Yvonne Hardt
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195386691
- eISBN:
- 9780199863600
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195386691.003.009
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
Yvonne Hardt links the era of early German modern dance called Ausdruckstanz (expressive dance) and the workers’ culture movement in the Germany of the 1920s and 1930s. Both were influenced by the ...
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Yvonne Hardt links the era of early German modern dance called Ausdruckstanz (expressive dance) and the workers’ culture movement in the Germany of the 1920s and 1930s. Both were influenced by the life reform movement (Lebensreformbewegung), which envisioned that a different society could be achieved by a new body culture (Körperkultur). Whereas Ausdruckstanz has most frequently been discussed in terms of how it could empower women, it also, theoretically, offered men the chance to “rediscover” themselves in ways that could emancipate them from traditional gender roles. At the same time, early modern dance could also reflect ideals of the Socialist and Communist ideology, which reinscribed some old male‐female divisions by emphasizing the physical strength of the male worker. Thematic aspects in the work of the following prominent Weimar dance figures are considered: Rudolf Laban, Martin Gleisner, and Jean (Hans) Weidt. Implicit in Hardt's analysis is the difficulty of embodying political ideals in dance in a way that acknowledges the multiple strands of complex gender identities.Less
Yvonne Hardt links the era of early German modern dance called Ausdruckstanz (expressive dance) and the workers’ culture movement in the Germany of the 1920s and 1930s. Both were influenced by the life reform movement (Lebensreformbewegung), which envisioned that a different society could be achieved by a new body culture (Körperkultur). Whereas Ausdruckstanz has most frequently been discussed in terms of how it could empower women, it also, theoretically, offered men the chance to “rediscover” themselves in ways that could emancipate them from traditional gender roles. At the same time, early modern dance could also reflect ideals of the Socialist and Communist ideology, which reinscribed some old male‐female divisions by emphasizing the physical strength of the male worker. Thematic aspects in the work of the following prominent Weimar dance figures are considered: Rudolf Laban, Martin Gleisner, and Jean (Hans) Weidt. Implicit in Hardt's analysis is the difficulty of embodying political ideals in dance in a way that acknowledges the multiple strands of complex gender identities.
Erin Brannigan
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195367232
- eISBN:
- 9780199894178
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195367232.003.0004
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
Turning to gestural performance in dancefilm, this chapter examines the exchange between silent film performers and the new discipline of modern dance in the first decades of the twentieth century, ...
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Turning to gestural performance in dancefilm, this chapter examines the exchange between silent film performers and the new discipline of modern dance in the first decades of the twentieth century, connecting this to the choreographic project of Pina Bausch. In the early years of cinema in Hollywood, many actors were originally dancers or were sent to study with the early modern dance duet Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn at the Denishawn School in Los Angeles. The focus on physical performance in the silent film era brought dance and acting into an intimate relationship and produced a gestural mediality—a term drawn from Giorgio Agamben's theory of gestural cinema—that can be traced through to contemporary dancefilm.Less
Turning to gestural performance in dancefilm, this chapter examines the exchange between silent film performers and the new discipline of modern dance in the first decades of the twentieth century, connecting this to the choreographic project of Pina Bausch. In the early years of cinema in Hollywood, many actors were originally dancers or were sent to study with the early modern dance duet Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn at the Denishawn School in Los Angeles. The focus on physical performance in the silent film era brought dance and acting into an intimate relationship and produced a gestural mediality—a term drawn from Giorgio Agamben's theory of gestural cinema—that can be traced through to contemporary dancefilm.
Rebecca Rossen
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- June 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199791767
- eISBN:
- 9780199375851
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199791767.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Dance, Ethnomusicology, World Music
While Jews are commonly referred to as the “people of the book,” American Jewish choreographers have consistently turned to dance as a means to articulate personal and collective identities; tangle ...
