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Widely regarded as the foremost choreographer of contemporary ballet, George Balanchine was, and continues to be, an institution and major inspiration in the world of dance. This book provides a technical explanation of the stylistic approaches that he taught in New York City between 1940 and 1960, as recorded by two prominent dancers who studied with him at that time. It replicates moments in the studio with the influential teacher, describing his instructions and corrections for twenty-four classes. These lessons not only introduce Balanchine's methods for executing steps, but also discuss the organization and development of his classes, shedding light on the aesthetics of his unique and celebrated style of movement.

This book tells how Caribbean dance is shaped by cultures mixing Africa and Europe and sometimes Asia in a new world. Many authors are cultural leaders on the islands, while others live elsewhere, but have spent years steeped in island cultures.? It starts with connective chapters, on calypso and wining for the Anglophone Caribbean, and on how the French and enslaved Africans spread dances throughout the Caribbean. Cuban chapters focus on the Haitian-influenced culture of Eastern Cuba, Arará and its connection to Africa, a memoir from the father of Cuban modern dance, Africanness, and a search for the roots of international ballroom rumba. It has a comprehensive look at the context and content of Jamaican folkloric dance, one on the inventors of Jamaican dancehall dance and the dances, and a Ghanian take on the Jamaican ritual tradition of Kumina. There are chapters on the Dominican misterios, the subculture of Dominican son, on dancing stars on Dominican television, and on contemporary Haitian choreographers. It includes the history of Puerto Rican experimental dancemakers, the quadrille and bele of Dominica, the personalities of St. Lucia seen through its dances, and also on dance in Barbados and how it has helped create a national identity, on the Big Drum of Carriacou, on the intertwined history of Trinidad and Tobago and its dance, and on the dance traditions of the Indians of Trinidad, from ritual Ramdilla to secular chutney.

Driven by exacting methods and hard data, this volume reveals gender dynamics within the dance world in the twenty-first century. It provides concrete evidence about how gender impacts the daily lives of dancers, choreographers, directors, educators, and students through surveys, interviews, analyses of data from institutional sources, and action research studies. Dancers, dance artists, and dance scholars from the United States, Australia, and Canada discuss equity in three areas: concert dance, the studio, and higher education. The chapters provide evidence of bias, stereotyping, and other behaviors that are often invisible to those involved, as well as to audiences. The contributors answer incisive questions about the role of gender in various aspects of the field, including physical expression and body image, classroom experiences and pedagogy, and performance and funding opportunities. The findings reveal how inequitable practices combined with societal pressures can create environments that hinder health, happiness, and success. At the same time, they highlight the individuals working to eliminate discrimination and open up new possibilities for expression and achievement in studios, choreography, performance venues, and institutions of higher education. The dance community can strive to eliminate discrimination, but first it must understand the status quo for gender in the dance world.

In recent years, site-specific dance has grown in popularity. In the wake of groundbreaking work by choreographers who left traditional performance spaces for other venues, more and more performances are cropping up, on skyscrapers, in alleyways, on trains, on the decks of aircraft carriers, and in myriad other unexpected locations worldwide. In this anthology of site-specific dance, the editors explore the work that choreographers create for non-traditional performance spaces and the thinking behind their creative choices. Combining interviews with and essays by practitioners of site dance, they look at the challenges and rewards of embracing alternative spaces. Examination of the work of artists such as Meredith Monk, Joanna Haigood, Stephan Koplowitz, Heidi Duckler, Ann Carlson, and Eiko Otake provides insights into why choreographers leave the theater to embrace the challenges of unconventional venues. The book also includes more than 80 photographs of site-specific performances, revealing how the arts, and movement in particular, can become part of and speak to our everyday lives.

