This book -- at once personal and analytical -- explores, in vibrant detail and compelling depth, the capacity of movement to express the way that human beings experience their lives and identities. In recounting her exploration of a town in the American Southwest, Deidre Sklar examines themes common to cultures around the world."—Benjamin S. Orlove, editor of The Allure of the Foreign
The second in the series set in the Derbyshire Peak District, Dancing with the Virgins is a tense psychological follow-up to Stephen Booth’s acclaimed debut Black Dog.
This groundbreaking collection combines ethnographic and historic strategies to reveal how dance plays crucial cultural roles in various regions of the world, including Tonga, Java, Bosnia-Herzegovina, New Mexico, India, Korea, Macedonia, and England. The essays find a balance between past and present and examine how dance and bodily practices are core identity and cultural creators. Reaching beyond the typically Eurocentric view of dance, Dancing from Past to Present opens a world of debate over the role dance plays in forming and expressing cultural identities around the world.
Dance plays an important role in many religious traditions, in rites of passage, processions, healing rituals or festivals. But it is also controversial, especially in Christianity. Colonial European Christian discourses tend to separate dance from religion(s) and spirituality. This volume explores dance as "Third Space", following Homi Bhabha's postcolonial metaphor. The "Inter-Dance approach" combines interdisciplinary theoretical considerations with case studies. International experts examine dance controversies and discourses from the early church to World Christianity, as well as in Hasidic Judaism, Greek mysteries, Islamic Sufism, West African Togolese religions, and Afro-Brazilian Umbanda. Christian dance theologies are unfolded and the boundary-crossing potential of dance in interreligious and intercultural encounters is explored. The volume breaks new ground in how dance as ephemeral performative art, embodied thought and gendered discourse can transform studies of religion.
The danza de matachines is a tradition with roots in the Spanish colonization of Mexico that summons history for Mexican, Chicano, and indigenous communities. The elaborate ritual, regalia, and practices associated with the tradition tell of the repeated appearances of Our Lady of Guadalupe to the Aztec Indian Juan Diego as she provided instructions for the building of a church. Matachines have been dancing in Mexico and portions of the southwestern United States for as long as 300 years, and various troupes in San Antonio date their beginnings to the late 1800s, as immigrants from Mexico brought the tradition to the southern reaches of Texas. In We Dance for the Virgen, Robert R. Botello, who participated in a family-based troupe from 2006 to 2019, reviews the history of the tradition while contrasting the troupe's internal changes in traditions with those originating from the larger social and political context of San Antonio. In Botello's words, this book "is as much about the dance and its history as it is about my transformation as a matachines dancer." Botello ultimately examines issues of cultural appropriation arising from the association of the troupe with the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Antonio, revealing the resilience in a tradition that has remained true to its origins across many generations of dancers.
In this biographical novel, Gladys Malvern shares the incredible story of Anna Pavlova, one of the most revered and celebrated ballerinas of all time. Malvern presents Pavlova’s life in enchanting prose, allowing the reader to experience Pavlova’s inspirational first exposure to a performance of Sleeping Beauty, the origination of her defining dance The Dying Swan, her illustrious rise to fame as a prima ballerina, and her extensive world tours. You don’t have to be a fan of the ballet to enjoy this captivating tale, available for the first time in ebook.
Enjoy this bad boy book by Best-selling billionaire romance author Michelle Love... I know there is an age gap between us. But I can’t get this bad boy out of my head! I fell in love with him the day we met! Pilot Scamo. World-famous photographer & billionaire. He’s a drop-dead gorgeous man. I know he is older, but there’s a special connection when I’m with him. I feel it in my heart, my head, my body. It’s like electricity when he makes passionate love to me. There is only one problem. His ex-wife. A crazy psycho that wishes us nothing but the worst. With so much dark history and so many people against us, all we have is each other. I’ll do everything I can to stay with him! Even if it costs me my life.
The Third Book of Joy: Chain Dance is the second notebook of family lore, the collection of Joy's magical stories about her enslaved ancestors, researched by Professor Bo Wolfson in Burning Streams; the first notebook was published in Blood of Angels. When Heaven's heartbroken death in childbirth and Whip Man's torture at her father's hands lead her to resurrect herself as a death dancer, magic and terror drive the plantation's owner off of his land. Most of the men and women who labor on the haunted plantation flee, following Heaven's brother to his Louisiana swampland. But not everyone runs. A winged angel, a dancing coven of witches, a shapeshifting wildcat, and a ferocious pack of werewolves defend Solace's plantation from attack. Marauding patrollers and opportunists clash with the cunning, the blood thirst, and the supernatural powers unleashed by women determined to free themselves and the men and children they love.
After her body experiences the Blossom, the confused virgin Vuyis heart begins to burn with unquenchable and relentless passion. Her parents and the village practices compel her to travel to the Village of Virtue, where the fire in her heart would be molded and, thus, gain permission to reign as queen with the faithful. With other virgins, she quickly learns that dreams, pain, and sacrifice are strangehowever necessarybedfellows. Though determined to reach her destination, her journey is littered with sadistic creatures that seek to corrupt her, break her down, and puncture her dreams of purity. Corrupting Virgins is a book about purity, second chances, and tsunamis of hatred. It is a story about wading through oceans of opinions, tunnelling through mountains of ignorance, and dancing through the joys and sorrows of life. It is a story that seeks to defend love in a society where love is constantly on trial. Corrupting Virgins is a book about wrestling arguments and monsters that besiege those who believe in faith, hope, and love. Through a unique African and poetic lens, the reader will be taken through Jungles of Insult, Trains of Testing, Rivers of Life, Cities of Instant Gratification, and Villages of Virtue.
