British Dance Research Articles

Anglicization and canonization of ballroom dance, late 19th - early 20th century

Purpose of the Article. The aim of the article is to analyze the processes of anglicization and canonization of ballroom dance, during the period of democratization of social dances in England, in the late 19th - early 20th centuries. Methodology is an organic set of basic principles of research: objectivity, historicism, multifactor essence, systematicity, complexity, development, and pluralism, to achieve the goal, the following methods of scientific knowledge are used: problem-chronological, concrete historical, statistical, descriptive, logical- analytical. Scientific Novelty. The scientific novelty lies in the identification of the processes of origin and development of competitive ballroom dancing in England at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries. Conclusions. The widespread democratization of social dancing in England began as early as the 19th century when the Austrian waltz and other ballroom dancing became popular among all social strata. Democratic fervor of the common people, which at the end of the XIX century got the opportunity to relax on the resort coast of Great Britain, gave birth to the first dance competition in ballroom dancing. It was often noted by professional dance experts that the new British dance forms were superior to the original. Certainly, the distinctive features and high quality of British ballroom dancing were a matter of special professional pride. The advantages of a standardized English style as early as the late 30s. The XX century was recognized outside the country for the extraordinary success of British dancers in international ballroom dancing championships. Gradually, it established the international standard for ballroom dancing and was adopted by many of the world's dance organizations at the national level, with the exception of the United States of America (by many American competitive ballroom dancers, the English style was not adopted until the 1960s.).

Anglicization and Canonization of Ballroom Dance, Late 19th — Early 20th Century

The purpose of this article. The purpose of the article is to determine the specifics of the evolutionary processes in the English dance style of the XX — early XXI century.
 The methodology is an organic set of basic research principles: objectivity, historicism, multifactority, systemacity, complexity, development and pluralism, and to achieve the goal, the following methods of scientific knowledge are used: problem­chronological, concrete historical, statistical, descriptive, logical­analytical.
 The results. The evolution of the English dance style took place through professionalization. Communication at the international level between teachers­choreographers, the popularization of dance competitions and tournaments, the development of a judging system formed not only the content of new ballroom dances, but also the manner of their performance. The English style of performance has become a model for the world dance society for many years. Foreign­born dances, which were fashionable among the general public, were transformed by the British dance society in the 1920s and 1930s to form the so­called “English style” of ballroom dancing. Consistently claiming that dance is an expression of national character, the country’s professional dancers and dance teachers have sought to create a British dance form that is distinct from foreign forms. It was the process of “Anglicization” of foreign ballroom dancing that became one of the most important elements of the national dance culture of Great Britain in the 1920s and 1930s. The original British school of ballroom dancing, the style and methods of which were popularized in European countries in the early 1930s, led to the development and standardization of requirements for the conduction of competitions and championships. Improving the national rating system, the English system of training and identifying the best performers of ballroom choreography for many decades of the XX century remained the only generally recognized dance school in the world. Now the UK remains a leader in the art of ballroom choreography in many of its aspects — from pedagogical methods of training high­class performers and choreographers to the media and tournament sphere.
 The topicality. An attempt has been made to research the topical issues of the development of the English dance style of the XX — early XXI century.
 The practical significance. The research may be used in developing lectures by specialists in choreography.

Henrietta Bannerman and Richard Bannerman, Changing the Face of British Dance: Fifty Years of London Contemporary Dance School

Henrietta Bannerman and Richard Bannerman, <i>Changing the Face of British Dance: Fifty Years of London Contemporary Dance School</i>

