Must poetic form be, as Yeats demanded, "full, sphere-like, single", or can it accommodate the "impurities" Yeats and his Modernist generation found so problematic? Sixty years later, these are still open questions, questions to which Marjorie Perloff addresses herself in the essays collected here. The first group of essays deals with Pound's own poetics as that poetics related to two of his great contemporaries, Stevens and Joyce, as well as to the visual arts of his day. The second group deals with the more technical aspects of verse and prose. In the last four essays, Perloff takes up broader issues, including the current pessimism about the state of poetry, and the work of experimental poets and conceptual poets.

"Since its inception, dance has maintained a tenuous position within Christianity. Yet, despite - or perhaps because of - its contested status, dance persists inside and outside organized religious communities. Using original, multi-site, qualitative studies of four dance companies, this book examines the movements dancing Christians make to transform what they perceive as secular professional dance into religious practices in order to actualize individual and communal religious identities. Dancing to transform is the first book-length analysis that situates developments in contemporary Christian dance in relation to the histories of American modern dance and American Christianity"--Page 4 of cover.

An innovative exploration of understanding through dance, Dancing across the Page draws on the frameworks of phenomenology, feminism, and postmodernism to offer readers an understanding of performance studies that is grounded in personal narrative and lived experience. Through accounts of contemporary dance making, improvisation, and dance education, Karen Barbour explores a diversity of themes, including power; activism; and cultural, gendered, and personal identity. An intimate yet rigorous investigation of creativity in dance, Dancing across the Page emphasizes embodied knowledge and imagination as a basis for creative action in the world.

This book explores the experience and value of dancing for people living with the neurodegenerative disorder Parkinson's disease. Linking aesthetic values to wellbeing, Sara Houston articulates the importance of the dancing experience for those with Parkinson's, and argues that the benefits of participatory dance are best understood through the experiences, lives, needs, and challenges of people living with Parkinson's who have chosen to dance. Presenting personal narratives from a study that investigates the experience of people with Parkinson's who dance, intertwined with the social and political contexts in which the dancers live, this volume examines the personal and systemic issues as well as the attitudes and identities that shape people's relationship to dance. Taking this new primary research as a starting point, Dancing with Parkinson's builds an argument for how dance becomes a way of helping people live well with Parkinson's. This book explores the experience and value of dancing for people living with the neurodegenerative disorder Parkinson's disease. Linking aesthetic values to wellbeing, Sara Houston articulates the importance of the dancing experience for those with Parkinson's, and argues that the benefits of participatory dance are best understood through the experiences, lives, needs and challenges of people living with Parkinson's who have chosen to dance. Presenting personal narratives from a study that investigates the experience of people with Parkinson's who dance, intertwined with the social and political contexts in which the dancers live, this volume examines the personal and systemic issues as well as the attitudes and identities that shape people's relationship to dance. Taking this new primary research as a starting point, Dancing with Parkinson's builds an argument for how dance becomes a way of helping people live well with Parkinson's.

This collection is the first book to focus on the intersection of dance, disability, and the law. Bringing together a range of writers from different disciplines, it considers the question of how we value, validate, and speak about diversity in performance practice, with a specific focus on the experience of differently-abled dance artists within the changing world of the arts in the United Kingdom. Contributors address the legal frameworks that support or inhibit the work of disabled dancers and explore factors that affect their full participation, including those related to policy, arts funding, dance criticism, and audience reception.

Western contemporary dance and body-mind education have engaged in a pas de deux for more than four decades. The rich interchange of somatics and dance has altered both fields, but scholarship that substantiates these ideas through the findings of twentieth-century scientific advances has been missing. This book fills that gap and brings to light contemporary discoveries of neuroscience and somatic education as they relate to dance. Drawing from the burgeoning field of “embodiment”—itself an idea at the intersection of the sciences, humanities, arts, and technologies—Body and Mind in Motion highlights the relevance of somatic education within dance education, dance science, and body-mind studies.

"This book adds an entirely new dimension to the consideration of Humanism and Italian culture. It will make a welcome addition to the field of cultural studies by broadening the subject to consider an important source of information that has been previously overlooked." -- Timothy McGee The Eloquent Body offers a history and analysis of court dancing during the Renaissance, within the context of Italian Humanism. Each chapter addresses different philosophical, social, or intellectual aspects of dance during the 15th century. Some topics include issues of economic class, education, and power; relating dance treatises to the ideals of Humanism and the meaning of the arts; ideas of the body as they relate to elegance, nobility, and ethics; the intellectual history of dance based on contemporaneous readings of Pythagoras and Plato; and a comparison of geometric dance structures to geometric order in Humanist architecture.