Both the identity of dance and that of theory are at risk as soon as the two intertwine. This anthology collects observations by choreographers and scholars, dancers, dramaturges and dance theorists in an effort to trace the multiple ways in which dance and theory correlate and redefine each other: What is the nature of their relationship? How can we outline a theory of dance from our particular historical perspective which will cover dance both as a practice and as an academic concept? The contributions examine which concepts, interdependencies and discontinuities of dance and theory are relevant today and promise to engage us in the future. They address crucial topics of the current debate in dance and performance studies such as artistic research, aesthetics, politics, visuality, archives, and the »next generation«.
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.
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.
Dance and Organisation is the first comprehensive work to integrate dance theory and methods into the study of management, which have developed an interest in the arts and the humanities. Dance represents dynamics and change and puts the moving body at the centre, which has been ignored and oppressed by traditional management theory. ‘Being’ a leader however also means to ‘move’ like one, and critical lessons can be learned from ballerinas and modern dancers. Leadership is a dialogue, as in the work of musicians, conductors and DJs who manage groups without words. Movement in organisational space, in a museum or a techno club can be understood as a choreography and site-specific performance. Movement also is practically used for leadership and employee development workshops and can be deployed as an organisational research method. By taking a firm interdisciplinary stance in dance studies and organisational research to explore management topics, reflecting on practitioner accounts and research projects, the book seeks to make an innovative contribution to our understanding of the moving body, generating new insights on teamwork, leadership, gender in management, organisational space, training and research methods. It comprises an important contribution to the organizational behaviour and critical management studies disciplines, and looks to push the boundaries of the academic literature.
This “what is”—rather than “how to”— volume proposes a theoretical framework for understanding dance leadership for dancers, leaders, and students of both domains, illustrated by portraits of leaders in action in India, South Africa, UK, US, Brazil and Canada. What is dance leadership? Who practices it, in what setting, and why? Through performance, choreography, teaching, writing, organizing and directing, the dance leaders portrayed herein instigate change and forward movement. Illustrating all that is unique about leading in dance, and by extension the other arts, readers can engage with such wide-ranging issues as: Does the practice of leading require followers? How does one individual’s dance movement act on others in a group? What does ‘social engagement’ mean for artists? Is the pursuit of art and culture a human right?
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.
"This book began in 2014 as an introduction to the book I was then writing about a small group of dance theorists-five Germans and an Englishman-and their treatises published between 1703 and 1721: obviously a very narrow conspectus in subject and years. The aim of the introduction was to place these largely ignored writers (epecially the Germans) in a broad historical context that would demonstrate how essential and pivotal they were. As I read further in dance theory I found more and more sources on the subject that turned out to be far more interesting and complex than I had originally imagined. The introduction kept getting longer, until it became an albatross on the book's actual text, not only because of its ever-increasing length, but more gravely, because I had assumed it would trace a teleological ascent in dance theory culminating in my authors and their works, followed by a degenerative aftermath. This tendentious viewpoint threatened not only to deter readers from a sympathetic reading of the book as a whole; it turned out, the more I read and learned, to be simply wrong. The history of dance theory, as I gradually came to realize, is too interesting and important to be exploited for spurious purposes. Also, it's an untold story. Dance historians are familiar with many or most of the authors and titles, but not what they have to say about dance theory. That's the part usually at the beginning of books that is skimmed through in order to get to the more urgent preoccupations of historical dancers and dance historians: performance practice, reconstruction, technique, and repertoire. Viewed superficially, moreover, it can seem as if the same self-evident and obligatory themes keep getting repeated like clichés in these sections under the general rubric of theory: a definition of dance and/or dance theory, or at least a list of their basic components; the relation of dance to the other arts and other areas of knowledge; dance's origin and history; and its utility (i.e., health, social conduct and success, recreation). Finally, and contrary to what I had long believed, dance theory is not dead. In fact, it is thriving in the twenty-first century. Yes, I was fully aware that something called dance theory was being copiously written and talked about, and that "theory" and "theorizing" and "theorist" had become wildly ubiquitous in dance scholars' lexicon, but I believed that what they were talking about was no genuine dance theory, had no kinship with what was historically accepted as dance theory, and did not meet the criteria of what a theory should be. I was convinced that what I considered dance theory had been swept away in the iconoclastic, irreverent, and nonconformist spirit of postmodernism. Luckily, early readers tactfully convinced me to address my folly. As I wrote, I learned. Writing this book has already served as a textbook in my own learning experience. There are some excellent compilations of readings in dance history. The common format is to devote each chapter to a historical period, with an introductory essay followed by relevant readings. The number of readings tends to increase as history marches on, peaking in the nineteenth century. A sampling of such compilations follows. Each book differs from this one in different ways, but in general, and by intent, none of them does everything this book sets out to do: treat theory in depth and as a discrete topic; treat theatrical and social dance equally; include readings dating from classical Antiquity to the twenty-first century; and link the readings, through brief introductory essays, from end to end by a narrative thread based on salient topics as seen from evolving perspectives"--
'Planes of Composition' focuses on how contemporary choreographic strategies initiate new modes of understanding the moving body in its multiple performances: racial, kinetic, political, ethical, and theoretical.
