Dance Pathologies

Dance Pathologies PDF Author: Felicia M. McCarren
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804735247
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
A history of dance’s pathologization may startle readers who find in dance performance grace, discipline, geometry, poetry, and the body’s transcendence of itself. Exploring dance’s historical links to the medical and scientific connotations of a “pathology,” this book asks what has subtended the idealization of dance in the West. It investigates the nineteenth-century response, in the intersections of dance, literature, and medicine, to the complex and long-standing connections between illness, madness, poetry, and performance. In the nineteenth century, medicine becomes a major cultural index to measure the body’s meanings. As a particularly performative form of madness, nineteenth-century hysteria preserved the traditional connection to dance in medical descriptions of “choreas.” In its withholding of speech and its use of body code, dance, like hysteria, functions as a form of symptomatic expression. Yet by working like a symptom, dance performance can also be read as a commentary on symptomatology and as a condition of possibility for such alternative approaches to mental illness as psychoanalysis. By redeeming as art what is “lost” in hysteria, dance expresses non-hysterically what only hysteria had been able to express: the somatic translation of idea, the physicalization of meaning. Medicine’s discovery of “idea” manifesting itself in the body in mental illness strikingly parallels a literary fascination with the ability of nineteenth-century dance to manifest “idea,” suggesting that the evolution of medical thinking about mind-body relations as they malfunction in madness, as well as changes in the cultural reception of danced representations of these relations, might be paradigmatic shifts caused by the same cultural factors: concern about the body as a site of meaning and about vision as a theater of knowledge.

Dance Pathologies

Dance Pathologies PDF Author: Felicia M. McCarren
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804735247
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Get Book

Book Description
A history of dance’s pathologization may startle readers who find in dance performance grace, discipline, geometry, poetry, and the body’s transcendence of itself. Exploring dance’s historical links to the medical and scientific connotations of a “pathology,” this book asks what has subtended the idealization of dance in the West. It investigates the nineteenth-century response, in the intersections of dance, literature, and medicine, to the complex and long-standing connections between illness, madness, poetry, and performance. In the nineteenth century, medicine becomes a major cultural index to measure the body’s meanings. As a particularly performative form of madness, nineteenth-century hysteria preserved the traditional connection to dance in medical descriptions of “choreas.” In its withholding of speech and its use of body code, dance, like hysteria, functions as a form of symptomatic expression. Yet by working like a symptom, dance performance can also be read as a commentary on symptomatology and as a condition of possibility for such alternative approaches to mental illness as psychoanalysis. By redeeming as art what is “lost” in hysteria, dance expresses non-hysterically what only hysteria had been able to express: the somatic translation of idea, the physicalization of meaning. Medicine’s discovery of “idea” manifesting itself in the body in mental illness strikingly parallels a literary fascination with the ability of nineteenth-century dance to manifest “idea,” suggesting that the evolution of medical thinking about mind-body relations as they malfunction in madness, as well as changes in the cultural reception of danced representations of these relations, might be paradigmatic shifts caused by the same cultural factors: concern about the body as a site of meaning and about vision as a theater of knowledge.

Dance Discourses

Dance Discourses PDF Author: Susanne Franco
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134947194
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
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.

Choreomania

Choreomania PDF Author: Kélina Gotman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190840412
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
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.

The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Dance

The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Dance PDF Author: Lynsey McCulloch
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019049879X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 904

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Book Description
Shakespeare's texts have a long and close relationship with many different types of dance, from dance forms referenced in the plays to adaptations across many genres today. With contributions from experienced and emerging scholars, this handbook provides a concise reference on dance as both an integral feature of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century culture and as a means of translating Shakespearean text into movement - a process that raises questions of authorship and authority, cross-cultural communication, semantics, embodiment, and the relationship between word and image. Motivated by growing interest in movement, materiality, and the body, The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Dance is the first collection to examine the relationship between William Shakespeare - his life, works, and afterlife - and dance. In the handbook's first section - Shakespeare and Dance - authors consider dance within the context of early modern life and culture and investigate Shakespeare's use of dance forms within his writing. The latter half of the handbook - Shakespeare as Dance - explores the ways that choreographers have adapted Shakespeare's work. Chapters address everything from narrative ballet adaptations to dance in musicals, physical theater adaptations, and interpretations using non-Western dance forms such as Cambodian traditional dance or igal, an indigenous dance form from the southern Philippines. With a truly interdisciplinary approach, The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Dance provides an indispensable resource for considerations of dance and corporeality on Shakespeare's stage and the early modern era.

