Category Archives: Dance

by | March 18, 2014 · 1:00 am

Goth belly dance

Snake_edited-1

Goth belly dance or raqs gothique—a term coined from the Arabic raqs sharqi (dance of the East)—fuses the already Westernized interpretative dance style of the Middle East with Goth subculture.

This new experimental dance involves different musics (from goth rock to world music), altered costuming, and new performance settings. Although rooted in belly dance and its ties to colonialism, Goth belly dance transforms Orientalism and embodies decolonization as process and product.

This according to “Raqs gothique: Decolonizing belly dance” by Tina Frühauf (TDR: The drama review LIII/3 [fall 2009] pp. 117-138). Above, Maiiah with her snake, Maharet (photo by Pryor Dodge; click to enlarge); below, the late JeniViva Mia performs.

Related article: Subversive belly dancing

Enhanced by Zemanta

1 Comment

Filed under Curiosities, Dance

Tagged as , , ,

by | March 6, 2014 · 1:00 am

From Bollywood to fusion

dola re dola

Performances of Bollywood dances among Indian diasporic populations are sites of Hindi film reception, and part of understanding this involves analyzing the dances as they exist in the films and the processes surrounding their transformation into performed works.

A comparison of the choreography of the song Dola re dola in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Devdas (2002) with a newly choreographed version by the U.S. fusion dance troupe Chamak demonstrates how the latter dispensed with the former’s plot-driven elements and Bollywood glitz to become a display of the troupe’s perceptions of both their Indian-American identities and their cultural heritage.

This according to “Swaying to an Indian beat: Dola goes my diasporic heart—Exploring Hindi film dance” by Sangita Shresthova (Dance research journal XXXVI/2 [winter 2004] pp. 91–101.

Above and below, the Bollywood version; further below, Chamak’s version (performance begins around 0:25).

Related article: Globalized Bollywood

Enhanced by Zemanta

2 Comments

Filed under Dance

Tagged as , ,

by | February 10, 2014 · 1:00 am

Swinging at the Savoy

Savoy Ballroom 1

The development of the Lindy hop must be understood within the context of Depression-era black culture and the Savoy Ballroom in New York City.

For some young black dancers the Savoy became a way of life, and for serious Lindy hoppers the crucial part of the evening was showtime, when the best dancers took the floor and tried to eliminate each other. The improvisational section—known as the breakaway, when couples broke into solos—spawned many new steps and maneuvers that were subsequently incorporated into the dance.

This according to “Swinging at the Savoy” by Barbara Engelbrecht (Dance research journal XV/2 [spring 1983] pp. 3–10). Above, a moment at the Savoy Ballroom in the 1930s; below, a tribute to the great Frankie Manning includes vintage footage from the Savoy.

Enhanced by Zemanta

1 Comment

Filed under Dance, Popular music

Tagged as , , ,

by | October 2, 2013 · 1:00 am

Pungmul and dance

pungmul

“Pungmul is played with your heel!” say many celebrated performers of this percussion genre, underscoring the inseparability of the music and the musicians’ dance moves.

Merely listening to the music of pungmul is not sufficient for differentiating between passages where the meter does not change but the instruments play cross-rhythmically and those where the meter does change and the instrumental parts reflect this change. Such passages can only be differentiated through a choreological analysis that demonstrates the relationships between the stepping patterns of the dancing musicians and the music that they are simultaneously playing.

This according to “‘Pungmul is played with your heel!’ Dance as a determinant of rhythmic construct in Korean percussion band music/dance” by Nathan Hesselink (Eum’ag gwa munhwa/Music and culture IV [2001] pp. 99–110). Below, a taste of pungmul from the Gungnip Minsok Bangmulgwan (National Folk Museum) in Seoul.

Comments Off on Pungmul and dance

Filed under Asia, Dance

Tagged as ,

by | September 30, 2013 · 1:00 am

Cholly Atkins and American vernacular dance

 

Charles “Cholly” Atkins was a tap dancing star before the bottom dropped out for the genre in the 1940s.

In 1953 he was hired to coach the Cadillacs on their stage presentation, and he was so successful that he was given a steady job at Motown Records in the early 1960s; he went on to coach and choreograph for their top groups, including The Supremes, The Temptations, and Gladys Knight and the Pips, almost single-handedly keeping much of American vernacular dance alive for a new generation.

This according to “‘Let the punishment fit the crime’: The vocal choreography of Cholly Atkins” by Jacqui Malone (Dance research journal XX/1 [summer 1988] pp. 11–18).

Today is Atkins’s 100th birthday! Below, rehearsing with The Temptations in 1986.

BONUS: The celebrated duo Coles & Atkins (Atkins is on the right).