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While Jews are commonly referred to as the “people of the book,” American Jewish choreographers have consistently turned to dance as a means to articulate personal and collective identities; tangle with stereotypes; advance social and political agendas; and imagine new possibilities for themselves as individuals, artists, and Jews. Dancing Jewish delineates this rich history, demonstrating that Jewish choreographers have not only been vital contributors to American modern and postmodern dance, but they have also played a critical and unacknowledged role in the history of Jews in the United States. By examining the role that dance has played in the struggle between Jewish identification and integration into American life, the book moves across disciplinary boundaries to show how cultural identity, nationality, ethnicity, and gender are formed and performed through the body and its motions. A choreographer as well as a historian, Rebecca Rossen offers evocative analyses of dances while asserting the importance of embodied methodologies to academic research. Featuring over fifty images, a companion website, and key works from 1930 to 2005 by a wide range of artists—including David Dorfman, Dan Froot, David Gordon, Hadassah, Margaret Jenkins, Pauline Koner, Dvora Lapson, Liz Lerman, Victoria Marks, Sophie Maslow, Anna Sokolow, and Benjamin Zemach—Dancing Jewish offers a comprehensive framework for interpreting performance and establishes dance as a crucial site in which American Jews have grappled with cultural belonging, personal and collective histories, and the values that bind and pull them apart.Less
While Jews are commonly referred to as the “people of the book,” American Jewish choreographers have consistently turned to dance as a means to articulate personal and collective identities; tangle with stereotypes; advance social and political agendas; and imagine new possibilities for themselves as individuals, artists, and Jews. Dancing Jewish delineates this rich history, demonstrating that Jewish choreographers have not only been vital contributors to American modern and postmodern dance, but they have also played a critical and unacknowledged role in the history of Jews in the United States. By examining the role that dance has played in the struggle between Jewish identification and integration into American life, the book moves across disciplinary boundaries to show how cultural identity, nationality, ethnicity, and gender are formed and performed through the body and its motions. A choreographer as well as a historian, Rebecca Rossen offers evocative analyses of dances while asserting the importance of embodied methodologies to academic research. Featuring over fifty images, a companion website, and key works from 1930 to 2005 by a wide range of artists—including David Dorfman, Dan Froot, David Gordon, Hadassah, Margaret Jenkins, Pauline Koner, Dvora Lapson, Liz Lerman, Victoria Marks, Sophie Maslow, Anna Sokolow, and Benjamin Zemach—Dancing Jewish offers a comprehensive framework for interpreting performance and establishes dance as a crucial site in which American Jews have grappled with cultural belonging, personal and collective histories, and the values that bind and pull them apart.
Erin Brannigan
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195367232
- eISBN:
- 9780199894178
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195367232.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
Maya Deren's writings on film provide the basis for considering her dancefilm works such as A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945) and Ritual in Transfigured Time (1945–1946). A pivotal figure in ...
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Maya Deren's writings on film provide the basis for considering her dancefilm works such as A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945) and Ritual in Transfigured Time (1945–1946). A pivotal figure in the history of dancefilm, Deren's films marked the re‐emergence of the form within the avantgarde for the first time since the experiments of the Futurists, Surrealists, and Dadaists earlier in the twentieth century. Operating outside the major American film studios, which were releasing their highest output of dance musicals, Deren was working with modern and untrained dancers to create choreographies for the screen. Deren realized seminal strategies for dancefilm in the mid‐twentieth century that can be found in the most recent examples of the form. Vertical film form is a concept developed by Deren to account for the different film structure in non‐narrative films—what she calls “poetic film.” Rather than progressing “horizontally” with the logic of the narrative, vertical films or sequences explore the quality of moments, images, ideas, and movements outside of such imperatives. Depersonalization refers to a type of screen performance that subsumes the individual into the choreography of the film as a whole. Actors become figures across whom movement transfers as an “event.” The manipulation of gestural action through stylization occurs through individual performances as well as cinematic effects, the two levels of filmic performance combining to create screen choreographies.Less
Maya Deren's writings on film provide the basis for considering her dancefilm works such as A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945) and Ritual in Transfigured Time (1945–1946). A pivotal figure in the history of dancefilm, Deren's films marked the re‐emergence of the form within the avantgarde for the first time since the experiments of the Futurists, Surrealists, and Dadaists earlier in the twentieth century. Operating outside the major American film studios, which were releasing their highest output of dance musicals, Deren was working with modern and untrained dancers to create choreographies for the screen. Deren realized seminal strategies for dancefilm in the mid‐twentieth century that can be found in the most recent examples of the form. Vertical film form is a concept developed by Deren to account for the different film structure in non‐narrative films—what she calls “poetic film.” Rather than progressing “horizontally” with the logic of the narrative, vertical films or sequences explore the quality of moments, images, ideas, and movements outside of such imperatives. Depersonalization refers to a type of screen performance that subsumes the individual into the choreography of the film as a whole. Actors become figures across whom movement transfers as an “event.” The manipulation of gestural action through stylization occurs through individual performances as well as cinematic effects, the two levels of filmic performance combining to create screen choreographies.
Karl Toepfer
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780813040257
- eISBN:
- 9780813043869
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813040257.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
Modern dance in Europe established itself as a distinctive aesthetic experience in the early twentieth century through solo dancing by a lone woman in a program of dances designed to reveal the power ...
