Baring Unbearable Sensualities brings together a bold methodology, an interdisciplinary perspective and a rich array of primary sources to deepen and complicate mainstream understandings of Hip Hop dance, an Afro-diasporic dance form, which have generally reduced the style to a set of techniques divorced from social contexts. Drawing on close observation and interviews with Hip Hop pioneers and their students, Rosemarie A. Roberts proposes that Hip Hop dance is a collective and sentient process of resisting oppressive manifestations of race and power. Roberts argues that the experiences of marginalized Black and Brown bodies materialize in and through Hip Hop dance from the streets of urban centers to contemporary worldwide expressions. A companion web site contains over 30 video clips referenced in the text.

"Featuring contributions from internationally recognized Hip Hop dancers, advocates, and scholars of various Hip Hop or streetdance practices, the Oxford Handbook of Hip Hop Dance Studies is the first collection devoted exclusively to the dances that fall under the rubric of Hip Hop. Each of its five sections explore different key themes relevant to streetdance: legacies and traditions, Hip Hop methodologies, the politics of identity, institutionalization, Hip Hop (dance) theatre, and issues of health, injury, and rehabilitation. This compendium of topics, approaches, theoretical influences, histories, and perspectives demonstrate the futures of a field in formation. It adds new resources to research in dance and Hip Hop studies, contributing to ongoing debates within Hip Hop dance communities globally"--

The face contributes a vital, yet often overlooked, component of dance performance. Facial Choreographies: Performing the Face in Popular Dance examines what the face does in dance and what it may mean. Author Sherril Dodds focuses on popular presentational dance, which permits the face to be one of excess and spectacle, as well as disclosure or deception. The concept of facial choreography resists the idea that the expressive countenance in dance is simply by chance, and instead conceives its movement as purposeful, creative, and communicative. The book centers on three facial case studies: global celebrity Michael Jackson, whose face has occupied a site of fervent controversy; Maddie Ziegler, child star of the reality television series Dance Moms and de facto face of pop star Sia; and a community of hip hop dancers who engage in fiercely contested dance battles. Chapters are organized according to action-expressions, actively working even in times of stillness: SMILE, LOOK, FROWN, CRY, SCREAM, and LAUGH. Across each case study, the book explores pedagogies of facial composition, the purpose of codified expressions, and how dancers re-choreograph their faces as a critical unworking of what a dancing visage might represent. Facial choreographies engender opportunity for startling creativity, the articulation of identity, a cathartic expression of emotions and attitudes, and the capacity to dismantle previously held assumptions. As the dancing face tauntingly slips between visual, sensory, and kinetic registers it ensures that nothing can be taken at face value.

An Empty Room is a transformative journey through butoh, an avant-garde form of performance art that originated in Japan in the late 1950's and is now a global phenomenon. This is the first book about butoh authored by a scholar-practitioner who combines personal experience with ethnographic and historical accounts alongside over twenty photos. Author Michael Sakamoto traverses butoh dance history from its roots in post-World War II Japan to its diaspora in the West in the 1970s and 1980s. An Empty Room delves into the archive of butoh dance, gathering testimony from multiple generations of artists active in Japan, the US, and Europe. The book also creatively highlights seminal visual and written texts, especially Hosoe Eikoh's photo essay, "Kamaitachi," and Hijikata Tatsumi's early essays. Sakamoto ultimately fashions an original view of what butoh has been, is and, more importantly, can be through the lens of literary criticism, photo studies, folklore, political theory, and his experience performing, photographing, teaching, and lecturing in 15 countries worldwide.

“Far more than a conventional novel. It is a meditation on life, on the erotic, on the nature of men and women and love . . . full of telling details, truths large and small, to which just about every reader will respond.” — People In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera tells the story of two couples, a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing, and one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover. In a world in which lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and by fortuitous events, a world in which everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence, we feel "the unbearable lightness of being" not only as the consequence of our pristine actions but also in the public sphere, and the two inevitably intertwine. This magnificent novel is a story of passion and politics, infidelity and ideas, and encompasses the extremes of comedy and tragedy, illuminating all aspects of human existence.

The Grand Union was a leaderless improvisation group in SoHo in the 1970s that included people who became some of the biggest names in postmodern dance: Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown, Steve Paxton, Barbara Dilley, David Gordon, and Douglas Dunn. Together they unleashed a range of improvised forms from peaceful movement explorations to wildly imaginative collective fantasies. This book delves into the "collective genius" of Grand Union and explores their process of deep play. Drawing on hours of archival videotapes, Wendy Perron seeks to understand the ebb and flow of the performances. Includes 65 photographs.

La 4e de couverture indique : "There is a growing interest in the notion and practice of dramaturgy, which is often discussed either as the work of the dramaturg, or as the compositional, cohesive or sense-making aspects of a performance. Drawing on such views, 'The Practice of Dramaturgy' addresses dramaturgy as a shared, politicized and catalytic practice that sets actions into motion in a more speculative rather than an instructive way. In the first part, 'Dramaturgy as Working on Actions', the editors and main authors of the book discuss three working principles that lie at the heart of their proposition, and return to the etymology of the term 'dramaturgy' ('drama'=action and 'ergon'=work) in order to scrutinize this further by relating it to debates on action, work and post-Fordist labour. The second part, 'Working on Actions and Beyond', opens up to different artistic, social and political perspectives that such understanding of dramaturgy may give rise to."