Tango. A multidimensional expression of Argentine identity, one that speaks to that nation’s sense of disorientation, loss, and terror. Yet the tango mesmerizes dancers and audiences alike throughout the world. In Paper Tangos, Julie Taylor—a classically trained dancer and anthropologist—examines the poetics of the tango while describing her own quest to dance this most dramatic of paired dances.
Taylor, born in the United States, has lived much of her adult life in Latin America. She has spent years studying the tango in Buenos Aires, dancing during and after the terror of military dictatorships. This book is at once an account of a life lived crossing the borders of two distinct and complex cultures and an exploration of the conflicting meanings of tango for women who love the poetry of its movement yet feel uneasy with the roles it bestows on the male and female dancers. Drawing parallels among the violences of the Argentine Junta, the play with power inherent in tango dancing, and her own experiences with violence both inside and outside the intriguing tango culture, Taylor weaves the line between engaging memoir and insightful cultural critique. Within the contexts of tango’s creative birth and contemporary presentations, this book welcomes us directly into the tango subculture and reveals the ways that personal, political, and historical violence operate in our lives.
The book’s experimental design includes photographs on every page, which form a flip-book sequence of a tango. Not simply a book for tango dancers and fans, Paper Tangos will reward students of Latin American studies, cultural studies, anthropology, feminist studies, dance studies, and the art of critical memoir.

Observing the activities of urban folk dance enthusiasts in Slovakia, Joseph Grim Feinberg sets out to scrutinize the processes by which "authentic folklore" is identified, talked about, represented, reconstructed, reenacted, and revived.

In Slovakia and elsewhere in Eastern Europe after World War II, Communist governments promoted folklore revivals and staged performances of song and dance as representations of "the people." When the Communists fell from power in Slovakia in 1989, folklore was also discredited in the eyes of many. By the early twenty-first century, however, a new generation launched a movement to revive folklore's reputation and reintroduce it to a broad public.

Weaving together personal narrative, ethnographic analysis, and philosophical reflection, Feinberg examines the aspirations and difficulties of young folk dance devotees as they recognize that authenticity is more easily prized than achieved. He sheds new light on the problems of specialized performance and broad participation, the uneasy relationship between folklore and the public sphere, and the paradoxical pursuit of authenticity in the modern world.

 In the aftermath of state-perpetrated injustice, a façade of peace can suddenly give way, and in South Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo, post-apartheid and postcolonial framings of change have exceeded their limits. Performance and the Afterlives of Injustice reveals how the voices and visions of artists can help us see what otherwise evades perception. Embodied performance in South Africa has particular potency because apartheid was so centrally focused on the body: classifying bodies into racial categories, legislating where certain bodies could move and which bathrooms and drinking fountains certain bodies could use, and how different bodies carried meaning. The book considers key works by contemporary performing artists Brett Bailey, Gregory Maqoma, Mamela Nyamza, Robyn Orlin, Jay Pather, and Sello Pesa, artists imagining new forms and helping audiences see the contemporary moment as it is: an important intervention in a country long predicated on denial. They are also helping to conjure, anticipate, and dream a world that is otherwise. The book will be of particular interest to scholars of African studies, black performance, dance studies, transitional justice, as well as theater and performance studies.

A field-shaping anthology by top cultural critics and practitioners representing a wide range of disciplines and art forms, Performing Brazil is the first book to bring together studies of the many and varied manifestations of Brazilian performance in and beyond their country of origin. Arguing that diverse forms of performance are best understood when presented in tandem, it offers new takes on better-known forms, such as carnival and capoeira, as well as those studied less often, including gender acts, curatorial practice, political protest, and the performance of Brazil in the United States.
            The contributors to the volume are Maria José Somerlate Barbosa, Eric A. Galm, Annie McNeill Gibson, Ana Paula Höfling, Benjamin Legg, Bryan McCann, Simone Osthoff, Fernando de Sousa Rocha, Cristina F. Rosa, Alessandra Santos, and Lidia Santos.

Increasingly, choreographic process is examined, shared, and discussed in a variety of academic, artistic, and performative contexts. More than ever before, post-show discussions, artistic blogs, books, archives, and seminars provide opportunities for choreographers to explain their particular methodologies. Performing Process: Sharing Dance and Choreographic Practice provides a unique theoretical investigation of this current trend. The chapters in this collection examine the methods, politics, and philosophy of sharing choreographic process, aiming to uncover theoretical repercussions of and the implications for forms of knowledge, the appreciation of dance, education, and artistic practices.