Albion’s Dance was inspired by the author’s memory of her childhood ballet teacher who danced in Britain during World War Two. Dancers’ memoirs and the writings of dance critics are central resources for this book that asks how ballet in Britain survived during the war and how the end of war resulted in a newly refined national ballet. Exploring the so-called ballet boom during World War Two, the larger story of this book is one of how art and artists thrive during conflict, and how they respond pragmatically and creatively to privation and duress. The way ballet participated in propagandistic discourse and answered to a public mood of pragmatism and idealism are part of this story. Also considered are the distinct roles of dance critics, male and female dancers, producers, audiences, and choreographers. Each population contributed to the creation of a uniquely British ballet identity. After the war, British ballet emerged on the international stage demonstrating superb qualities of dramatic acuity, musicality, and sensitivity to the classic ballets.

Everything Is Choreography: The Musical Theater of Tommy Tune is the first full-scale analysis of the work of Tommy Tune, and his place in a lineage of Broadway’s great director-choreographers. The decade of the 1980s was considered a low point for the American musical. Tune’s predecessors in the art of complete musical staging like Jerome Robbins, Bob Fosse, Gower Champion, and Michael Bennett were either dead or withdrawn from the Broadway arena. Yet it was the period of Tune’s greatest success. The book examines how he adapted to an increasingly corporatized, high-stakes producing and funding environment. It considers how Tune kept the American musical a thriving, creative enterprise at a time when Broadway was dominated by British imports. It investigates Tune’s work since the mid-1990s, when he shifted his attentions to touring and regional productions, far from the glare of Broadway. Unlike his fellow director-choreographers, Tune also maintained a successful performing career, and the book details the deft balancing act that kept him working as a popular singer-dancer-actor while he was directing a series of striking and influential Broadway musicals.

This multi-author textbook provides an in-depth look at the rich and varied history of jazz dance, from its African roots in early American society until today. The book is divided into six main parts, each addressing a different aspect of jazz dance. The opening section explores the nature of jazz dance from the perspective of four different authors, and is capped by descriptions of the many different styles of jazz dance. The second section focuses on jazz dance history, giving an expansive overview beginning with African dance, through the jazz era of the 1920s-40s, the immense diversification of the late 20th century, and up to the present. The third part looks at master teachers and choreographers who shaped the way jazz dance was codified and performed from 1930-1980. The fourth section discusses dance genres which are closely related to jazz dance, including tap dance, musical theater dance, African-American concert dance, hip-hop dance, and dance in pop culture. Education and training is the focus of the fifth part, including an examination of jazz dance in colleges and universities, as well as private dance studios. Lastly, the sixth section looks at current topics in the jazz dance world including race, jazz dance in France, England, and Japan, and jazz dance aesthetics. The sum of these many parts is both a broader and deeper understanding of a uniquely American dance form, with its African roots and multiple permutations that have evolved as it has mixed with other dance forms and styles.

During his lifetime, Charles “Chuck” Walters enjoyed a reputation as one of the foremost director-choreographers of Hollywood motion pictures. From his earliest directorial triumphs, Good News, Easter Parade, and The Barkleys of Broadway, to his victorious Lili, High Society, and The Unsinkable Molly Brown, musicals directed by Walters seamlessly fuse movement, storytelling, and song. He was one of Broadway’s most prominent dancers in the 1930s, creating featured roles in Rodgers and Hart’s I Married an Angel and Cole Porter’s Jubilee and Du Barry Was a Lady. He supplied choreography for entertainment on Broadway (Let’s Face It, St. Louis Woman) and at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios in Hollywood (Meet Me in St. Louis, Girl Crazy). Especially renowned for the manner in which he showcased his stars, Walters skilfully guided Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Debbie Reynolds, Doris Day, Cary Grant, Shirley MacLaine, Lucille Ball, Esther Williams, Grace Kelly, and Joan Crawford. He enjoyed a unique rapport with Judy Garland, creating some of her most indelible stage and screen performances. Personally, Walters was one of the few “uncloseted” gay film directors to excel in studio-era Hollywood, living openly with his partner, a top industry talent agent. This detailed study is long overdue. Charles Walters: The Director Who Made Hollywood Dance corrects both the historical oversight and reassesses the career of this Academy Award nominated film director, whose boyhood dream of dance led to a firmly — and now finally — acknowledged position as a major contributor to American popular culture.