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Modern dance in Europe established itself as a distinctive aesthetic experience in the early twentieth century through solo dancing by a lone woman in a program of dances designed to reveal the power of movement to define and amplify her unique personality. To be modern was to be alone and free of social contexts. The dancer was allowed by audiences of the day to appear on stage in sensual and seductive ways. The door was open to expressionist dance. Nine dancers are presented: Mata Hari, Olga Desmond, Anna Pavlova, Gertrud Leistikow, Lavinia Schulz, Edith von Schrenk, Niddy Impekoven, Oda Schottmüller, and Ella Ilbak.Less
Modern dance in Europe established itself as a distinctive aesthetic experience in the early twentieth century through solo dancing by a lone woman in a program of dances designed to reveal the power of movement to define and amplify her unique personality. To be modern was to be alone and free of social contexts. The dancer was allowed by audiences of the day to appear on stage in sensual and seductive ways. The door was open to expressionist dance. Nine dancers are presented: Mata Hari, Olga Desmond, Anna Pavlova, Gertrud Leistikow, Lavinia Schulz, Edith von Schrenk, Niddy Impekoven, Oda Schottmüller, and Ella Ilbak.
Rebecca Rossen
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- June 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199791767
- eISBN:
- 9780199375851
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199791767.003.0004
- Subject:
- Music, Dance, Ethnomusicology, World Music
This chapter further scrutinizes gender and Jewishness through an examination of Anna Sokolow’s Songs of a Semite (1943), Pearl Lang’s Song of Deborah (1949–67), and Victoria Marks’s My First Solo ...
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This chapter further scrutinizes gender and Jewishness through an examination of Anna Sokolow’s Songs of a Semite (1943), Pearl Lang’s Song of Deborah (1949–67), and Victoria Marks’s My First Solo (1997). Unlike the women discussed in chapter 1, Sokolow and Lang avoided the stigma of “Jewish dance” through their deployment of mythic modernism. Their triumphant depictions of biblical heroines undermined ideas about Jewish victimhood prevalent during and after World War II, while also asserting the value of women to Jewish and American history. During the mid-twentieth century, many Jews moved from the urban working class into the suburban middle class, replacing secular radicalism with a more conventional value system. Marks addressed the impact of this shift in My First Solo, in which she took a biblical anti-heroine, Lot’s wife, and transformed her stasis into an inspired rebellion against organized Judaism and middle-class gender norms.Less
This chapter further scrutinizes gender and Jewishness through an examination of Anna Sokolow’s Songs of a Semite (1943), Pearl Lang’s Song of Deborah (1949–67), and Victoria Marks’s My First Solo (1997). Unlike the women discussed in chapter 1, Sokolow and Lang avoided the stigma of “Jewish dance” through their deployment of mythic modernism. Their triumphant depictions of biblical heroines undermined ideas about Jewish victimhood prevalent during and after World War II, while also asserting the value of women to Jewish and American history. During the mid-twentieth century, many Jews moved from the urban working class into the suburban middle class, replacing secular radicalism with a more conventional value system. Marks addressed the impact of this shift in My First Solo, in which she took a biblical anti-heroine, Lot’s wife, and transformed her stasis into an inspired rebellion against organized Judaism and middle-class gender norms.
Mark Franko
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199777662
- eISBN:
- 9780199950119
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199777662.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Dance, History, American
Using newly discovered archival sources this book examines the major works of Martha Graham between 1938 and 1953, arguably her most productive period. Graham’s artistic maturation overlaps the ...
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Using newly discovered archival sources this book examines the major works of Martha Graham between 1938 and 1953, arguably her most productive period. Graham’s artistic maturation overlaps the global crisis of fascism, the conflict of World War II, and the post-war period that ushered in the Cold War. It also corresponds to the trajectory of her personal and professional relationship with dancer Erick Hawkins who first appeared with the Martha Graham Dance Company in 1938 when her art was taking on new dramaturgical complexity, political commitment and mytho-graphic dimension. As a relationship between a young man and a mature woman as well as between an established and a fledgling artist, the Graham-Hawkins story was a tormented one. The vicissitudes of this relationship and its emotional tone will be an integral part of the description of Graham’s work undertaken in this study. The sociological axes of seven major works are Graham’s involvement with anti-Fascism prior and during World War Two and her involvement with post-Freudian psychoanalytic theory and Jungian psychoanalysis in the postwar period. This book relates Graham’s original and groundbreaking use of myth to both anti-fascism and psychoanalysis, before and after the war respectively, and thus brings her choreography into direct relationship both to the key events of her time and to her personal life.Less
Using newly discovered archival sources this book examines the major works of Martha Graham between 1938 and 1953, arguably her most productive period. Graham’s artistic maturation overlaps the global crisis of fascism, the conflict of World War II, and the post-war period that ushered in the Cold War. It also corresponds to the trajectory of her personal and professional relationship with dancer Erick Hawkins who first appeared with the Martha Graham Dance Company in 1938 when her art was taking on new dramaturgical complexity, political commitment and mytho-graphic dimension. As a relationship between a young man and a mature woman as well as between an established and a fledgling artist, the Graham-Hawkins story was a tormented one. The vicissitudes of this relationship and its emotional tone will be an integral part of the description of Graham’s work undertaken in this study. The sociological axes of seven major works are Graham’s involvement with anti-Fascism prior and during World War Two and her involvement with post-Freudian psychoanalytic theory and Jungian psychoanalysis in the postwar period. This book relates Graham’s original and groundbreaking use of myth to both anti-fascism and psychoanalysis, before and after the war respectively, and thus brings her choreography into direct relationship both to the key events of her time and to her personal life.