Performing Queer Latinidad highlights the critical role that performance played in the development of Latina/o queer public culture in the United States during the 1990s and early 2000s, a period when the size and influence of the Latina/o population was increasing alongside a growing scrutiny of the public spaces where latinidad could circulate.  Performances---from concert dance and street protest to the choreographic strategies deployed by dancers at nightclubs---served as critical meeting points and practices through which LGBT and other nonnormative sex practitioners of Latin American descent (individuals with greatly differing cultures, histories of migration or annexation to the United States, and contemporary living conditions) encountered each other and forged social, cultural, and political bonds. At a time when latinidad ascended to the national public sphere in mainstream commercial and political venues and Latina/o public space was increasingly threatened by the redevelopment of urban centers and a revived anti-immigrant campaign, queer Latinas/os in places such as the Bronx, San Antonio, Austin, Phoenix, and Rochester, NY, returned to performance to claim spaces and ways of being that allowed their queerness and latinidad to coexist. These social events of performance and their attendant aesthetic communication strategies served as critical sites and tactics for creating and sustaining queer latinidad.

Performing the Greek Crisis explores the impact of the Greek financial crisis (2009–19) on the performing arts sector in Greece, and especially on contemporary concert dance. When Greece became the first European Union member to be threatened with default, the resulting budget cuts pushed dance to develop in unprecedented directions. The book examines the repercussions that the crisis had on artists’ daily lives and experiences, weaving the personal with the political to humanize a phenomenon that, to date, had been examined chiefly through economic and statistical lenses. Informed by the author’s experience of growing up in Greece and including interviews and rich descriptions of performances,  the book offers a glimpse into a pivotal moment in Greek history. 

In Greece, dance (and, by extension, the body) has historically held a central role in the process of national identity construction. When the crisis broke out, artists had to navigate through a precariously fluctuating landscape, with their bodies as their only stable referent. In Greece, dance has held a historical role in national identity construction of Greece as the cradle of Western civilization. As the financial crisis coincided with the European Refugee Crisis, dancing bodies became agents to advocate for human rights. By centering the analysis of the Greek crisis on the dancing bodies, Performing the Greek Crisis is able to examine the various ways that artists reconceptualized their history and reframed ideas of national belonging, race, citizenship, and immigration.

A new exploration of how digital media assert the relevance of dance in a wired world

How has the Internet changed dance? Dance performances can now be seen anywhere, can be looped endlessly at user whim, and can integrate crowds in unprecedented ways. Dance practices are evolving to explore these new possibilities. In Perpetual Motion, Harmony Bench argues that dance is a vital part of civil society and a means for building participation and community. She looks at how, after 9/11, it became a crucial way of recuperating the common character of public spaces. She explores how crowdsourcing dance contributes to the project of performing a common world, as well as the social relationships forged when we look at dance as a gift in the era of globalization. Throughout, she asks how dance brings people together in digital spaces and what dance’s digital travels might mean for how we experience and express community. 

From original research on dance today to political economies of digital media to the philosophy of dance, Perpetual Motion provides an ambitious, invigorating look at a commonly shared practice.

There is a category of choreographic practice with a lineage stretching back to mid-20th century North America that has re-emerged since the early 1990s: dance as a contemporary art medium. Such work belongs as much to the gallery as does video art or sculpture and is distinct from both performance art and its history as well as from theater-based dance. 

The Persistence of Dance: Choreography as Concept and Material in Contemporary Art clarifies the continuities and differences between the second-wave dance avant-garde in the 1950s‒1970s and the third-wave starting in the 1990s. Through close readings of key artists such as Maria Hassabi, Sarah Michelson, Boris Charmatz, Meg Stuart, Philipp Gehmacher, Adam Linder, Agatha Gothe-Snape, Shelley Lasica and Latai Taumoepeau, The Persistence of Dance traces the relationship between the third-wave and gallery-based work. Looking at these artists highlights how the discussions and practices associated with “conceptual dance” resonate with the categories of conceptual and post-conceptual art as well as with the critical work on the function of visual art categories. Brannigan concludes that within the current post-disciplinary context, there is a persistence of dance and that a model of post-dance exists that encompasses dance as a contemporary art medium.

