Dance

A complete history of Ballet and Modern Dance

Providing an understanding of the history, evolution, and universality of dance as an art form, this guidebook explores the significance of dance in culture, the relationship of dance to other art forms, the contributions of great pioneering choreographers, dancers, and teachers, and the creative process. Highlighting an extensive range of types of dance--including ballet, modern, jazz, tap, folk, ethnic, and social--this comprehensive collection features a variety of engaging essays written by experts in their respective fields. Students of dance, professionals, instructors, and enthusiasts will learn what to look for during a performance, and how to appreciate dance styles from around the world. This newly revised edition includes five new chapters and an extensive, annotated appendix of film resources giving helpful suggestions for viewing that will enhance the dance experience.

In the twenty-first century, values of competition underpin the free-market economy and aspirations of individual achievement shape the broader social world. Consequently, ideas of winning and losing, success and failure, judgment and worth, influence the dance that we see and do. Acrossstage, studio, street, and screen, economies of competition impact bodily aesthetics, choreographic strategies, and danced meanings. In formalized competitions, dancers are judged according to industry standards to accumulate social capital and financial gain. Within the capitalist economy, dancingbodies compete to win positions in prestigious companies, while choreographers hustle to secure funding and attract audiences. On the social dance floor, dancers participate in dance-offs that often include unspoken, but nevertheless complex, rules of bodily engagement. And the media attraction tothe drama and spectacle of competition regularly plays out in reality television shows, film documentaries, and Hollywood cinema. Drawing upon a diverse collection of dances across history and geography, The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Competition asks how competition affects the presentation andexperience of dance and, in response, how dancing bodies negotiate, critique, and resist the aesthetic and social structures of the competition paradigm.

This unparalleled collection, international and innovative in scope, analyzes the dynamic tensions between masculinity and dance. Introducing a lens of intersectionality, the book's content examines why, despite burgeoning popular and contemporary representations of a normalization of dancing masculinities, some boys don't dance and why many of those who do struggle to stay involved. Prominent themes of identity, masculinity, and intersectionality weave throughout the book's conceptual frameworks of education and schooling, cultures, and identities in dance. Incorporating empirical studies, qualitative inquiry, and reflexive accounts, Doug Risner and Beccy Watson have assembled a unique volume of original chapters from established scholars and emerging voices to inform the future direction of interdisciplinary dance scholarship and dance education research. The book's scope spans several related disciplines including gender studies, queer studies, cultural studies, performance studies, and sociology. The volume will appeal to dancers, educators, researchers, scholars, students, parents, and caregivers of boys who dance. Accessible at multiple levels, the content is relevant for undergraduate students across dance, dance education, and movement science, and graduate students forging new analysis of dance, pedagogy, gender theory, and teaching praxis.

A collaboration between well-established and rising scholars, Futures of Dance Studies suggests multiple directions for new research in the field. Essays address dance in a wider range of contexts--onstage, on screen, in the studio, and on the street--and deploy methods from diverse disciplines. Engaging African American and African diasporic studies, Latinx and Latin American studies, gender and sexuality studies, and Asian American and Asian studies, this anthology demonstrates the relevance of dance analysis to adjacent fields.

A new exploration of how digital media assert the relevance of dance in a wired world How has the Internet changed dance? Dance performances can now be seen anywhere, can be looped endlessly at user whim, and can integrate crowds in unprecedented ways. Dance practices are evolving to explore these new possibilities. In Perpetual Motion, Harmony Bench argues that dance is a vital part of civil society and a means for building participation and community. She looks at how, after 9/11, it became a crucial way of recuperating the common character of public spaces. She explores how crowdsourcing dance contributes to the project of performing a common world, as well as the social relationships forged when we look at dance as a gift in the era of globalization. Throughout, she asks how dance brings people together in digital spaces and what dance's digital travels might mean for how we experience and express community.  From original research on dance today to political economies of digital media to the philosophy of dance, Perpetual Motion provides an ambitious, invigorating look at a commonly shared practice.