This collection of papers, many written principally for this volume, explore aspects of the ways in which dancer and gender intersect in a variety of cultural contexts, from social and disco dance to performance dance, to the Hollywood musical and dances from different cultures. The contributions come from a broad range of disciplines, such as cultural studies, anthropology, sociology, dance studies, film studies and journalism and bring a body of ideas and approaches including feminism, psychoanalysis, ethnography and subcultural theory.

'...full credit to Thomas and Macmillan for embarking on such a worthwhile venture - Dance Research I have already found the Thomas edition of enormous value in teaching both undergraduates and postgraduates, from the perspectives of dance anthropology, ethnography and theatre dance analysis - Theresa Buckland, Department of Dance Studies, University of Surrey This unique collection of papers, written specially for this volume, explores the aspects of the ways in which dance and gender intersect in a variety of cultural contexts, from social and disco dance to performance dance, to the Hollywood musical and dances from different cultures. The contributors come from a broad range of disciplines, such as cultural studies, anthropology, sociology, dance studies, film studies, and journalism. They bring to the book a wide body of ideas and approaches, including feminism, psychoanalysis, ethnography and subcultural theory. List of Plates - Preface to the 1995 Reprint - Notes on the Contributors - Introduction - PART 1: CULTURAL STUDIES - Dance, Gender and Culture; T.Polhumus - Dancing in the Dark: Rationalism and the Neglect of Social Dance; A.Ward - Ballet, Gender and Cultural Power; C.J.Novack - 'I Seem to Find the Happiness I Seek': Heterosexuality and Dance in the Musical; R.Dyer - PART 2: ETHNOGRAPHY - An-Other Voice: Young Women Dancing and Talking; H.Thomas - Gender Interchangeability among the Tiwi; A.Grau - 'Saturday Night Fever': An Ethnography of Disco Dancing; D.Walsh - Classical Indian Dance and Women's Status; J.L.Hanna - PART 3: THEORY/CRITICISM - Dance, Feminism and the Critique of the Visual; R.Copeland - 'You put your left foot in, then you shake it all about ...': Excursions and Incursions into Feminism and Bausch's Tanztheater; A.Sanchez-Colberg - 'She might pirouette on a daisy and it would not bend': Images of Femininity and Dance Appreciation; L-A.Sayers - Still Dancing Downwards and Talking Back; Z.Oyortey - The Anxiety of Dance Performance; V.Rimmer - Index

Driven by exacting methods and hard data, this volume reveals gender dynamics within the dance world in the twenty-first century. It provides concrete evidence about how gender impacts the daily lives of dancers, choreographers, directors, educators, and students through surveys, interviews, analyses of data from institutional sources, and action research studies. Dancers, dance artists, and dance scholars from the United States, Australia, and Canada discuss equity in three areas: concert dance, the studio, and higher education. The chapters provide evidence of bias, stereotyping, and other behaviors that are often invisible to those involved, as well as to audiences. The contributors answer incisive questions about the role of gender in various aspects of the field, including physical expression and body image, classroom experiences and pedagogy, and performance and funding opportunities. The findings reveal how inequitable practices combined with societal pressures can create environments that hinder health, happiness, and success. At the same time, they highlight the individuals working to eliminate discrimination and open up new possibilities for expression and achievement in studios, choreography, performance venues, and institutions of higher education. The dance community can strive to eliminate discrimination, but first it must understand the status quo for gender in the dance world. Wendy Oliver, professor of dance at Providence College, is coeditor of Jazz Dance: A History of the Roots and Branches. Doug Risner, professor of dance at Wayne State University, is coeditor of Hybrid Lives of Teaching Artists in Dance and Theatre Arts: A Critical Reader. Contributors: Gareth Belling | Karen Bond | Carolyn Hebert | Eliza Larson | Pamela S. Musil | Wendy Oliver | Katherine Polasek | Doug Risner | Emily Roper | Karen Schupp | Jan Van Dyke

Dance is more than an aesthetic of life – dance embodies life. This is evident from the social history of jive, the marketing of trans-national ballet, ritual healing dances in Italy or folk dances performed for tourists in Mexico, Panama and Canada. Dance often captures those essential dimensions of social life that cannot be easily put into words. What are the flows and movements of dance carried by migrants and tourists? How is dance used to shape nationalist ideology? What are the connections between dance and ethnicity, gender, health, globalization and nationalism, capitalism and post-colonialism? Through innovative and wide-ranging case studies, the contributors explore the central role dance plays in culture as leisure commodity, cultural heritage, cultural aesthetic or cathartic social movement.

Gender and Dance in Modern Iran: Biopolitics on Stage investigates the ways dancing bodies have been providing evidence for competing representations of modernity, urbanism, and religiosity across the twentieth century. Focusing on the transformation of the staged dancing body, its space of performance, and spectatorial cultural ideology, this book traces the dancing body in multiple milieus of performance, including the Pahlavi era’s national artistic scene and the popular café and cabaret stages, as well as the commercial cinematic screen and the post-revolutionary Islamized theatrical stage. It links the socio-political discourses on performance with the staged public dancer, in order to interrogate the formation of dominant categories of "modern," "high," and "artistic," and the subsequent "othering" of cultural realms that were discursively peripheralized from the "national" stage. Through the study of archival and ethnographic research as well as a diverse literature pertaining to music, theater, cinema, and popular culture, it combines a close reading of primary sources such as official documents, press materials, and program notes with visual analysis of filmic materials and imageries, as well as interviews with practitioners. It offers an original and informed exploration into the ways performing bodies and their public have been associated with binary notions of vice and virtue, morality and immorality, commitment and degeneration, chastity and eroticism, and veiled-ness and nakedness. Engaging with a range of methodological and historiographical methods, including postcolonial, performance, and feminist studies, this book is a valuable resource for students and scholars of Middle East history and Iranian studies, as well as gender studies and dance and performance studies.

This book takes its point of departure from the overwhelming interest in theories of the body and performativity in sociology and cultural studies in recent years. It explores a variety of ways of looking at dance as a social and artistic (bodily) practice as a means of generating insights into the politics of identity and difference as they are situated and traced through representations of the body and bodily practices. These issues are addressed through a series of case studies.

This is an extraordinary autobiography of a young girl growing up in Iran. The daughter of an English Christian mother and an Iranian Zoroastrian father, Nesta Ramazani sketches her personal life story against the backdrop of a society marked by the fusion of Iranian, Islamic, and Western cultures, and by the efforts of an authoritarian state to force modernization on a traditional society. Within this multicultural tapestry of personal, cultural, and national life, the author portrays how she came to love Persian and Western music, poetry, and dance. But translating this love into practice seemed an insurmountable task until an American woman pioneered the establishment of the first indigenous Iranian ballet company. As a member of this troupe, the author violated convention, performing first in her native land and then traveling abroad to exhibit this beautiful synthesis of Persian/Western forms to foreign audiences. The significance of this work transcends an autobiography penned by an Iranian woman—still a taboo in traditional Iranian society—it is a unique microcosm of today’s universal quest for a dialogue among civilizations. Ramazani’s story will appeal not only to students of Iran, the Middle East, and women’s studies, but also to general readers.