The Mythology of Dance

The Mythology of Dance PDF Author: Harry Eiss
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443852880
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Book Description
The lights dim and soon the theatre becomes dark. The audience conversations end with a few softly dissipating whispers, and the movie begins. Nina Sayers, a young ballerina, dances the prologue to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, a ballet expressing a story drawn from Russian folk tales about a princess who has been turned into a White Swan and can only be turned back if a man swears eternal fidelity to her. However, this is not that ballet. This is the beginning of Black Swan, a controversial movie employing symbolism in a complex interweaving of dance and film to reveal the struggles and paradoxes of everything from a female rite-of-passage to questions about where artistic expression should demand self-sacrifice and whether such sacrifice is worth the price. The dance floor is the stage of life, the place where physical actions take on the symbolic meanings of mythology and express the deepest archetypes of the human mind. This book explores how dance gives shape to those human needs and how it reflects, and even creates, the maps of meaning and value that structure our lives. Though the volume looks at all the forms of dance, it focuses on three main categories in particular: religious, social, and artistic. Since the American Musical and subsequent Musical Videos have both reflected and influenced our current world, they receive the most space—such acclaimed performers as Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Judy Garland, Ricky Nelson, Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson, such important composers and lyrists as Gershwin, Rodgers-and-Hammerstein, Porter, Berlin, Webber, Bernstein, the Beatles, and the Who, and such choreographers as Graham, Balanchine, Robbins and Fosse are examined in particular detail.

The Mythology of Dance

The Mythology of Dance PDF Author: Harry Eiss
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443852880
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 430

Get Book

Book Description
The lights dim and soon the theatre becomes dark. The audience conversations end with a few softly dissipating whispers, and the movie begins. Nina Sayers, a young ballerina, dances the prologue to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, a ballet expressing a story drawn from Russian folk tales about a princess who has been turned into a White Swan and can only be turned back if a man swears eternal fidelity to her. However, this is not that ballet. This is the beginning of Black Swan, a controversial movie employing symbolism in a complex interweaving of dance and film to reveal the struggles and paradoxes of everything from a female rite-of-passage to questions about where artistic expression should demand self-sacrifice and whether such sacrifice is worth the price. The dance floor is the stage of life, the place where physical actions take on the symbolic meanings of mythology and express the deepest archetypes of the human mind. This book explores how dance gives shape to those human needs and how it reflects, and even creates, the maps of meaning and value that structure our lives. Though the volume looks at all the forms of dance, it focuses on three main categories in particular: religious, social, and artistic. Since the American Musical and subsequent Musical Videos have both reflected and influenced our current world, they receive the most space—such acclaimed performers as Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Judy Garland, Ricky Nelson, Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson, such important composers and lyrists as Gershwin, Rodgers-and-Hammerstein, Porter, Berlin, Webber, Bernstein, the Beatles, and the Who, and such choreographers as Graham, Balanchine, Robbins and Fosse are examined in particular detail.

Ecstasy of Being

Ecstasy of Being PDF Author: Joseph Campbell
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781608688890
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Now available in paperback, Joseph Campbell's collected writings on dance and art, including Campbell's unpublished manuscript "Mythology and Form in the Performing and Visual Arts," the book he was working on when he died Dance was one of mythologist Joseph Campbell's wide-ranging passions. His wife, Jean Erdman, was a leading figure in modern dance who worked with Martha Graham and had Merce Cunningham in her first company. When Campbell retired from teaching in 1972, he and Erdman formed the Theater of the Open Eye in New York City, where for nearly fifteen years they presented a wide array of dance and theater productions, lectures, and performance pieces. The Ecstasy of Being brings together seven of Campbell's previously uncollected articles on dance, along with "Mythology and Form in the Performing and Visual Arts," the treatise he was working on when he died, published here for the first time. In this collection Campbell explores the rise of modern art and dance in the twentieth century; delves into the work and philosophy of Isadora Duncan, Martha Graham, and others; and, as always, probes the idea of art as "the funnel through which spirit is poured into life." This book offers the reader an accessible, yet profound and provocative, insight into Campbell's lifelong fascination with the relationship of myth to aesthetic form and human psychology.

The Mythology of Dance

The Mythology of Dance PDF Author: Harry Eiss
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781527598553
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The lights dim and soon the theatre becomes dark. The audience conversations end with a few softly dissipating whispers, and the movie begins. Nina Sayers, a young ballerina, dances the prologue to Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, a ballet expressing a story drawn from Russian folk tales about a princess who has been turned into a White Swan and can only be turned back if a man swears eternal fidelity to her. However, this is not that ballet. This is the beginning of Black Swan, a controversial movie employing symbolism in a complex interweaving of dance and film to reveal the struggles and paradoxes of everything from a female rite-of-passage to questions about where artistic expression should demand self-sacrifice and whether such sacrifice is worth the price. The dance floor is the stage of life, the place where physical actions take on the symbolic meanings of mythology and express the deepest archetypes of the human mind. This book explores how dance gives shape to those human needs and how it reflects, and even creates, the maps of meaning and value that structure our lives. Though the volume looks at all the forms of dance, it focuses on three main categories in particular: religious, social, and artistic. Since the American Musical and subsequent Musical Videos have both reflected and influenced our current world, they receive the most space--such acclaimed performers as Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Judy Garland, Ricky Nelson, Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson, such important composers and lyrists as Gershwin, Rodgers-and-Hammerstein, Porter, Berlin, Webber, Bernstein, the Beatles, and the Who, and such choreographers as Graham, Balanchine, Robbins and Fosse are examined in particular detail.