When The Phenomenology of Dance was first published in 1966, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone asked: “When we look at a dance, what do we see?” Her questions, about the nature of our experience of dance and the nature of dance as a formed and performed art, are still provocative and acutely significant today. Sheets-Johnstone considers dance as an aesthetic mode of expression, and integrates theories of dance into philosophical discussions of the nature of movement.
 
Back in print after nearly 20 years, The Phenomenology of Dance provides an informed approach to teaching dance and to dance education, appreciation, criticism, and choreography. In addition to the foreword by Merce Cunningham from the original edition, and the preface from the second edition, this fiftieth anniversary edition includes an in-depth introduction that critically and constructively addresses present-day scholarship on movement and dance.

In Spring 1938, an Indian dancer named Ram Gopal and an American writer-photographer named Carl Van Vechten came together for a photoshoot in New York City. Ram Gopal was a pioneer of classical Indian dance and Van Vechten was reputed as a prominent white patron of the African-American movement called the Harlem Renaissance. Photo-Attractions describes the interpersonal desires and expectations of the two men that took shape when the dancer took pose in exotic costumes in front of Van Vechten’s Leica camera. The spectacular images provide a rare and compelling record of an underrepresented history of transcultural exchanges during the interwar years of early-20th century, made briefly visible through photography.
 
Art historian Ajay Sinha uses these hitherto unpublished photographs and archival research to raise provocative and important questions about photographic technology, colonial histories, race, sexuality and transcultural desires. Challenging the assumption that Gopal was merely objectified by Van Vechten’s Orientalist gaze, he explores the ways in which the Indian dancer co-authored the photos. In Sinha’s reading, Van Vechten’s New York studio becomes a promiscuous contact zone between world cultures, where a “photo-erotic” triangle is formed between the American photographer, Indian dancer, and German camera.
 
A groundbreaking study of global modernity, Photo-Attractions brings scholarship on American photography, literature, race and sexual economies into conversation with work on South Asian visual culture, dance, and gender. In these remarkable historical documents, it locates the pleasure taken in cultural difference that still resonates today.

Capturing the energy of the popular workshops presented by master movement teacher Jerald Schwiebert, the book draws from the wisdom of hatha yoga, tai chi, and Pilates as well as from the teachings of Stanislavski, Structural Integration (Rolfing), Alexander, Feldenkrais, and Laban to provide a fresh and accessible approach to movement. More than 300 anatomical drawings help readers pinpoint specific muscles, joints, and actions as they explore the capacity of the performer's physical instrument, the components of dynamic movement, and the anatomy of expression. The book's many detailed exercises bring awareness of habitual and inefficient movement and introduce the steps necessary for more efficient movement patterns in all parts of the body. This book will prove indispensable in movement courses and as a resource guide for professionals seeking to take their performances to the next level.

"Polka Heartland" captures the beat that pulses in the heart of Midwestern culture--the polka--and offers up the fascinating history of how "oompah-pah" came to be the sound of middle America. From the crowded dance tent at Pulaski Polka Days to an off-the-grid Mexican polka dance in small-town Wisconsin, "Polka Heartland" explores the people, places, and history behind the Midwest's favorite music.

From polka's surprising origin story as a cutting-edge European fad to an exploration of the modern-day polka scene, author Rick March and photographer Dick Blau take readers on a joyful romp through this beloved, unique, and richly storied genre. "Polka Heartland" describes the artists, venues, instruments, and music-makers who have been pivotal to polka's popularity across the Midwest and offers six full-color photo galleries to immerse readers in today's vibrant polka scene.