Rebecca Rossen
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- June 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199791767
- eISBN:
- 9780199375851
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199791767.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Dance, Ethnomusicology, World Music
Dancing Jewish investigates how Jewish identity is embodied and represented in American modern and postmodern dance over a seventy-five-year period (1930–2005). The introduction distinguishes “Jewish ...
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Dancing Jewish investigates how Jewish identity is embodied and represented in American modern and postmodern dance over a seventy-five-year period (1930–2005). The introduction distinguishes “Jewish dance,” which implies a distinct and fixed genre, from “dancing Jewish,” a mode of representation in which Jewish choreographers continually engage (and revise) a select but shifting repertory of images and themes in crafting their work. In addition to outlining the scope of the project and situating her findings in relation to dance and American Jewish scholarship to date, Rossen examines how cultural identity, ethnicity, and gender are formed and performed through the body and its movements, and delineates a persuasive, interdisciplinary methodology for researching and interpreting Jewishness in American dance.Less
Dancing Jewish investigates how Jewish identity is embodied and represented in American modern and postmodern dance over a seventy-five-year period (1930–2005). The introduction distinguishes “Jewish dance,” which implies a distinct and fixed genre, from “dancing Jewish,” a mode of representation in which Jewish choreographers continually engage (and revise) a select but shifting repertory of images and themes in crafting their work. In addition to outlining the scope of the project and situating her findings in relation to dance and American Jewish scholarship to date, Rossen examines how cultural identity, ethnicity, and gender are formed and performed through the body and its movements, and delineates a persuasive, interdisciplinary methodology for researching and interpreting Jewishness in American dance.
Ramiro Guerra and Melinda Mousouris (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780813034676
- eISBN:
- 9780813046303
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813034676.003.0004
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
Ramiro Guerra, the fountainhead of Cuban modern dance, looks back on this life and work, from his childhood in Havana in the 1930s, to becoming a dancer and beginning to transcend the conventions of ...
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Ramiro Guerra, the fountainhead of Cuban modern dance, looks back on this life and work, from his childhood in Havana in the 1930s, to becoming a dancer and beginning to transcend the conventions of dance and theater, to his innovative work as the founder of Cuba's national modern dance company, Conjunto Nacional de Danza Moderna, now called Danza Contemporánea de Cuba. After a daring site-specific piece of his was suspended by the government in 1971, Guerra left the company to explore Cuban folklore, gesture, and humor, to choreograph for other companies such as Danza Voluminosa and Danza Libre, and to write about dance. He continued to choreograph highly experimental works such as “De la Memoria Fragmentada” and “Ordalias,” which used unusual spaces, including his own apartment tower.Less
Ramiro Guerra, the fountainhead of Cuban modern dance, looks back on this life and work, from his childhood in Havana in the 1930s, to becoming a dancer and beginning to transcend the conventions of dance and theater, to his innovative work as the founder of Cuba's national modern dance company, Conjunto Nacional de Danza Moderna, now called Danza Contemporánea de Cuba. After a daring site-specific piece of his was suspended by the government in 1971, Guerra left the company to explore Cuban folklore, gesture, and humor, to choreograph for other companies such as Danza Voluminosa and Danza Libre, and to write about dance. He continued to choreograph highly experimental works such as “De la Memoria Fragmentada” and “Ordalias,” which used unusual spaces, including his own apartment tower.
Daniel J. Walkowitz
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814794692
- eISBN:
- 9780814784525
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814794692.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This chapter chronicles the world of country dance as it underwent changes during the 1970s. The controversial 1974 visit to Pinewoods Camp of the pioneering dance choreographer and teacher from ...
