Focusing on politics, gender, and identities, a group of international dance scholars provide a broad overview of new methodological approaches – with specific case studies – and how they can be applied to the study of ballet and modern dance. With an introduction exploring the history of dance studies and the development of central themes and areas of concerns in the field, the book is then divided into three parts: politics explores 'Ausdruckstanz' – an expressive dance tradition first formulated in the 1920s by dancer Mary Wigman and carried forward in the work of Pina Bausch and others gender examines eighteenth century theatrical dance – a time when elaborate sets, costumes, and plots examined racial and sexual stereotypes identity is concerned with modern dance. Exploring contemporary analytical approaches to understanding performance traditions, Dance Discourses' pedagogical structure makes it ideal for courses in performing arts and humanities.

Focusing on politics, gender, and identities, a group of international dance scholars provide a broad overview of new methodological approaches – with specific case studies – and how they can be applied to the study of ballet and modern dance. With an introduction exploring the history of dance studies and the development of central themes and areas of concerns in the field, the book is then divided into three parts: politics explores 'Ausdruckstanz' – an expressive dance tradition first formulated in the 1920s by dancer Mary Wigman and carried forward in the work of Pina Bausch and others gender examines eighteenth century theatrical dance – a time when elaborate sets, costumes, and plots examined racial and sexual stereotypes identity is concerned with modern dance. Exploring contemporary analytical approaches to understanding performance traditions, Dance Discourses' pedagogical structure makes it ideal for courses in performing arts and humanities.

Within the newly thriving field of ancient Greek and Roman performance and dance studies, The Anatomy of Dance Discourse offers a fresh and original perspective on ancient perceptions of dance. Focusing on the second century CE, it provides an overview of the dance discourse of this period and explores the conceptualization of dance across an array of different texts, from Plutarch and Lucian of Samosata, to the apocryphal Acts of John, Longus, and Apuleius. The volume is divided into two Parts: while the second Part discusses ekphraseis of dance performance in prose and poetry of the Roman imperial period, the first delves more deeply into an examination of how both philosophical and literary treatments of dance interacted with other areas of cultural expression, whether language and poetry, rhetoric and art, or philosophy and religion. Its distinctive contribution lies in this juxtaposition of ancient theorizations of dance and philosophical analyses of the medium with literary depictions of dance scenes and performances, and it attends not only to the highly encoded genre of pantomime, which dominated the stage in the Roman empire, but also to acrobatic, non-representational dances. This twofold nature of dance sparked highly sophisticated reflections on the relationship between dance and meaning in the ancient world, and the volume defends the novel claim that in the imperial period it became more and more palpable that dance, unlike painting or sculpture, could be representational or not a performance of nothing but itself. It argues that dance was understood as a practice in which human beings, whether as dancers or spectators, are confronted with the irreducible reality of their own physical existence, which is constantly changing, and that its way to cognition and action is physical experience.

Dance plays an important role in many religious traditions, in rites of passage, processions, healing rituals or festivals. But it is also controversial, especially in Christianity. Colonial European Christian discourses tend to separate dance from religion(s) and spirituality. This volume explores dance as "Third Space", following Homi Bhabha's postcolonial metaphor. The "Inter-Dance approach" combines interdisciplinary theoretical considerations with case studies. International experts examine dance controversies and discourses from the early church to World Christianity, as well as in Hasidic Judaism, Greek mysteries, Islamic Sufism, West African Togolese religions, and Afro-Brazilian Umbanda. Christian dance theologies are unfolded and the boundary-crossing potential of dance in interreligious and intercultural encounters is explored. The volume breaks new ground in how dance as ephemeral performative art, embodied thought and gendered discourse can transform studies of religion.

This groundbreaking collection combines ethnographic and historic strategies to reveal how dance plays crucial cultural roles in various regions of the world, including Tonga, Java, Bosnia-Herzegovina, New Mexico, India, Korea, Macedonia, and England. The essays find a balance between past and present and examine how dance and bodily practices are core identity and cultural creators. Reaching beyond the typically Eurocentric view of dance, Dancing from Past to Present opens a world of debate over the role dance plays in forming and expressing cultural identities around the world.

When political protest is read as epidemic madness, religious ecstasy as nervous disease, and angular dance moves as dark and uncouth, the 'disorder' being described is choreomania. At once a catchall term to denote spontaneous gestures and the unruly movements of crowds, 'choreomania' emerged in the nineteenth century at a time of heightened class conflict, nationalist policy, and colonial rule. In this book, author K lina Gotman examines these choreographies of unrest, rethinking the modern formation of the choreomania concept as it moved across scientific and social scientific disciplines. Reading archives describing dramatic misformations-of bodies and body politics-she shows how prejudices against expressivity unravel, in turn revealing widespread anxieties about demonstrative agitation. This history of the fitful body complements stories of nineteenth-century discipline and regimentation. As she notes, constraints on movement imply constraints on political power and agency. In each chapter, Gotman confronts the many ways choreomania works as an extension of discourses shaping colonialist orientalism, which alternately depict riotous bodies as dangerously infected others, and as curious bacchanalian remains. Through her research, Gotman also shows how beneath the radar of this colonial discourse, men and women gathered together to repossess on their terms the gestures of social revolt.