, Janet M. Davis, Shanon Fitzpatrick, Paul A. Kramer, Shirley Jennifer Lim, Mary Ting Yi Lui, Natalia Molina, Brenda Gayle Plummer, Emily S. Rosenberg, Kristina Shull, Annessa C. Stagner, Marilyn B. Young
Digital technologies have transformed archives in every area of their form and function, and as technologies mature so does their capacity to change our understanding and experience of material and performative cultural production. There has been an exponential explosion in the production and consumption of video online and yet there is a scarcity of knowledge and cases about video and the digital archive. This book seeks to address that through the lens of the project Circus Oz Living Archive. This project provides the case study foundation for the articulation of the issues, challenges and possibilities that the design and development of digital archives afford. Drawn from eight different disciplines and professions, the authors explore what it means to embrace the possibilities of digital technologies to transform contemporary cultural institutions and their archives into new methods of performance, representation and history.
Following on from Part 1, which was highly acclaimed by the space community, this peer-viewed book provides detailed insights into how space and popular culture intersect across a broad spectrum of areas, including cinema, music, art, arcade games, cartoons, comics, and advertisements. This is a pertinent topic since the use of space themes differs in different cultural contexts, and these themes can be used to explore various aspects of the human condition and provide a context for social commentary on politically sensitive issues. With the use of space imagery evolving over the past sixty years of the space age, this topic is ripe for in-depth exploration. Covering a wide array of relevant and timely topics, the book examines the intersections between space and popular culture, and offers accounts of space and its effect on culture, language, and storytelling from the southern regions of the world.
With a billion-dollar industry centred in Montreal, the province of Quebec has established itself as a major hub for contemporary circus. Cirque du Soleil has a global presence, and troupes such as Cirque Éloize and 7 doigts de la main are state-of-the-art innovators. The National Circus School of Montreal - the only state-funded elite training facility in North America - is an influential leader in artistry and technique. Montreal-based Cirque du Soleil’s Cirque du Monde supports arts for social change on many continents and is renowned for its social-circus training and research. Cirque Global is the first book-length study of this new variety of circus and its international impact. The contributors offer critical perspectives on this rapidly developing art form and its aesthetics, ethics, business practices, pedagogical implications, and discursive significations. Essays explore creative, entrepreneurial, and cultural forces that are shaping Quebec’s dynamic nouveau cirque. Lavishly illustrated with photographs from circus performances, the volume showcases Quebec circus’s hybrid forms, which have merged the ethos and aesthetics of European circuses with American commercial and industrial creativity. Cirque Global is the definitive study of the phenomenon of Quebec circus and is an important model for future research on contemporary circus.
The Routledge Circus Studies Reader offers an absorbing critical introduction to this diverse and emerging field. It brings together the work of over 30 scholars in this discipline, including Janet Davis, Helen Stoddart and Peta Tait, to highlight and address the field’s key historical, critical and theoretical issues. It is organised into three accessible sections, Perspectives, Precedents and Presents, which approach historical aspects, current issues, and the future of circus performance. The chapters, grouped together into 13 theme-based sub-sections, provide a clear entry point into the field and emphasise the diversity of approaches available to students and scholars of circus studies. Classic accounts of performance, including pieces by Philippe Petit and Friedrich Nietzsche, are included alongside more recent scholarship in the field. Edited by two scholars whose work is strongly connected to the dynamic world of performance, The Routledge Circus Studies Reader is an essential teaching and study resource for the emerging discipline of circus studies. It also provides a stimulating introduction to the field for lovers of circus.
An authoritative introduction to the specialised histories of the modern circus, its unique aesthetics, and its contemporary manifestations and scholarship, from its origins in commercial equestrian performance, to contemporary inflections of circus arts in major international festivals, educational environments, and social justice settings.