Comments Off on Cholly Atkins and American vernacular dance

Filed under Dance

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

by | September 23, 2013 · 1:00 am

Isadora Duncan and nature

Isadora

Even as she evoked a utopian vision of classicism, Isadora Duncan was creating a new image of the stage dancer as a noble-spirited woman, bold yet pliant, freely using her imagination and her body as she wished.

Duncan emphasized nature and the connectedness of body and soul, countering the effects of the Industrial Revolution and Victorian prudery; she championed simplicity and organic design in the face of the public’s taste for elaboration in both design and decorum; and she made herself into an emblem of freedom from conventions, particularly those of dance and femininity.

This according to “Images of Isadora: The search for motion” by Deborah Jowitt (Dance research journal XVII–XVIII [fall–spring 1985–86] pp. 21–29. Below, a reconstruction of one of Duncan’s dances.

Related article: St. Denis and Radha

Comments Off on Isadora Duncan and nature

Filed under Dance

Tagged as , , ,

by | September 5, 2013 · 1:00 am

Dance Your PhD

 

In 2008 Science magazine and the American Academy for the Advancement of Science hosted the first ever Dance Your PhD Contest in Vienna.

Calls for submission to subsequent annual Dance Your PhD contests followed suit, attracting hundreds of entries.

For these contests, practitioners transform their bodies into animating media and conduct body experiments to test their hypotheses. This body-work offers a medium through which they can communicate the nuanced details of their findings among students and colleagues. The Dance Your PhD contests expand and extend what it is possible for scientific researchers to see, say, imagine, and feel.

This according to “Dance Your PhD: Embodied animations, body experiments, and the affective entanglements of life science research” by Natasha Myers (Body & society XVIII/1 [2012] pp. 151–189). Above and below, the winning dance from 2017.

BONUS: John Bohannon, who started the contest, presents a TED talk about it here.

Comments Off on Dance Your PhD

Filed under Curiosities, Dance, Humor, Science

Tagged as ,

by | August 23, 2013 · 1:00 am

St. Denis and Radha

isainyn001p1

Presenting a hyperbolization of categories of otherness through mapping markers of race, Orientalism, and sexuality onto the white middle-class female body, Ruth St. Denis’s Radha functions as a site of the condensation and displacement of desire.

In this work, St. Denis achieved a combination of Delsartism’s transcendent spirituality with the Oriental orgasmic in the spectacle of a goddess delirious with her own sexuality who chooses to renounce the powerful pleasure of her body for a chaste union with the transcendent.

This according to “Dancing out the difference: Cultural imperialism and Ruth St. Denis’s Radha of 1906” by Jane C. Desmond (Signs: Journal of women in culture and society XVII/1 [fall-winter 1991] pp. 28–49; reprinted in Moving history/dancing cultures: A dance history reader [Middletown: Wesleyan University press, 2001] pp. 256–270.

Above, St. Denis performing Radha in 1908; below, a documentary contextualizes the work in her career and influences.

Related post: Ted Shawn and Native American dance

2 Comments

Filed under Curiosities, Dance

Tagged as , , ,

by | August 19, 2013 · 1:00 am

Primate dance

lemur

The only clear difference between human dance and primate dancelike behavior is that the former is culturally patterned; otherwise, attributes only vary in terms of their complexity.

Dance, therefore, is not a human invention—it is a human variation on a primate theme.

This according to “The origins of dance: The perspective of primate evolution” by Sandra T. Francis (Dance chronicle XIV/2–3 [1991] pp. 203–220). Above, a lemur trips the light fantastic; below, the story behind a popular YouTube video.

Comments Off on Primate dance

Filed under Animals, Curiosities, Dance

Tagged as

by | August 12, 2013 · 1:00 am

Mallarmé and dance

Mallarmé_(Manet)

Although Stéphane Mallarmé’s writings on dance are few, he has come to be considered an important dance theorist who allied and underscored two aspects of dance that are seldom simultaneously emphasized: its ritual character and its function as a system of signs.

While Mallarmé linked dance with poetry, he noted that—unlike poetry—dance’s symbolism does not develop from a codified semiotic system; rather, dance signifiers are inherently open-ended, and the spectator completes the art work by supplying the signified.

This according to “Ephemeral signs: Apprehending the idea through poetry and dance” by Mary Lewis Shaw (Dance research journal XX/1 [summer 1988] pp. 3–9).

Above, Édouard Manet’s portrait of the poet; below, perhaps the ultimate meeting of Mallarmé and dance, as Rudolf Nureyev performs a reconstruction of Nijinsky’s choreography for Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, a work inspired by Mallarmé’s L’après-midi d’un faune.

Comments Off on Mallarmé and dance

Filed under Dance, Mass media

Tagged as , , , , , ,