New Books In Dance

In the information age, knowledge is power. Hence, facilitating the access to knowledge to wider publics empowers citizens and makes societies more democratic. How can publishers and authors contribute to this process? This podcast addresses this issue. We interview Professor Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, whose book, The Good Drone: How Social Movements Democratize Surveillance (forthcoming with MIT Press) is undergoing a Massive Online Peer-Review (MOPR) process, where everyone can make comments on his manuscript. Additionally, his book will be Open Access (OA) since the date of publication. We discuss with him how do MOPR and OA work, how he managed to combine both of them and how these initiatives can contribute to the democratization of knowledge. You can participate in the MOPR process of The Good Drone through this link: https://thegooddrone.pubpub.org/ Felipe G. Santos is a PhD candidate at the Central European University. His research is focused on how activists care for each other and how care practices w

Women get into stripping for money, writes Dr. Bernadete Barton, and the experience the girls have throughout their career in exotic dancing varies. Dr. Barton uses Stripped: More Stories from Exotic Dancers, Completely Revised and Updated Edition (NYU Press, 2017) to take readers inside countless strip bars and clubs, from upscale to back road and specialty lap dancing, table dancing, topless only, and peep shows, to provide up close and personal exposure to the lives of exotic dancers. Join us as Dr. Barton takes a no holds barred approach to explaining the transformation of the strip club since the original publication of this research, the change in behavior both male and female patrons show in the clubs, and the the impact technology has had on strip clubs. Dr. Barton also gifts us with a sneak peek of her newest book project on the effects of raunch culture beyond the walls of the strip club. Michael O. Johnston is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. He is currently conductin

Victoria Fortuna's new book Moving Otherwise: Dance, Violence and Memory in Buenos Aires (Oxford University Press, 2018) examines the different ways in which contemporary dance practices have engaged in resistance amidst the political and economic violence experienced in Argentina, from the 1960s to the mid-2010s. Covering performances on the concert stage to staged protests and impromptu movement, Victoria Fortuna brings to light histories of Contemporary Dance that have until now been under-explored. Victoria Fortuna is Assistant Professor in the Dance Department at Reed College. She received her PhD in Performance Studies from Northwestern University, is a trained modern and contemporary dancer, and collaborates with several dance collectives based in Buenos Aires. Prior to joining Reed University, Dr. Fortuna was a Mellow Postdoctoral Fellow in Dance at Oberlin College. Sitara Thobani is Assistant Professor in the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities, Michigan State University. Her research focu

McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention. The chapters of General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century (Verso, 2017) introduce readers to important work in Anglophone cultural studies, psychoanalysis, political theory, media theory, speculative realism, science studies, Italian and French workerist and autonomist thought, two “imaginative readings of Marx,” and two “unique takes on the body politic.” There are significant implications of these ideas for how we live and work at the contemporary university, and we discussed some of those in our conversation. This is a great book to read and to teach with! Carla Nappi is the Andrew W. Mellon Chair in the Department of History at the University of Pittsburgh. You can learn more about her and her work here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm

Combining memoir with auto-ethnography, historical study and sociocultural analysis, Halifu Osumare draws on her decades of experience to explore the complexities of black dance in the United States. Starting in San Francisco during the rise of the Black Arts and Black Power Movements as well as of hippie counterculture, Osumare’s narrative follows her subsequent journeys to twenty-three countries across Europe, Africa and North America. Throughout Dancing in Blackness: A Memoir (University Press of Florida, 2018), she reflects on her subjectivity as a black woman traveling through and performing in diverse national/cultural contexts. Drawing on her academic grounding in black studies as well as her artistic experiences as a professional dancer, Osumare underscores the relationship between art, performance, and the black struggle for recognition, justice and self-empowerment. Dr. Osumare is professor emerita of African American and African Studies at the University of California, Davis, is the author of The