Combining how-to information with voices of working artists, Poor Dancer's Almanac is an essential resource tool and source of inspiration for all independent artists—choreographers, performance artists, dancers producers, managers. Created in 1975 and revised again in 1984 this handbook has come to serve as one of the most crucial references for the arts community. In the most up-to-date and comprehensive edition yet, a broad range of issues affecting performers and producers is addressed, interwoven with newly added, more personal contributions from major figures in the performance world.
Organized and compiled by Dance Theater Workshop in New York and authored by more than fifty leading professionals in the field, Poor Dancer's Almanac offers in-depth discussions of everything from personal livelihood to professional career development, from medical care, housing, and unemployment insurance to management, touring, and legal issues. Each chapter is followed by an appendix containing extensive and varied listings, giving names and addresses for finding internship programs, videotaping, flooring, grant-writing, and reference publications. Although centered on New York the Almanac includes lists of resources and contacts for many other states—California, Washington D.C, Illinois, Minnesota, North Carolina, Texas, Florida, and Ohio. An entirely new section has been added dealing with health issues and the crisis of AIDS.
In personal anecdotes and essays various performers offer their own insights and stories—both of struggles and of successes—to bring to life the practical realities of working in the arts. We hear from Merce Cunningham, Eric Bogosian, Karen Finley, Paul Zaloom, and Bill T. Jones, among others. Illustrated with original drawings by Janie Geiser, this thoroughly revised and updated edition of the Poor Dancer's Almanac will continue to serve as one of the leading sources for those concerned with managing life and work in the performing arts.

The United States is among the wealthiest nations in the world. But that wealth hasn't translated to a higher life expectancy, an area where the United States still ranks thirty-eighth—behind Cuba, Chile, Costa Rica, and Greece, among many others. Some fault the absence of universal health care or the persistence of social inequalities. Others blame unhealthy lifestyles. But these emphases on present-day behaviors and policies miss a much more fundamental determinant of societal health: the state.

Werner Troesken looks at the history of the United States with a focus on three diseases—smallpox, typhoid fever, and yellow fever—to show how constitutional rules and provisions that promoted individual liberty and economic prosperity also influenced, for good and for bad, the country’s ability to eradicate infectious disease. Ranging from federalism under the Commerce Clause to the Contract Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment, Troesken argues persuasively that many institutions intended to promote desirable political or economic outcomes also hindered the provision of public health. We are unhealthy, in other words, at least in part because our political and legal institutions function well. Offering a compelling new perspective, The Pox of Liberty challenges many traditional claims that infectious diseases are inexorable forces in human history, beyond the control of individual actors or the state, revealing them instead to be the result of public and private choices.

Taylor explores aspects of himself that have affected his work. He delves into the creation of Aureole and From Sea to Shining Sea, from their initial inception to the ways in which specific dancers influenced the choreography, including such notables as Pina Bausch, Laura Dean, David Parsons, Twyla Tharp, Dan Wagoner, Senta Driver—all of whom went on to form their own companies—and others—Bettie de Jong, Nicholas Gunn, and Carolyn Adams—who remained as much a part of the Taylor style as the choreography itself. Taylor writes with sincerity, wit, and charm of his associations with Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Jerome Robbins, Anthony Tudor, George Balanchine, and many others.

A leading advocate for the arts in America and recent recipient of the 1997 National Medal of the Arts, the 1997 Kennedy Center Honors, and the George Abbott Carbonell Award for Achievement, Edward Villella was recently inducted into the State of Florida Artist Hall of Fame.  Villella also received the Frances Holleman Breathitt Award for Excellence for his contributions to the arts and to education, the thirty-eighth annual Capezio Dance Award, and Award for Lifetime Achievement, becoming only the fourth dance personality to receive National Endowment for the Arts advisory artistic director of the Miami City Ballet, which has won worldwide acclaim under his direction.

Composed of a core set of two drums and two gongs, p’ungmul is a South Korean tradition of rural folk percussion. Steeped in music, dance, theater, and pageantry, but centrally focused on rhythm, such ensembles have been an integral part of village life in South Korea for centuries, serving as a musical accompaniment in the often overlapping and shifting contexts of labor, ritual, and entertainment.
 
The first book to introduce Korean drumming and dance to the English-speaking world, Nathan Hesselink’s P’ungmul offers detailed descriptions of its instrumentation, dance formations, costuming, actors, teaching lineages, and the complexities of training. Hesselink also evaluates how this tradition has taken on new roles and meanings in the twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries, investigating the interrelated yet contested spheres of history, memory, government policy, grassroots politics, opportunities for musical transmission, and performance practices and aesthetics.
 
P’ungmul offers those interested in ethnomusicology, world music, anthropology, sociology, and Asian studies a special glimpse into the inner workings of a historically rich, artistically complex, and aesthetically and aurally beautiful Korean musical and dance tradition.