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Dance

Parks Library Dance Resources

These books were all published and added to our collection in 2018. In all there are 11 titles - from 2018 - that we added in our primary collection, housed in GV1580 - GV1800. We may have added other books tangentially related from other call numbers, as well as e-books that are not listed here. This is just print books on this page. The box to the left, if you select it, should bring you to a catalog search for e-books on dance.

2018 books in our dance collection

Theory and Practice in Eighteenth-Century Dance

Theory and Practice in Eighteenth-Century Dance

This book is about the intersection of two evolving dance-historical realms--theory and practice--during the first two decades of the eighteenth century. France was the source of works on notation, choreography, and repertoire that dominated European dance practice until the 1780s. While these French inventions were welcomed and used in Germany, German dance writers responded by producing an important body of work on dance theory. This book examines consequences in Germany of this asymmetrical confrontation of dance perspectives.

The Sentient Archive

The Sentient Archive

The Sentient Archive gathers the work of scholars and practitioners in dance, performance, science, and the visual arts. Its twenty-eight rich and challenging essays cross boundaries within and between disciplines, and illustrate how the body serves as a repository for knowledge. Contributors include Nancy Goldner, Marcia B. Siegel, Jenn Joy, Alain Platel, Catherine J. Stevens, Meg Stuart, André Lepecki, Ralph Lemon, and other notable scholars and artists. Hardcover is un-jacketed.

Writing and the Body in Motion

Writing and the Body in Motion

 Based upon the author's lifetime practices as a dancer, poet and teacher, this innovative approach to developing body awareness focuses on achieving self-discovery and well-being through movement, mindfulness and writing. Written from a holistic (rather than dualistic) view of the mind-body duality, discussion and exercises draw on dance, psychology, neuroscience and meditation to guide personal exploration and creative expression.

Making Ballet American

Making Ballet American

George Balanchine's arrival in the United States in 1933, it is widely thought, changed the course of ballet history by creating a bold and original neoclassical style that is celebrated as the first successful American manifestation of the art form. This book intervenes in the prevailing historical narrative and rebalances Balanchine's role in dance history by revealing the complex social, cultural, and political forces that actually shaped the construction of American neoclassical ballet.

Perspectives on American Dance: The New Millenium

Perspectives on American Dance: The New Millenium

Perspectives on American Dance is the first anthology in over twenty-five years to focus exclusively on American dance practices across a wide span of American culture. This volume and its companion show how social experience, courtship, sexualities, and other aspects of life in America are translated through dancing into spatial patterns, gestures, and partner relationships.This volume of Perspectives on American Dance features essays by a young generation of authors who write with familiarity about their own era, exploring new parameters of identity and evaluating a wide variety of movement practices being performed in spaces beyond traditional proscenium stages. Topics include "dorky dancing" on YouTube; same-sex competitors on the TV show So You Think You Can Dance; racial politics in NFL touchdown dances; the commercialization of flash mobs; the connections between striptease and corporate branding; how 9/11 affected dance; the criminalization of New York City club dancing; and the joyous ironies of hipster dance. 

Perspectives on American Dance: the 20th century

Perspectives on American Dance: the 20th century

This volume and its companion show how social experience, courtship, sexualities, and other aspects of life in America are translated through dancing into spatial patterns, gestures, and partner relationships. In this volume of Perspectives on American Dance, the contributors explore a variety of subjects: white businessmen in Prescott, Arizona, who created a "Smoki tribe" that performed "authentic" Hopi dances for over seventy years; swing dancing by Japanese American teens in World War II internment camps; African American jazz dancing in the work of ballet choreographer Ruth Page; dancing in early Hollywood movie musicals; how critics identified "American" qualities in the dancing of ballerina Nana Gollner; the politics of dancing with the American flag; English Country Dance as translated into American communities; Bob Fosse's sociopolitical choreography; and early break dancing as Latino political protest. 