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This chapter chronicles the world of country dance as it underwent changes during the 1970s. The controversial 1974 visit to Pinewoods Camp of the pioneering dance choreographer and teacher from London—Pat Shaw—was the transformative symbolic moment. Shaw's view of the folk reflected struggles within folklore generally, and while it empowered some, it threatened others, most especially those committed to preserving what they imagined to be Sharp's legacy: the Playford tradition. Shaw had set in motion the development of a new “modern” genre of dances in the spirit of historical English Country Dance, leaving it to choreographers to interpret how that historical “spirit” or “tradition” would be represented in the newly written “folk” dances. The result was the emergence by the century's end of a new subset of ECD: Modern English Country Dance.Less
This chapter chronicles the world of country dance as it underwent changes during the 1970s. The controversial 1974 visit to Pinewoods Camp of the pioneering dance choreographer and teacher from London—Pat Shaw—was the transformative symbolic moment. Shaw's view of the folk reflected struggles within folklore generally, and while it empowered some, it threatened others, most especially those committed to preserving what they imagined to be Sharp's legacy: the Playford tradition. Shaw had set in motion the development of a new “modern” genre of dances in the spirit of historical English Country Dance, leaving it to choreographers to interpret how that historical “spirit” or “tradition” would be represented in the newly written “folk” dances. The result was the emergence by the century's end of a new subset of ECD: Modern English Country Dance.
Daniel J. Walkowitz
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814794692
- eISBN:
- 9780814784525
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814794692.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This chapter traces the emergence of a transcontinental Modern English Country Dance (MECD) and the liberal body carriage that its music and style promulgated. In the last decade of the twentieth ...
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This chapter traces the emergence of a transcontinental Modern English Country Dance (MECD) and the liberal body carriage that its music and style promulgated. In the last decade of the twentieth century, MECD became a robust transcontinental and transatlantic leisure activity of postwar baby boomers. MECD during this era became a continental movement, both in its geographic stretch and in its development of a mobile transcontinental and transatlantic community with shared passions and a shared emergent new dance practice. It was as much a new spirit, tempo, and style of dancing as it was a corpus of newly written dances that advanced that spirit. And within this thriving urban sphere, relatively affluent MECD dancers inhabited a countercultural space that echoed with the contradictions of liberalism.Less
This chapter traces the emergence of a transcontinental Modern English Country Dance (MECD) and the liberal body carriage that its music and style promulgated. In the last decade of the twentieth century, MECD became a robust transcontinental and transatlantic leisure activity of postwar baby boomers. MECD during this era became a continental movement, both in its geographic stretch and in its development of a mobile transcontinental and transatlantic community with shared passions and a shared emergent new dance practice. It was as much a new spirit, tempo, and style of dancing as it was a corpus of newly written dances that advanced that spirit. And within this thriving urban sphere, relatively affluent MECD dancers inhabited a countercultural space that echoed with the contradictions of liberalism.
Faye Yuan Kleeman
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824838607
- eISBN:
- 9780824871482
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824838607.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This chapter examines the relationship between private body and empire by focusing on the life experiences of two modern dancers from the colonies: Choi Seunghee (1911–1969) of Chōsen and Tsai ...
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This chapter examines the relationship between private body and empire by focusing on the life experiences of two modern dancers from the colonies: Choi Seunghee (1911–1969) of Chōsen and Tsai Juiyueh (1921–2 005) of Taiwan. The stories of Choi and Tsai illustrate how the cosmopolitanism and universalism inherent in avant-garde art can overcome the colonial division between the metropole and the colonies and yet be handicapped by postcolonial conditions. These two women are prime examples of how knowledge and (colonial) modernity circulated within the Japanese empire. This chapter explores how the lives of Choi and Tsai intersected and were altered by their encounters with the Japanese modern dancer Ishii Baku. It also considers the role of dance in elucidating the diverse patterns and trajectories of knowledge flow and cultural exchanges within the empire, and in a global movement of avant-garde art.Less
This chapter examines the relationship between private body and empire by focusing on the life experiences of two modern dancers from the colonies: Choi Seunghee (1911–1969) of Chōsen and Tsai Juiyueh (1921–2 005) of Taiwan. The stories of Choi and Tsai illustrate how the cosmopolitanism and universalism inherent in avant-garde art can overcome the colonial division between the metropole and the colonies and yet be handicapped by postcolonial conditions. These two women are prime examples of how knowledge and (colonial) modernity circulated within the Japanese empire. This chapter explores how the lives of Choi and Tsai intersected and were altered by their encounters with the Japanese modern dancer Ishii Baku. It also considers the role of dance in elucidating the diverse patterns and trajectories of knowledge flow and cultural exchanges within the empire, and in a global movement of avant-garde art.