British Multiculturalism and Interweaving Hybridities in South Asian Dance

British South Asian dancers, choreographers, curators, Arts Council policymakers, and directors of South Asian dance agencies, used ‘hybridity’ as a multi-faceted historical, political, cultural, aesthetic and public culture trope to constitute what is today known as the British South Asian Dance Sector in the UK. This constitution story, initiated under the ideological signs of British multi-culturalism, hybridity and cultural diversity, remains unexamined in theatre, dance and performance scholarship because scholars have not historicized the term and failed to see how it was used creatively as an interweaving trope to facilitate the integration of South Asian dance into British mainstream dance milieu in the three stages of the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. Drawing on the work of Homi Bhabha, I show how Shobana Jeyasingh, Akram Khan and British South Asian dance organizations used ‘hybridity’ as a multifaceted, historical, institutional, theatrical, choreographic and political trope to integrate South Asian dance forms into mainstream British dance milieu in the forty-year period from 1979 to 2020. I develop my argument by drawing on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin (1981) and focus specifically on the distinction he makes between the two forms of linguistic and cultural hybridization, which he identifies within the frames of ‘unconscious’ organic hybridity and ‘conscious’ intentional hybridity. Significantly for my argument, Bakhtin explains that intentional hybrids build on the historic foundations provided by organic hybrids and deploy these pasts, intentionally, to create new visions in global diasporas. In this paper, I extend Bakhtin’s analytic frame and show how British South Asian chorographers and curators, decontextualized the classical forms of Bharatanatyam and Kathak and reused these, intentionally, to create a hybrid, post-colonial British South Asian dance phenomenon that was both Indian and British simultaneously.

Im/possible Choreographies: Diffractive Processes and Ethical Entanglements in Current British Dance Practices

This article considers the ethico-aesthetic potential of British choreographic practices that respond to questions raised by the current sociopolitical moment by staging im/possibilities and dis/orientation and by envisioning alternative understandings of the present. It embraces Karen Barad's new materialist onto-epistemology as an inspiring framework to discuss the significance of choreography that troubles accepted patterns of relationality and engages in a creative-critical remapping of experience.

Kenneth MacMillan and the Subject Matter of Ballet

Sex, violence, and visceral elements of similar dramatic tenor feature frequently in ballets by the British choreographer Kenneth MacMillan. Although he publicly acknowledged the decisive impact of John Osborne’s play Look Back in Anger on his artistic vision, little detail is known about how his inclination toward unconventional topics was formed. By revisiting primary and secondary sources about MacMillan’s life and career, and by considering them within the context of postwar British dance and drama, this article explores how this tendency toward dramatic subject matter progressively took shape during his first years as a choreographer and purposely crystalized in 1960 with his ballet The Invitation.

Radical connections: the Dartington Dance Festival/X6 Dance Space axis

The article discusses the extraordinary time of ferment in British dance in the late 1970s and 1980s and the significant role played by the ‘axis’ between Dartington College of Arts and the London-based X6 Dance Space. This relationship centred upon members of the X6 collective and Mary O’Donnell Fulkerson, the dance leader in Dartington’s Theatre department, as well as other visiting US and European artists and teachers. The importance of X6 as a platform for radical and innovative dance and performance is discussed, as is its role in hosting the first London workshops in Release (Fulkerson) and Contact Improvisation (Steve Paxton and Lisa Nelson). Critical connections are revealed between X6 and the Dartington Dance Festivals, together with the part played by X6’s quarterly magazine, New Dance. The article ultimately addresses the question of what was lastingly significant about this extraordinary M5–M4 trajectory, both artistically and politically, and therefore how much we owe to it today. Jacky Lansley and Fergus Early were both central as being among the founders of the X6 collective and regular performers and teachers at Dartington. They reference critical sources such as New Dance magazine, as well as excavating their own memories of that particular and seminal era.

Akram Khan, Lloyd Newson, and the Challenges of British Multiculturalism

In a climate riven by national insecurities, anti-immigration movements and competing visions of a post-Brexit future, this paper examines the contentious space multiculturalism has inhabited in 21st-century British choreography. It analyses acclaimed works by Akram Khan and Lloyd Newson to explore starkly differing perspectives on cultural diversity in the UK. Khan's contribution to the London 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony (Abide with Me) emphasised the nation's post-imperialist and cosmopolitan profile. By contrast, Newson's contemporaneous work Can We Talk about this? (2011/12) was highly critical of current models of multiculturalism and in particular attitudes towards Islam. This paper compares the two choreographies using a theoretical framework that draws on both political thought and dance analysis, to evaluate their contributions to debates around culture, tolerance and diasporic identities and illustrate the broader entanglement between British dance and contemporary politics.