In Making Samba: A New History of Race and Music in Brazil (Duke University Press, 2013), Marc Hertzman revisits the history of Brazil’s quintessential music and dance genre to explore the links between popular music, intellectual property, law, racial democracy and nation formation. Charting more than a century of samba’s development, Hertzman challenges simplistic narratives of the all too often romanticized form, focusing instead on the material conditions under which this cultural powerhouse came to be produced. So doing, he highlights the complex social, cultural and political processes at the heart of making samba, and indeed, making Brazil. Mark Hertzman is Associate Professor of History at the University of Illinois. His first book, Making Samba, was awarded Honorable mention by the Latin American Studies Association for the Bryce Wood Book Prize. He is currently working on his next book project, titled The Death of Zumbi: Suicide, Slavery and Martyrdom in Brazil and the Black Atlantic. Prior to join

The Syrian Revolution, which began in March 2011, has since resulted in what can be described as a civil war, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and the forced migrations of millions of Syrians. This story has been told countless times in news media. However, less known is the story of the Syrian artists who have portrayed the revolution with all of its nuances. miriam cooke’s Dancing in Damascus: Creativity, Resilience and the Syrian Revolution (Routledge, 2017) tells that story, beginning before the revolution and continuing until the present. Through cooke’s work, we see how oppression can beget creativity and how art in the Syrian context can create public memory. cooke brings together different mediums to show how different conversations cut through the Syrian artistic community and how Syrians relate to one another. Dancing in Damascus is comprehensive, provocative, and hopeful. Nadirah Mansour is a graduate student at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies working on t

In his new book, Dancing in the Blood: Modern Dance and European Culture on the Eve of the First World War (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Edward Ross Dickinson charts the development of modern dance in the turbulent decades of the early twentieth century. Arguing that modern dance provided the aesthetic tools to address the central features of modernity, Dickinson illustrates its impact on Euro-American cultural life, as well as on ideas about gender, nation, race, science, spirituality, and selfhood. Furthermore, he ties the development of modern dance to the emergence of mass culture and the work of marketing modernity. As becomes evident in his analysis, these ideas were fraught with contradictions as modern dance was seen to be both chaste and sexual, scientific and spiritual, universal yet grounded in racial difference. Dancing in the Blood thus provides fascinating insight into the development of modern dance, not only as an artistic genre but as part of the larger project of modernity. Edward Ros

Studio 54 opened its doors 40 years ago and since that time it has held a place in American popular culture. Studio 54 was the place to go dancing to great music, mingle with celebrities and beautiful people, and do drugs night after night. In his historical and cultural memoir as the owner of Studio 54, Mark Fleischman takes readers behind the scenes and the into the basement rooms and dark corners of the night club. Inside Studio 54: The Real Story of Sex, Drugs, and Rock ‘n Roll from Former Studio 54 Owner (Rare Bird Books, 2017) introduces readers to the Studio 54 of the 1980s which Fleischman took control over after the original owners went to jail for tax evasion. Fleischman shares stories of celebrities, drugs, and day in and day out partying. He presents how he initiated theme nights and created ways to make the night club a destination for cultural icons of the decade. Through his journey of making Studio 54 the in club of the 1980s after disco was declared dead, Fleischman also shares his story of a

“How can the modern individual maintain control over his or her self-representation when the whole world seems to be watching?” This is the question that prompts Julia Fawcett‘s new book, Spectacular Disappearances: Celebrity and Privacy, 1696-1801 (University of Michigan Press, 2016). Drawing on a diverse range of material to analyze some of England’s earliest modern celebrities, Fawcett offers a fascinating glimpse into the paradoxes of their eighteenth-century autobiographical performances. More than just the rise of celebrity culture she argues, these performances can help deepen our understanding of the making – and unmaking – of the modern self. Using creative, playful and transgressive techniques, the celebrities in Fawcett’s study experimented with presenting themselves as legible to curious publics even as they obscured their identities through ‘overexpressive’ acts that helped enable their spectacular disappearance. The result is a tantalizing narrative that continues to fascinate, three centuries l