Ann M. Axtmann
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780813049113
- eISBN:
- 9780813050010
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813049113.003.0007
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
There are many non–Indians––wannabes, hobbyists, and New Age practitioners––who dance at powwows by “playing Indian.” This chapter continues the discussion, begun in chapter 3, of the long history of ...
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There are many non–Indians––wannabes, hobbyists, and New Age practitioners––who dance at powwows by “playing Indian.” This chapter continues the discussion, begun in chapter 3, of the long history of this practice from colonial times onward. By close examination of how these non–Indians move, we can appreciate the stark contrasts of wannabe and Indian dancing. Axtmann discusses early dance scholars––Bernard S. Mason, Ernest T. Seton, and Julia M. Buttree––and modern dance innovators of the twentieth century––Ted Shawn, Lester Horton, Martha Graham, Erik Hawkins, Mexican-born José Limón, and Tom Two Arrows (Thomas Dorsey) of Lenni-Lenape descent ––within the context of wannabes and as people duly influenced by Native culture. Considering the proliferation of wannabes outside the United States––on the world stage––and the ideas of masking and appropriation, Axtmann addresses two primary questions: (1) Why are wannabe non-Indians so invested in Native dance? and (2) What meanings and motivations drive their actions?Less
There are many non–Indians––wannabes, hobbyists, and New Age practitioners––who dance at powwows by “playing Indian.” This chapter continues the discussion, begun in chapter 3, of the long history of this practice from colonial times onward. By close examination of how these non–Indians move, we can appreciate the stark contrasts of wannabe and Indian dancing. Axtmann discusses early dance scholars––Bernard S. Mason, Ernest T. Seton, and Julia M. Buttree––and modern dance innovators of the twentieth century––Ted Shawn, Lester Horton, Martha Graham, Erik Hawkins, Mexican-born José Limón, and Tom Two Arrows (Thomas Dorsey) of Lenni-Lenape descent ––within the context of wannabes and as people duly influenced by Native culture. Considering the proliferation of wannabes outside the United States––on the world stage––and the ideas of masking and appropriation, Axtmann addresses two primary questions: (1) Why are wannabe non-Indians so invested in Native dance? and (2) What meanings and motivations drive their actions?
Claudia Gitelman and Barbara Palfy (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780813040257
- eISBN:
- 9780813043869
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813040257.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
Soloists ignited the modern dance movement and have continued to renew it. These self-fashioned artists represent the individuality inherent in modernism—the arts movement that arose in the late ...
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Soloists ignited the modern dance movement and have continued to renew it. These self-fashioned artists represent the individuality inherent in modernism—the arts movement that arose in the late 1800s—and its successor, postmodernism. Omitting well-documented pioneers, eight notable writers examine a roster of iconoclasts, male and female, whose careers shaped cultural attitudes worldwide. The perils and rewards of a soloist's life become clear. The role of government support is also addressed.Less
Soloists ignited the modern dance movement and have continued to renew it. These self-fashioned artists represent the individuality inherent in modernism—the arts movement that arose in the late 1800s—and its successor, postmodernism. Omitting well-documented pioneers, eight notable writers examine a roster of iconoclasts, male and female, whose careers shaped cultural attitudes worldwide. The perils and rewards of a soloist's life become clear. The role of government support is also addressed.
Susan Jones
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199565320
- eISBN:
- 9780191765995
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199565320.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
The opening chapter explores a modernist engagement between literature and dance as it emerged through the writing and experimental typography of Stéphane Mallarmé, who, inspired by the innovative ...