The Mythology of America's Seasonal Holidays

The Mythology of America's Seasonal Holidays PDF Author: Arthur George
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9783030469153
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description
Every year we celebrate a cycle of seasonal holidays. The ancient Greeks called this cycle “The Dance of the Horae,” after the mythical divinities who represented the seasons. What myths sit at the foundation of our own holiday celebrations? This interdisciplinary book explores the myths and symbols that underlie our major seasonal holidays and give them their meaning. Arthur George also shows how America’s own mythmaking has shaped some holidays. This mythological approach reveals how and why holidays arose in the first place, how and why they have changed over the centuries, why they have remained important, and finally how we can celebrate them today in a more meaningful manner that can enrich our lives and better our society. George devotes particular attention to the depth psychological aspects of holidays and their corresponding myths, as well as to the insights of modern biblical scholarship for key holidays such as Easter and Christmas.

The Dancing Goddesses: Folklore, Archaeology, and the Origins of European Dance

The Dancing Goddesses: Folklore, Archaeology, and the Origins of European Dance PDF Author: Elizabeth Wayland Barber
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393089215
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
A fascinating exploration of an ancient system of beliefs and its links to the evolution of dance. From southern Greece to northern Russia, people have long believed in female spirits, bringers of fertility, who spend their nights and days dancing in the fields and forests. So appealing were these spirit-maidens that they also took up residence in nineteenth-century Romantic literature. Archaeologist and linguist by profession, folk dancer by avocation, Elizabeth Wayland Barber has sleuthed through ethnographic lore and archaeological reports of east and southeast Europe, translating enchanting folktales about these “dancing goddesses” as well as eyewitness accounts of traditional rituals—texts that offer new perspectives on dance in agrarian society. She then traces these goddesses and their dances back through the Romans and Greeks to the first farmers of Europe. Along the way, she locates the origins of many customs, including coloring Easter eggs and throwing rice at the bride. The result is a detective story like no other and a joyful reminder of the human need to dance.

Myth Adventures of the Muses #1

Myth Adventures of the Muses #1 PDF Author:
Publisher: Bluewater Productions
ISBN:
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 23

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Book Description
The Muses of Greek Mythology have brought tales and wonder to the world for centuries. Follow this brand-new and exciting series that details each Muse and the story of how they came to be. Marvel at the story of Terpsichore, the muse of Dance, as she travels to the mortal world and meets with one of the most famous and well-respected dancers in modern history. Wonder at her travails in the modern world. Explore the universe with the muses and start here with Book One, the story of Terpsichore.

They Dance in the Sky

They Dance in the Sky PDF Author:
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780618809127
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
A collection of legends about the stars from various North American Indian cultures, including explanations of the Milky Way and constellations such as the Big Dipper.

Chance or the Dance?

Chance or the Dance? PDF Author: Thomas Howard
Publisher: Ignatius Press
ISBN: 1642290343
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Book Description
In this new edition of a modern classic, Thomas Howard contrasts the Christian and secular worldviews, refreshing our minds with the illuminated vision of reality that inspired the world in times past and showing us that we cannot live meaningful lives without it. Howard explains in clear and beautiful prose the way materialism robs us of beauty, depth, and truth. With laser precision and lyrical ponderings he takes us through the dismal reductionist view of the world to the shimmering significance of the world as sign and sacrament. More timely now than when it was first written, this book is a prophetic examination of modern society's conscience.

Ecstasy of Being

Ecstasy of Being PDF Author: Joseph Campbell
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781608688890
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Now available in paperback, Joseph Campbell's collected writings on dance and art, including Campbell's unpublished manuscript "Mythology and Form in the Performing and Visual Arts," the book he was working on when he died Dance was one of mythologist Joseph Campbell's wide-ranging passions. His wife, Jean Erdman, was a leading figure in modern dance who worked with Martha Graham and had Merce Cunningham in her first company. When Campbell retired from teaching in 1972, he and Erdman formed the Theater of the Open Eye in New York City, where for nearly fifteen years they presented a wide array of dance and theater productions, lectures, and performance pieces. The Ecstasy of Being brings together seven of Campbell's previously uncollected articles on dance, along with "Mythology and Form in the Performing and Visual Arts," the treatise he was working on when he died, published here for the first time. In this collection Campbell explores the rise of modern art and dance in the twentieth century; delves into the work and philosophy of Isadora Duncan, Martha Graham, and others; and, as always, probes the idea of art as "the funnel through which spirit is poured into life." This book offers the reader an accessible, yet profound and provocative, insight into Campbell's lifelong fascination with the relationship of myth to aesthetic form and human psychology.

The Dance of Śiva

The Dance of Śiva PDF Author: Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description