Dancing Protein Clouds: Intrinsically Disordered Proteins in the Norm and Pathology

Dancing Protein Clouds: Intrinsically Disordered Proteins in the Norm and Pathology PDF Author: Vladimir Uversky
Publisher: Academic Press
ISBN: 012816851X
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
"Dancing protein clouds: Intrinsically disordered proteins in the norm and pathology" represents a set of selected studies on a variety of research topics related to intrinsically disordered proteins. Topics in this update include structural and functional characterization of several important intrinsically disordered proteins, such as 14-3-3 proteins and their partners, as well as proteins from muscle sarcomere; representation of intrinsic disorder-related concept of protein structure-function continuum; discussion of the role of intrinsic disorder in phenotypic switching; consideration of the role of intrinsically disordered proteins in the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases and cancer; discussion of the roles of intrinsic disorder in functional amyloids; demonstration of the usefulness of the analysis of translational diffusion of unfolded and intrinsically disordered proteins; consideration of various computational tools for evaluation of functions of intrinsically disordered regions; and discussion of the role of shear stress in the amyloid formation of intrinsically disordered regions in the brain. Provides some recent studies on the intrinsically disordered proteins and their functions, as well as on the involvement of intrinsically disordered proteins in pthogenesis of various diseases Contains numerous illustrative materials (color figures, diagrams, and tables) to help the readers to delve in the information provided Includes contributions from recognized experts in the field

The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Politics

The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Politics PDF Author: Rebekah J. Kowal
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199928193
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 848

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Book Description
In recent decades, dance has become a vehicle for querying assumptions about what it means to be embodied, in turn illuminating intersections among the political, the social, the aesthetical, and the phenomenological. The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Politics edited by internationally lauded scholars Rebekah Kowal, Gerald Siegmund, and the late Randy Martin presents a compendium of newly-commissioned chapters that address the interdisciplinary and global scope of dance theory - its political philosophy, social movements, and approaches to bodily difference such as disability, postcolonial, and critical race and queer studies. In six sections 30 of the most prestigious dance scholars in the US and Europe track the political economy of dance and analyze the political dimensions of choreography, of writing history, and of embodied phenomena in general. Employing years of intimate knowledge of dance and its cultural phenomenology, scholars urge readers to re-think dominant cultural codes, their usages, and the meaning they produce and theorize ways dance may help to re-signify and to re-negotiate established cultural practices and their inherent power relations. This handbook poses ever-present questions about dance politics-which aspects or effects of a dance can be considered political? What possibilities and understandings of politics are disclosed through dance? How does a particular dance articulate or undermine forces of authority? How might dance relate to emancipation or bondage of the body? Where and how can dance articulate social movements, represent or challenge political institutions, or offer insight into habits of labor and leisure? The handbook opens its critical terms in two directions. First, it offers an elaborated understanding of how dance achieves its politics. Second, it illustrates how notions of the political are themselves expanded when viewed from the perspective of dance, thus addressing both the relationship between the politics in dance and the politics of dance. Using the most sophisticated theoretical frameworks and engaging with the problematics that come from philosophy, social science, history, and the humanities, chapters explore the affinities, affiliations, concepts, and critiques that are inherent in the act of dance, and questions about matters political that dance makes legible.