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The opening chapter explores a modernist engagement between literature and dance as it emerged through the writing and experimental typography of Stéphane Mallarmé, who, inspired by the innovative performances of Loïe Fuller and other dancers in Paris at the fin de siècle, provided a conceptual framework for this relationship. Mallarmé's primarily symbolist poetics, identifying the ‘écriture corporelle’ of the dancing body, also questioned the creative relationship of artist to the production of art, and focused on an economy of form that drew on Fuller's use of experimental choreography, stage technologies, and design. The Mallarméan dialogue of dance and symbolist literature was sustained in the twentieth century by writers including Paul Valéry, Arthur Symons, Guillaume Apollinaire, and W. B. Yeats, by choreographers such as Vaslav Nijinsky, and, through a number of transatlantic transmissions, by the choreography of Doris Humphrey and Martha Graham.Less
The opening chapter explores a modernist engagement between literature and dance as it emerged through the writing and experimental typography of Stéphane Mallarmé, who, inspired by the innovative performances of Loïe Fuller and other dancers in Paris at the fin de siècle, provided a conceptual framework for this relationship. Mallarmé's primarily symbolist poetics, identifying the ‘écriture corporelle’ of the dancing body, also questioned the creative relationship of artist to the production of art, and focused on an economy of form that drew on Fuller's use of experimental choreography, stage technologies, and design. The Mallarméan dialogue of dance and symbolist literature was sustained in the twentieth century by writers including Paul Valéry, Arthur Symons, Guillaume Apollinaire, and W. B. Yeats, by choreographers such as Vaslav Nijinsky, and, through a number of transatlantic transmissions, by the choreography of Doris Humphrey and Martha Graham.
Mary Simonson
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199898015
- eISBN:
- 9780199369683
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199898015.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, Dance, History, American
Dancer Rita Sacchetto’s little-known Tanzbilder (“Dance Pictures”) tend to be read as elaborate tableaux vivants. Yet close examination of several of Sacchetto’s writings and pieces, including the ...
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Dancer Rita Sacchetto’s little-known Tanzbilder (“Dance Pictures”) tend to be read as elaborate tableaux vivants. Yet close examination of several of Sacchetto’s writings and pieces, including the Botticelli-inspired Der Tanz der Simonetta and her “suffrage dance” Awakening of Woman, which referenced Grieg’s Peer Gynt suites, a Walt Whitman poem, Botticelli visual effects, and Wagnerian stage settings, reveals otherwise. Sacchetto was not interested in replicating paintings, nor translating them into dance. Rather, she adopted the representational practices and formal structures of visual art, music, poetry, and silent film in order to create danced interpretations of these works; out of these materials, she also developed an artistic theory of dance that distinguished her from her contemporary Isadora Duncan.Less
Dancer Rita Sacchetto’s little-known Tanzbilder (“Dance Pictures”) tend to be read as elaborate tableaux vivants. Yet close examination of several of Sacchetto’s writings and pieces, including the Botticelli-inspired Der Tanz der Simonetta and her “suffrage dance” Awakening of Woman, which referenced Grieg’s Peer Gynt suites, a Walt Whitman poem, Botticelli visual effects, and Wagnerian stage settings, reveals otherwise. Sacchetto was not interested in replicating paintings, nor translating them into dance. Rather, she adopted the representational practices and formal structures of visual art, music, poetry, and silent film in order to create danced interpretations of these works; out of these materials, she also developed an artistic theory of dance that distinguished her from her contemporary Isadora Duncan.
Mary Simonson
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199898015
- eISBN:
- 9780199369683
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199898015.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Dance, History, American
In the early twentieth century, female performers regularly appeared on the stages and screens of American cities. Though advertised as dancers, mimics, singers, or actresses, they often exceeded ...
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In the early twentieth century, female performers regularly appeared on the stages and screens of American cities. Though advertised as dancers, mimics, singers, or actresses, they often exceeded these categories. Instead, their performances adopted an aesthetic of intermediality, weaving together techniques and elements drawn from a wide variety of genres and media, including ballet, art music, photography, early modern dance, vaudeville traditions, silent film, and more. Onstage and on-screen, performers borrowed from existing musical scores and narratives, referred to contemporary shows, films, and events, and mimicked fellow performers, skating neatly across various media, art forms, and traditions. The performances and conceptions of art that emerged were innovative, compelling, and deeply meaningful. This book examines these performances and the performers behind them, focusing particularly on the ways in which they negotiated turn-of-the-century American social and cultural issues, including technological developments and commodification, new modes of perception, evolving understandings of the body and the self, and shifting conceptions of gender, race, and sexual identity. Tracing the various modes of intermediality at work on- and offstage, Body Knowledge re-imagines early twentieth-century art and entertainment as both fluid and convergent.Less
In the early twentieth century, female performers regularly appeared on the stages and screens of American cities. Though advertised as dancers, mimics, singers, or actresses, they often exceeded these categories. Instead, their performances adopted an aesthetic of intermediality, weaving together techniques and elements drawn from a wide variety of genres and media, including ballet, art music, photography, early modern dance, vaudeville traditions, silent film, and more. Onstage and on-screen, performers borrowed from existing musical scores and narratives, referred to contemporary shows, films, and events, and mimicked fellow performers, skating neatly across various media, art forms, and traditions. The performances and conceptions of art that emerged were innovative, compelling, and deeply meaningful. This book examines these performances and the performers behind them, focusing particularly on the ways in which they negotiated turn-of-the-century American social and cultural issues, including technological developments and commodification, new modes of perception, evolving understandings of the body and the self, and shifting conceptions of gender, race, and sexual identity. Tracing the various modes of intermediality at work on- and offstage, Body Knowledge re-imagines early twentieth-century art and entertainment as both fluid and convergent.
