Kinesthetic City uses choreography as subject and method to explore how movement through particular spaces at precise moments can illuminate the communities in those places and times. It examines the simultaneous persistence and mobility of the idea of Chineseness as it travels across a transnational network of Chinese cities.

Kinesthetic City uses choreography as subject and method to explore how movement through particular spaces at precise moments can illuminate the communities in those places and times. It examines the simultaneous persistence and mobility of the idea of Chineseness as it travels across a transnational network of Chinese cities.

Contemporary PerforMemory looks at dance works created in the 21st century by choreographers identifying as Afro-European, Jewish, Black, Palestinian, and Taiwanese-Chinese-American. It explores how contemporary dance-makers engage with historical traumas such as the Shoah and the Maafa to reimagine how the past is remembered and how the future is anticipated. The new idea of perforMemory arises within a lively blend of interdisciplinary theory, interviews, performance analysis, and personal storytelling. Scholar and artist Layla Zami traces unexpected pathways, inviting the reader to move gracefully across disciplines, geographies, and histories. Featuring insightful interviews with seven international artists: Oxana Chi, Zufit Simon, André M. Zachery, Chantal Loïal, Wan-Chao Chang, Farah Saleh, and Christiane Emmanuel.

This book analyzes how national and international dancers contributed to developing Mexico's cultural politics and notions of the nation at different historical moments. It emphasizes how dancers and other moving bodies resisted and reproduced racial and social hierarchies stemming from colonial Mexico (1521-1821). Relying on extensive archival research, choreography as an analytical methodology, and theories of race, dance, and performance studies, author Jose Reynoso examines how dance and other forms of embodiment participated in Mexico's formation after the Mexican War of Independence (1821-1876), the Porfirian dictatorship (1876-1911), and postrevolutionary Mexico (1919-1940). In so doing, the book analyzes how underlying colonial logics continued to influence relationships amongst dancers, other artists, government officials, critics, and audiences of different backgrounds as they refashioned their racial, social, cultural, and national identities. The book proposes and develops two main concepts that explore these mutually formative interactions among such diverse people: embodied mestizo modernisms and transnational nationalisms. 'Embodied mestizo modernisms' refers to combinations of indigenous, folkloric, ballet, and modern dance practices in works choreographed by national and international dancers with different racial and social backgrounds. The book contends that these mestizo modernist dance practices challenged assumptions about racial neutrality with which whiteness historically established its ostensible supremacy in constructing Mexico's 'transnational nationalisms'. This argument holds that notions of the nation-state and national identities are not produced exclusively by a nation's natives but also by historical transnational forces and (dancing) bodies whose influences shape local politics, economic interests, and artistic practices.

The German-American architect, art critic, and urban planner Ludwig Hilberseimer was central to avant-garde art and architecture in the Weimar Republic, an important Bauhaus teacher, and long-standing collaborator of leading modern architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Despite being internationally-known for his work on Lafayette Park in Detroit, Hilberseimer's legacy as a whole has been obscured in the history of modern architecture. Whether this is due to the intense shadow cast by Mies, or by his oeuvre being split between the differing languages and contexts of interwar Germany and postwar North America, this book argues that the time is now right for a critical reassessment of Hilberseimer's work and writings. Published as part of the Bloomsbury Studies in Modern Architecture series, which brings to light the work of significant yet overlooked modernist architects, this study clarifies and situates Hilberseimer's ideas both as an architect and writer, and examines their influence on modern and contemporary architecture and urbanism. The first synthetic account of Hilberseimer in English, it provides a contextual account of Hilberseimer's works which have until now been subject to fragmentary or highly specialized interpretations. By demonstrating the influence of Hilberseimer's ideas on the architecture of Mies van der Rohe, the book also lends Mies's work a newfound urban significance.

