Meaning in Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance (Post-Contemporary Interventions)

By Jane C. Desmond

Book Overview

Dance, whether considered as an art form or embodied social practice, as product or process, is a prime subject for cultural analysis. Yet only recently have studies of dance become concerned with the ideological, theoretical, and social meanings of dance practices, performances, and institutions. In Meaning in Motion, Jane C. Desmond brings together the work of critics who have ventured into the boundaries between dance and cultural studies, and thus maps a little-known and rarely explored critical site.
Writing from a broad range of perspectives, contributors from disciplines as varied as art history and anthropology, dance history and political science, philosophy and women's studies chart the questions and challenges that mark this site. How does dance enact or rework social categories of identity? How do meanings change as dance styles cross borders of race, nationality, or class? How do we talk about materiality and motion, sensation and expressivity, kinesthetics and ideology? The authors engage these issues in a variety of contexts: from popular social dances to the experimentation of the avant-garde; from nineteenth-century ballet and contemporary Afro-Brazilian Carnival dance to hip hop, the dance hall, and film; from the nationalist politics of folk dances to the feminist philosophies of modern dance. Giving definition to a new field of study, Meaning in Motion broadens the scope of dance analysis and extends to cultural studies new ways of approaching matters of embodiment, identity, and representation.

Contributors. Ann Cooper Albright, Evan Alderson, Norman Bryson, Cynthia Cohen Bull, Ann Daly, Brenda Dixon Gottschild, Susan Foster, Mark Franko, Marianne Goldberg, Amy Koritz, Susan Kozel, Susan Manning, Randy Martin, Angela McRobbie, Kate Ramsey, Anna Scott, Janet Wolff

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0822319365
• ISBN13: 9780822319368
• Release Date: April 1997
• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Length: 408 Pages
• Weight: 2.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 10.0" x 1.5" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

Outstanding Collection of Essays in Dance and Feminism

Editor Jane C. Desmond brings together a collection of provocative essays analyzing ballet, modern, and post-modern dance from feminist and multi-cultural perspectives. Some prominent topics include: 1) The male gaze and dance performance; 2) Objective versus subjective performance; 3) Michel Foucault's Docile Body Theory and Dance; 4) Gender difference and aesthetic virtues; 5) Nationalism versus the racial "other"; 6) Combining the universal and the personal through autobiographical performance.