Dance and the Arts in Mexico, 1920-1950

Dance and the Arts in Mexico, 1920-1950

Dance and the Arts in Mexico, 1920-1950 tells the story of the arts explosion that launched at the end of the Mexican revolution, when composers, choreographers, and muralists had produced state-sponsored works in wide public spaces. The book assesses how the "cosmic generation" in Mexico connected the nation-body and the dancer's body in artistic movements between 1920 and 1950. It first discusses the role of dance in particular, the convergences of composers and visual artists in dance productions, and the allegorical relationship between the dancer's body and the nation-body in state-sponsored performances. The arts were of critical import in times of political and social transition, and the dynamic between the dancer's body and the national body shifted as the government stance had also shifted. Second, this book examines more deeply the involvement of US artists and patrons in this Mexican arts movement during the period.

Dance Matters in Ireland

Dance Matters in Ireland

This book addresses the need for critical scholarship about contemporary dance practices in Ireland. Bringing together key voices from a new wave of scholarship to examine recent practice and research in the field of contemporary dance, it examines the excitingly diverse range of choreographers and works that are transforming Ireland's performance landscape. The first section provides a chronologically-ordered collection of critical essays to ground the reader in some of the most important issues currently at play in contemporary dance in Ireland. The second section then provides an interrogation of individual choreographers' processes. The book traces new choreographic work and trends through a broad array of topics, including somatics in performance, screendance, cultural trauma, dance archives, affect studies, feminist perspectives, choreographic process, the dancer's voice, interdisciplinarity, and pedagogical paradigms.

Dance Me a Song

Dance Me a Song

Dance Me a Song traces the history of famous Hollywood collaborations as the palimpsest of dance, film, and musical techniques were developed over time. Author Beth Genne draws on the most well-known and influential musical dances of the first half of the century, from the Fred Astaire andGinger Rogers' series in the thirties (Top Hat, Swing Time, Shall We Dance, and others), through the MGM film dances created and directed by Vincente Minnelli, Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen, and again Astaire, whose career continued at MGM in the forties and fifties (Yolanda and The Thief, The Pirate,On the Town, Singin' in the Rain, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, The Bandwagon). 

Group Motion in Practice

Group Motion in Practice

 Group Motion--an improvisational dance performance practice--represents fifty years of co-creation by the authors, with the participation of thousands of dancers, musicians, videographers and others around the globe. Informed by Mary Wigman's expressionist dance and other contemporary dance and theater traditions, Group Motion has brought dance not only to stages worldwide, but also to public parks, prisons and airports. Part memoir, part guidebook, part philosophy of art treatise, this book provides step-by-step guidance to dozens of improvisational structures or games for dance professionals, theater artists, musicians and other performers who use movement for creative expression.

Choreography: a basic approach using improvisation

Choreography: a basic approach using improvisation

Choreography: A Basic Approach Using Improvisation has long been a recognized standard in the field of dance education, and its fourth edition is replete with new and updated material and tools that will help students develop their skills in each step of the choreographic experience, from finding an idea to staging the performance. Choreography is equally suited for use in high school and university classes. You can use it to guide your students through the creative and choreographic processes, applying instructional strategies such as problem solving, updated technology integration, and connections to dance education standards. 

Choreomania: dance and disorder

Choreomania: dance and disorder

From the condemnation of protest to skepticism of religious ecstasy, radical movement has been defined by freedoms and restrictions relative to class conflict, national policy, and colonialism. In this book, author Kelina Gotman examines choreographies of unrest, rethinking the modernformation of choreomania, a fantastical concept across scientific disciplines used to designate the spontaneous and uncontrolled movements of crowds. In these misformations of body politics, prejudices against spontaneity unravel, suggesting widespread anxieties about impulsiveness and irregularity.In tandem with dialogues of the erratic, Gotman makes use of histories of nineteenth-century control which identify the period as one of increasing regimentation.

Choreography and Verbatim Theatre

Choreography and Verbatim Theatre

This book addresses the field of verbatim dance-theatre, around which there is currently limited existing scholarly writing. Grounded in extensive research, the project combines dance studies and performance studies theory, detailed analysis of professional choreographic work and examples of experimental practice to then employ the framework of translation studies in order to consider what a focus on movement and an attempt to dance/move other people's words can offer to the field of verbatim theatre. It investigates ways to understand, articulate and engage in the process of choreographing movement as a response to verbatim spoken language. It is directed at an international audience of dance studies scholars, theatre and performance studies scholars and dance-theatre practitioners, and it would be appropriate reading material for undergraduate students seeking to develop their understanding of choreographic processes that use written/spoken text as a starting point and graduate students working in the area of adaptation, verbatim theatre, physical theatre or devised theatre.

