Search Results

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.

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.

This chapter draws on Deleuzian thought in order to think through the role of experience within dance and the activity of dancing more generally. It contrasts phenomenological approaches to dancing, which appeal to notions of subjective agency, with a Deleuzian re-reading of subjectivity. In the process, it refers to Deleuze’s reading of Nietzsche, using Nietzsche’s concept of force to account for the many ways in which forces combine to produce movement. The notion of force is able to explain the way action unfolds without being the product of human agency. It offers a way of rethinking phenomenological notions of agency. According to this account, relations of force underlie action, as well as the many modes of interiority (subjectivity). But these two kinds of formation (of force) are different in kind. They belong to differing types (of force). The pursuit of action, including the utilisation of experience in action, constitutes a certain type of ethos, which Deleuze calls the active type, whereas the formation of experience belongs to ‘the reactive apparatus’, that which reacts but does not act. The active type drives a wedge between the dancing and the dancer. Deleuze’s treatment of Nietzsche can be adapted to account for the variety of dance practices, their production of training and technique, custom and virtuosity. In particular, it is able to account for the specific ways in which postmodern dance displaces the subjectivity of the dancer.

This chapter revisits key debates over documentation and authenticity in the emergence of queer studies, which it considers through the work of a contemporary choreographer who engages in a process of what he calls “fictional archiving.” By reimagining black queer aesthetics as always already central to the development of postmodern dance and other contemporary aesthetic innovations, the chapter shows how this performance enacts a form of “critical shade” on white normative histories and pedagogies of dance, fashion, and performance.

This chapter addresses how a dance artist’s civic capacities are characterized in relation to specific discourses that dominate any particular context by examining specific discourses of somatics/postmodern dance, and urban dance, as recently experienced within higher education. The chapter analyzes places of congruence and tension arising around these two discourses as a means to illuminate the value of providing space for potentially disruptive voices in ongoing debates about artistic citizenship. Four key concepts of dignity, respect, equity, and responsibility are examined in relation to somatics/postmodern dance and urban dance. The study offers valuable insights into how artist-educators can provide a constructive role in establishing and celebrating diverse communities through powerfully embodied, spiritually enriching movement forms. While somatics/postmodern dance discourse will be shown to provide valuable insights into choice making grounded in gentleness, relaxation, and nonjudgment, urban dance offers a dynamic view of civic life embracing challenge and contestation.

Joanna Haigood serves as Zaccho Dance Theater's artistic director in San Francisco. In order to understand the places in which she holds dances, Haigood makes an effort to look into the natural, historical, and architectural features of the sites. These sites may often be associated with various manifestations and memories, and these are demonstrated through making use of postmodern dance vocabulary, aerial work, and other diverse movement genres. Haigood has earned several awards—such as the 1997 Guggenheim Fellowship, the 1999 Alpert Award in the Arts, and other fellowships—and her work has been commissioned by the Walker Art Center and the National Black Arts Festival to name a few. Haigood was interviewed in her dance studio in San Francisco on November 22, 2004. Here, she was able to discuss how she chooses a site based on its historical value, and how she had been inspired by some architecture principles. The chapter also discussion of Haigood's work Ghost Architecture.

This chapter offers an account from the field of postmodern performance, attempting to address the question: why make live body-based performance at this socio-cultural moment? I seek to explain why this type of performance matters, why we should bother. I present examples that suggest a crucial difference between live and virtual performance and reflect on how live performance cultivates connection and compassion in its viewers. I argue for the importance of compassion in restoring a sense of care for other humans and the earth. I further suggest that live body-based performance creates a shift in the space as we experience it, and entertain the idea that this shift is connected to longstanding forms of ritual.