Karen Mozingo
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252036767
- eISBN:
- 9780252093869
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252036767.003.0007
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
Lotte Goslar employed clowning and fairy tales throughout her choreographic career to create a feminist disruption of romanticism and tragedy in German and American dance representations of women. ...
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Lotte Goslar employed clowning and fairy tales throughout her choreographic career to create a feminist disruption of romanticism and tragedy in German and American dance representations of women. However, her departure from the tragic moods and narratives of Ausdruckstanz and her resistance to conventional representations of the intellectual emigration trouble the histories of dance and exile on both sides of the Atlantic. This chapter examines the performance of clowning in Goslar's works, an artistic strategy that marginalized the choreographer in histories of modern dance on both sides of the Atlantic. Writing Goslar back into both histories, it articulates a richly alternative vision of how dance engages its historical time and place.Less
Lotte Goslar employed clowning and fairy tales throughout her choreographic career to create a feminist disruption of romanticism and tragedy in German and American dance representations of women. However, her departure from the tragic moods and narratives of Ausdruckstanz and her resistance to conventional representations of the intellectual emigration trouble the histories of dance and exile on both sides of the Atlantic. This chapter examines the performance of clowning in Goslar's works, an artistic strategy that marginalized the choreographer in histories of modern dance on both sides of the Atlantic. Writing Goslar back into both histories, it articulates a richly alternative vision of how dance engages its historical time and place.
Susan Jones
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199565320
- eISBN:
- 9780191765995
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199565320.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter focuses on Virginia Woolf's ongoing engagement with dance, evident from her letters, diaries, essays, and fiction. In her literary experimentation between the earliest journal essays ...
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This chapter focuses on Virginia Woolf's ongoing engagement with dance, evident from her letters, diaries, essays, and fiction. In her literary experimentation between the earliest journal essays through to Between the Acts (1941) she reflected both a Mallarméan emphasis on economy of gesture and a Nietzschean ‘primitivism’ as she sought alternative modes of expression and responded to the burgeoning popularity of social dance, Greek dance, the Ballets Russes, and—prompted by Bloomsbury connections with the dancer Lydia Lopokova and artists Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell—she witnessed the earliest choreographic experiments of Frederick Ashton and Ninette de Valois in the 1930s. Dance operates literally, metaphorically, and structurally in her fiction to express a range of thematic concerns, including her subversion of genre and gender; her questioning of a Cartesian separation of mind and body; her response to Bergsonian discussions of time and space; and her illustration of moments of self-discovery. Most radically, she moves towards an imagining of text as choreography, implying the choreographic function or patterning of a text to express the narrative of a life.Less
This chapter focuses on Virginia Woolf's ongoing engagement with dance, evident from her letters, diaries, essays, and fiction. In her literary experimentation between the earliest journal essays through to Between the Acts (1941) she reflected both a Mallarméan emphasis on economy of gesture and a Nietzschean ‘primitivism’ as she sought alternative modes of expression and responded to the burgeoning popularity of social dance, Greek dance, the Ballets Russes, and—prompted by Bloomsbury connections with the dancer Lydia Lopokova and artists Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell—she witnessed the earliest choreographic experiments of Frederick Ashton and Ninette de Valois in the 1930s. Dance operates literally, metaphorically, and structurally in her fiction to express a range of thematic concerns, including her subversion of genre and gender; her questioning of a Cartesian separation of mind and body; her response to Bergsonian discussions of time and space; and her illustration of moments of self-discovery. Most radically, she moves towards an imagining of text as choreography, implying the choreographic function or patterning of a text to express the narrative of a life.
Claudia Gitelman
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780813040257
- eISBN:
- 9780813043869
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813040257.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
An overview of the place of solo dancers in the development of modern dance from the late 1800s to today. Modernism is explicated, and a brief précis of each chapter outlines the book's content. ...
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An overview of the place of solo dancers in the development of modern dance from the late 1800s to today. Modernism is explicated, and a brief précis of each chapter outlines the book's content. Research sources are cited.Less
An overview of the place of solo dancers in the development of modern dance from the late 1800s to today. Modernism is explicated, and a brief précis of each chapter outlines the book's content. Research sources are cited.