Dance and American Art

Dance and American Art PDF Author: Sharyn R. Udall
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres
ISBN: 029928803X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
From ballet to burlesque, from the frontier jig to the jitterbug, Americans have always loved watching dance, whether in grand ballrooms, on Mississippi riverboats, or in the streets. Dance and American Art is an innovative look at the elusive, evocative nature of dance and the American visual artists who captured it through their paintings, sculpture, photography, and prints from the early nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century. The scores of artists discussed include many icons of American art: Winslow Homer, George Caleb Bingham, Mary Cassatt, James McNeill Whistler, Alexander Calder, Joseph Cornell, Edward Steichen, David Smith, and others. As a subject for visual artists, dance has given new meaning to America’s perennial myths, cherished identities, and most powerful dreams. Their portrayals of dance and dancers, from the anonymous to the famous—Anna Pavlova, Isadora Duncan, Loïe Fuller, Josephine Baker, Martha Graham—have testified to the enduring importance of spatial organization, physical pattern, and rhythmic motion in creating aesthetic form. Through extensive research, sparkling prose, and beautiful color reproductions, art historian Sharyn R. Udall draws attention to the ways that artists’ portrayals of dance have defined the visual character of the modern world and have embodied culturally specific ideas about order and meaning, about the human body, and about the diverse fusions that comprise American culture.

Dance, Desire, and Anxiety in Early Twentieth-Century French Theater

Dance, Desire, and Anxiety in Early Twentieth-Century French Theater PDF Author: Charles R. Batson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135194648X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
The 1909 arrival of Serge de Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in Paris marked the beginning of some two decades of collaboration among littérateurs, painters, musicians, and choreographers, many not native to France. Charles Batson's original and nuanced exploration of several of these collaborations integral to the formation of modernism and avant-gardist aesthetics reinscribes performances of the celebrated Russians and the lesser-known but equally innovative Ballets Suédois into their varied artistic traditions as well as the French historical context, teasing out connections and implications that are usually overlooked in less decidedly interdisciplinary studies. Batson not only uncovers the multiple meanings set in motion through the interplay of dancers, musicians, librettists, and spectators, but also reinterprets literary texts that inform these meanings, such as Valéry's 'L'Ame et la danse'. Identifying the performing body as a site where anxieties, drives, and desires of the French public were worked out, he shows how the messages carried by and ascribed to bodies in performance significantly influenced thought and informed the direction of much artistic expression in the twentieth century. His book will be a valuable resource for scholars working in the fields of literature, dance, music, and film, as well as French cultural studies.

Dancing Protein Clouds: Intrinsically Disordered Proteins in the Norm and Pathology, Part C

Dancing Protein Clouds: Intrinsically Disordered Proteins in the Norm and Pathology, Part C PDF Author:
Publisher: Academic Press
ISBN: 0323853005
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 438

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Book Description
Dancing Protein Clouds: Intrinsically Disordered Proteins in the Norm and Pathology, Part C, Volume 183 represents a set of selected studies on a variety of research topics related to intrinsically disordered proteins. Topics in this volume include discussions on the evolution of disorder, consideration of the peculiarities of phase separation of the prion protein, a general discussion of the relationships between intrinsic disorder and protein functions, coverage of the structural and functional characterization of several important intrinsically disordered proteins, such as transcription factors, outer membrane porins, trans-membrane and membrane associated proteins with ID regions, discussion of molecular simulations of IDPs, and much more. Provides recent studies on the intrinsically disordered proteins and their functions, along with the involvement of intrinsically disordered proteins in the pathogenesis of various diseases Contains numerous illustrative materials (color figures, diagrams and tables) to help readers delve into the information provided Includes contributions from recognized experts in the field

Dancefilm

Dancefilm PDF Author: Erin Brannigan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199887880
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Dancefilm: Choreography and the Moving Image examines the choreographic in cinema - the way choreographic elements inform cinematic operations in dancefilm. It traces the history of the form from some of its earliest manifestations in the silent film era, through the historic avant-garde, musicals and music videos to contemporary experimental short dancefilms. In so doing it also examines some of the most significant collaborations between dancers, choreographers, and filmmakers. The book also sets out to examine and rethink the parameters of dancefilm and thereby re-conceive the relations between dance and cinema. Dancefilm is understood as a modality that challenges familiar models of cinematic motion through its relation to the body, movement and time, instigating new categories of filmic performance and creating spectatorial experiences that are grounded in the somatic. Drawing on debates in both film theory (in particular ideas of gesture, the close up, and affect) and dance theory (concepts such as radical phrasing, the gestural anacrusis and somatic intelligence) and bringing these two fields into dialogue, the book argues that the combination of dance and film produces cine-choreographic practices that are specific to the dancefilm form. The book thus presents new models of cinematic movement that are both historically informed and thoroughly interdisciplinary.