By drawing on a vast, never-utilized trove of archival materials along with oral histories, choreographic analysis, and embodied research, Katherine Dunham: Dance and the African Diaspora (Oxford University Press, 2017) offers new insight about how this remarkable woman built political solidarity through the arts. One of the most important dance artists of the twentieth century, dancer and choreographer Katherine Dunham (1909-2006) created works that thrilled audiences the world over. As an African American woman, she broke barriers of race and gender, most notably as the founder of an important dance company that toured the United States, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Australia for several decades. The author makes the argument that Dunham was more than a dancer she was an intellectual and activist committed to using dance to fight for racial justice. Dunham saw dance as a tool of liberation, as a way for people of African descent to reclaim their history and forge a new future. She put her theories into

Dance & Politics: Moving Beyond Boundaries (Manchester University Press, 2017) by Dana Mills, considers dance as a political expression from a number of perspectives, situating the analysis within a framework of contemporary political theory. Mills notes that dance has always been with us, as humans, but that we do not usually think about it as part of our political discourse in the same way that other performative or artistic expressions are integrated into political discussions and political life. Mills’ book argues that dance, as a language or means of communication, should be considered from the dancers’ perspective but also from the audience or the receivers’ experience and understanding, as well as the choreographers’ point of view, and the interactions of the other dancers involved. Mills digs into the overarching question of how can we expand our notion of what is political so that dance is included, trying to also understand why it has often been excluded from the notion of the political. The book el

Carrie J. Preston‘s new book tells the story of the global circulation of noh-inspired performances, paying careful attention to the ways these performances inspired twentieth-century drama, poetry, modern dance, film, and popular entertainment. Inspired by noh’s practice of retelling stories in different styles and tenses, Learning to Kneel: Noh, Modernism, and Journeys in Teaching (Columbia University Press, 2016) also weaves together a number of writing styles, and incorporates Preston’s own lessons in noh chant, dance, and drumming and experience writing plays based on noh models and choreographing dances with noh-related gestures throughout the book. The result is a fascinating exploration of the relationships between pedagogy and performance traced through the work of Ezra Pound, W. B. Yeats, Bertolt Brecht, Samuel Beckett, and others. Learning to Kneel pays special attention to the politics of performance and pedagogy and the themes of submission and subversion, and urges a rethinking of many assumptio

Is it possible to lay claim to ownership of a dance? Is choreography intellectual property? How have shifting conceptions of race and gender shaped the way we think of dance, property and ownership? In Choreographing Copyright: Race, Gender and Intellectual Property Rights in American Dance, Anthea Kraut wrestles mightily with these questions as she presents the first book by a dance scholar to focus explicitly on matters of copyright and choreography. Combining archival research with critical race and gender theory, Kraut offers new perspectives in this cross-genre history of American Dance. Professor Kraut’s research addresses the interconnections between American performance and cultural history and the raced and gendered dancing body. Her first book, Choreographing the Folk: The Dance Stagings of Zora Neale Hurston, was published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2008, and received a Special Citation from the Society of Dance History Scholars de la Torre Bueno Prize for distinguished book of dance s

In his new book Going to the Palais: A Social and Cultural History of Dancing and Dance Halls in Britain, 1918-1960 (Oxford University Press, 2016), cultural historian James Nott charts the untold history of dancing and dance halls in Britain in the first half of the twentieth century. This exploration reveals the transformations of working-class communities, and of the changing notions of femininity, masculinity and leisure that occur in this period. To do so, Nott navigates us skillfully between the perspectives of the dance hall owners, dance teachers and innovators. He them leads us to consider the point of view of enthusiastic jiving individuals. Finally, we take our place on the sidelines with the onlookers and killjoys alarmed by this ‘craze.’ This kaleidoscope of voices and images illuminates the role of the dance hall as a social space. It is argued that the dance hall brought together men and women in search of fun, but also provided them with a safe space to try out identities and behaviors. Nott