Boston Ballerina

Boston Ballerina

As a charter member of Boston Ballet and its predecessor, New England Civic Ballet, Laura Young has been affiliated with the company longer than any other dancer in its history. This book is both a memoir of her personal journey and a fascinating account of Boston Ballet's rise from a regional troupe to the internationally recognized company that it is today. It is interspersed with ruminations on the history of ballet, stories from the company's Balanchine-influenced early years under founder E. Virginia Williams, and recollections from noteworthy tours, including those featuring the legendary Rudolf Nureyev, with whom Young was frequently paired. After retiring from the stage, Young has continued her affiliation with Boston Ballet, both as an administrator and a teacher. Working in collaboration with Janine Parker, Young has written a lively, informed, and entertaining memoir.

Ballet and Modern Dance: a Concise History

Ballet and Modern Dance: a Concise History

Ballet and Modern Dance meets the needs of both students and inquisitive dance goers through a narrative focused on the development of Western theatrical dance from the Renaissance to the first decades of the 21st century, incorporating the most recent scholarship and projecting trends. The text is illuminated by excerpts from primary sources and embellished by 65 photos. A section of biographical profiles at the end of the book serves as a supplementary reference source. Intended to be entertaining as well as enlightening the book seeks an additional objective which is the value of dance history as a field of study.

Tango Lessons

Tango Lessons

From a dazzling new literary voice, a debut memoir about a young woman learning to dance tango, becoming comfortable in her own skin and in the arms of others   Tango was an unlikely choice for Meghan Flaherty. A young woman living with the scars of past trauma, she was terrified of being touched and shied away from real passion. But by her late twenties, she knew something had to change. She dug up an old dream and tried on her dancing shoes.   In tango, there's a leader and a follower, and, traditionally, the woman follows. As Meghan moved from beginner classes to the late-night dance halls of New York's vibrant tango underground, she discovered that more than any footwork, the hardest and most essential lesson of the dance was to follow with strength and agency; to find her balance, regardless of the lead. And as she broke her own rule--never mix romance and tango--she started to apply those lessons in every corner of her life.   Written in wry, lyrical prose, and beautifully enriched by the vivid history and culture of the dance, Tango Lessons is a transformative story of conquering your fears, living your dreams, and enjoying the dizzying freedom found in the closest embrace.  

Dance and the Arts in Mexico, 1920-1950

Dance and the Arts in Mexico, 1920-1950

Dance and the Arts in Mexico, 1920-1950 tells the story of the arts explosion that launched at the end of the Mexican revolution, when composers, choreographers, and muralists had produced state-sponsored works in wide public spaces. The book assesses how the "cosmic generation" in Mexico connected the nation-body and the dancer's body in artistic movements between 1920 and 1950. It first discusses the role of dance in particular, the convergences of composers and visual artists in dance productions, and the allegorical relationship between the dancer's body and the nation-body in state-sponsored performances. The arts were of critical import in times of political and social transition, and the dynamic between the dancer's body and the national body shifted as the government stance had also shifted. Second, this book examines more deeply the involvement of US artists and patrons in this Mexican arts movement during the period. Given the power imbalance between north and south, these exchanges were vexed. Still, the results for both parties were invaluable. Ultimately, this book argues in favor of the benefits that artists on both sides of the border received from these exchanges.

On Choreography and Making Dance Theatre

On Choreography and Making Dance Theatre

There are many skills one needs to produce a piece of dance. In this text book, Bruce describes the basic foundation or ingredients of his version of Dance Theater as: Movement, Drama, Sound and Vision. A choreographer has to study all of them to the best of their ability and learn how to combine them.Award-winning choreographer Mark Bruce's aim as an artist is to tap the subconscious, our hearts; transcend our everyday lives and hopefully stumble upon some truth along the way. OnChoreography and Making Dance Theater will be an invaluable artist's guide to making innovative new dance work.