ANTHONY SHAY, Choreographic Politics: State Folk Dance Companies, Representation and Power (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2002). Pp. 290. $65.00 cloth; $19.95 paper.

Abstract

Anthony Shay's Choreographic Politics fills an important gap in the research of the history of folk dancing, a gap opened by the controversial status of “state folk dance ensembles,” whose performances have often been neglected or despised by folklorists and dance scholars. Staged folk dances have always charmed audiences with the energy they embed in their performances but they have also puzzled them, because it is clear that they are more of a “representation” than a true reflection of a locality's reality. The analysis of “state folk dance ensembles,” then, moves on the edges of folklore and “fake lore,” the art of dance and the ethnography of dance. Choreographic Politics touches on this very sense of illusion and disillusion, focusing on the politics of state folk dance ensembles, a cultural product of the post-war era.