What’s missing from our understanding of the role of dancers in the context of American Cultural Diplomacy? Clare Croft‘s first book, Dancers as Diplomats: American Choreography in Cultural Exchange (Oxford University Press, 2015) provides a range of thoughtful, well-researched responses to this question. By exploring the ways in which dancer’s bodies were operationalized and “deployed” on behalf of the US State Department during the Cold War as well as at the dawn of the 21st century, Dancers as Diplomats centers the work of dancers and choreographers as ambassadors, provocateurs and global leaders. Including more than 70 interviews with dancers who traveled on these international tours, the book centers the voices of artists actively engaged in this very particular kind of cultural work. Clare Croft is a historian, theorist, and dramaturg, working at the intersection of dance studies and performance studies. She specializes in 20th and 21st century American dance, cultural policy, feminist and queer theory

When does a dance become a book? How does choreography lend itself to the page? What discontents exist in theorizing performance that are best explored through the written word? And how does one distill the hours of embodied practice into 100 or so pages of a tightly packaged and beautifully rendered text? It was the opportunity of a lifetime to interview the incomparable Bill T. Jones, a mainstay in the landscape of American modern dance and contemporary performance. A true renaissance man, Jones will be familiar to listeners as a multi-talented artist who has shaped contemporary culture as a choreographer, dancer, theater director and author. Creator of over 140 dance works for his own company and numerous commissions for others, Jones is a recipient of the coveted MacArthur Genius Award (1994) and was recognized for his multiple achievements in 2010 at the Kennedy Center Honors. Today as Artistic Director of New York Live Arts, Jones leads this internationally recognized institution known for its commitmen

Contested and complicated histories create the best books. This is true for many volumes and is certainly so for Jazz Dance: A History of the Roots and Branches (University Press of Florida, 2014), a recent work edited by Wendy Oliver and Lindsay Guarino. Picking up where Marshall and Jean Stearns left off over two decades ago, Oliver and Guarino bring to the field a book that culls together some of the best contemporary scholarship on the history, progenitors, and cultural forces that shape the uniquely American art form known as jazz dance. Created in part as a resource for students, the book is unique in its accessibility, diversity of authorship and willingness to engage the complicated racial and social history of jazz dance. Wendy Oliver has been teaching and choreographing at Providence College since 1985, and is the director of the PC Dance Company. Dr. Oliver is Chair of the Department of Theatre, Dance and Film, and also runs the Children’s Dance program on the Providence College campus. An Active d

Cultural memory of World War II frequently draws on swing music and the USO dance floor as symbols of how the country came together in support of the war effort. Frequently, the term “the Greatest Generation” is used to exemplify patriotism and self-sacrifice. Digging beyond nostalgic remembrances, Sherrie Tucker‘s Dance Floor Democracy: The Social Geography of Memory at the Hollywood Canteen (Duke University Press, 2014) explores how race, gender, social class, and other social cleavages shaped the dance floor and produced a variety of responses to the war effort. Tucker questions the accuracy of common representations of World War II culture. In its place, she offers a more nuanced account of the social and cultural politics of the era. The podcast explores the war, the racial politics of swing music, integration and race relations, oral history and how to write cultural history. Dr. Sherrie Tucker is Professor of American Studies at the University of Kansas. She is also the author of Swing Shift: “All-Gi

How does an author craft a work that speaks across the boundaries of dance studies, Jewish studies and gender studies? What does it mean for dance to function as a site for probing complex questions of racial, ethnic and cultural identity? How do choreographers respond to the prompt, “make a Jewish dance?” What does all of this have to tell us about the ways in which Jewish identities show up onstage both historically and contemporarily? I was grateful to engage these questions with dancer, choreographer and historian, Rebecca Rossen (pronounced “Ross – in”,) author of Dancing Jewish: Jewish Identity in American Modern and Postmodern Dance (Oxford University Press, 2014). Rebecca’s groundbreaking work probes the ways in which American Jewish choreographers use dance as a site to interrogate personal and collective identities while articulating social and political agendas and challenging stereotypes. Rossen critically engages with the work of Anna Sokolow, Pauline Koner, David Dorfman, Liz Lerman and others i