The politics of theater dance is commonly theorized in relation to bodily freedom, resistance, agitation, or repair. This book questions those utopian imaginaries, arguing that the visions and sensations of canonical Euro-American choreographies carry hidden forms of racial violence, not in the sense of the physical or psychological traumas arising in the practice of these arts but through the histories of social domination that materially underwrite them. Developing a new theory of choreographic space, Arabella Stanger shows how embodied forms of hope promised in ballet and progressive dance modernisms conceal and depend on spatial operations of imperial, colonial, and racial subjection. Stanger unearths dance’s violent ground by interrogating the expansionist fantasies of Marius Petipa’s imperial ballet, settler colonial and corporate land practices in the modern dance of Martha Graham and George Balanchine, reactionary discourses of the human in Rudolf von Laban’s and Oskar Schlemmer’s movement geometries; Merce Cunningham’s experimentalism as a white settler fantasy of the land of the free, and the imperial amnesia of Boris Charmatz’s interventions into metropolitan museums. Drawing on materialist thought, critical race theory, and indigenous studies, Stanger ultimately advocates for dance studies to adopt a position of “critical negativity,” an analytical attitude attuned to how dance’s exuberant modeling of certain forms of life might provide cover for life-negating practices. Bold in its arguments and rigorous in its critique, Dancing on Violent Ground asks how performance scholars can develop a practice of thinking hopefully, without expunging history from their site of analysis.

In Body, Movement, and Culture, Sally Ann Ness provides an original interpretive account of three forms of sinulog dancing practiced in Cebu City in the Philippines: a healing ritual, a dance drama, and a "cultural" exhibition dance. Ness's examination of these dance forms yields rich insights into the cultural predicament of this Philippine city and the way in which kinesthetic and visual symbols interact to create meaning. Ness scrutinizes the patterns of movement, the use of the body and of objects, and the shaping of space common to all three versions of the sinulog. She then relates these elements to the fundamental ways the culture bearers of Cebu City experience their world. For example, she shows how each of the dance forms functions to reinforce class distinctions and to establish a code of authenticated "cultural" action. At the same time, Ness demonstrates, the dances manifest and actualize widely applied notions about the nature of "devotion," "sincerity," "naturalness," and "beauty." Throughout the text, Ness provides a close analysis of movement that is all too often missing from anthropological studies of dance. Most significantly, she works to relate the movements used in dance to everyday movement and to interpret the attitudes and values that are embodied in both choreographed and quotidian movement. Important and illuminating, Body, Movement, and Culture is of particular interest to students and scholars of anthropology, folklore, dance, and Asian studies.

Since the turn of the century, Performance Studies has emerged as an increasingly vibrant discipline. Its concerns - embodiment, ethical research and social change - are held in common with many other fields, however a unique combination of methods and applications is used in exploration of the discipline. Bridging live art practices - theatre, performance art and dance - with technological media, and social sciences with humanities, it is truly hybrid and experimental in its techniques. This Companion brings together specially commissioned essays from leading scholars who reflect on their own experiences in Performance Studies and the possibilities this offers to representations of identity, self-and-other, and communities. Theories which have been absorbed into the field are applied to compelling topics in current academic, artistic and community settings. The collection is designed to reflect the diversity of outlooks and provide a guide for students as well as scholars seeking a perspective on research trends.

Creative Dance for Learning: The Kinesthetic Link is a comprehensive teaching guide that addresses the “what”, “why” and “how” of creative dance. It provides theoretical and practical guidance on teaching creative dance, particularly in educational settings. The authors’ approach is heavily influenced by Barbara Mettler, Margaret H’Doubler, and Rudolph Laban, all legendary figures in the field of creative dance. Their theories are combined with the authors’ insights from thirty years of dance teaching experience to: * validate dance as art education, adaptable to all ages and abilities * explain a conceptual framework for teaching dance in common language * highlight the kinesthetic sense as a guide for creating dance forms * provide methods of linking movement across the curriculum * address cultural material through creative dance * outline teaching progressions that develop student skill and understanding * guide readers into building and presenting lessons of their own * provide models for assessing student learning * relate creative dance instruction to achievement standards in dance and other disciplines * offer over 25 well-tested lesson plans and 40 adaptations that extend the lesson material.