ОСОБЛИВОСТІ ФОРМУВАННЯ СОЦІАЛЬНИХ І КОНКУРСНИХ БАЛЬНИХ ТАНЦІВ АНГЛІЙСЬКОГО СТИЛЮ (20–30 рр. ХХ ст.)

Мета статті – аналіз особливостей формування та розвитку соціальних і конкурсних бальних танців англійського стилю в 1920–1930-ті рр., а також діяльності провідних танцюристів та екзаменаторів, членів Імперського товариства вчителів танцю (Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing) й Офіційної Ради бальних танців (Official Board of Ballroom Dance), у контексті формування техніки виконання та стандартизації європейської програми бальних танців; охарактеризувати становлення конкурсного бального танцю, особливості проведення чемпіонатів, фестивалів та змагань. Методи дослідження становить сукупність базових принципів дослідження – об’єктивності, історизму, багатофакторності, системності, комплексності, розвитку та плюралізму; для досягнення мети застосовані методи наукового пізнання, а саме: проблемно-хронологічний, конкретно-історичний, статистичний, описовий, логіко-аналітичний. Наукова новизна статті полягає у всебічному дослідженні етапу формування соціальних та конкурсних бальних танців англійського стилю в 20–30-ті рр. ХХ ст., здійсненого з використанням навчально-методичної літератури ISTD, WDC, раритетних журналів «The Dancing Times» та «The Monthly Letter Service», а також мемуарної літератури. Висновки. Внаслідок багатоаспектного дослідження особливостей формування соціальних та конкурсних бальних танців англійського стилю в 20–30-ті рр. ХХ ст., аналізу головних засад стандартизації рухів, кроків й темпу музичного оформлення 4-х з 5-ти конкурсних бальних танців європейської програми, визначено їх стилістичні особливості, розроблені в навчально-методичних рекомендаціях провідних танцюристів, членів Імперського товариства вчителів танцю (Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing) та Офіційної Ради бальних танців (Official Board of Ballroom Dance), а також висвітлено правила проведення та система оцінювання на чемпіонатах, фестивалях бальних танців у 20–30-ті рр. ХХ ст. в Англії.

Dance in/for /with/as/community: Re-defining community dance in 2015–16

An introduction to the community dance topics within this issue At no time in history has there been more emphasis on community and culture than now—as we witness communities torn apart by war and the destruction of habitat. Suddenly, the terms social justice, ethical practices, indigeneity and cultural practices have become part and parcel of our conversations around community dance participation. How, we ask, can dance play a meaningful role in fostering healthy communities while also maintaining its status as a contemporary art within the wider community? The Moving Communities International conference on Community Dance, hosted by the Dance Studies programme at the University of Otago in November 2015, both embraced the diversity that is community dance and offered meaningful re-evaluation and critique of the profession as defined by writers such as conference attendee Diane Amans (GB) and the British Dance council. This issue contains a selection of articles arising from the conference presentations.

Hucklebucking at the tea dances

Showband music emerged in Ireland in the mid-1950s as a hybrid genre that drew on popular music from Britain and the United States. Consisting of electric guitar and bass, drums, piano, a horn section, and a charismatic lead singer, showbands performed an eclectic mix of covers of rock’n’roll, pop songs, country and western, songs from the English Top Ten, and an occasional Irish popular song. Learning the newest hits from American and British radio broadcasts, showband musicians brought new sounds and provocative choreographies to their dancing audiences, ultimately revolutionizing popular entertainment in Ireland. In Britain, showbands were popular among the thousands of young Irish who emigrated there from the 1950s through the 1960s. Irish showbands in residence in British dance halls and on tour from Ireland underscore hybridity at its most inventive with the host culture serving as both an object of imitation as well as a source of creative transformation. Showbands offered a vital network that connected their largely young, immigrant audiences throughout Britain. Showband music served as a progressive and generative force in Ireland’s changing social, cultural, and economic landscape; in Britain, the genre translated into a more conservative expression among the emigrant Irish, but one that served as a bridge between Ireland and contemporary British culture.

Decolonizing Immersion

This article decolonises hitherto Anglophonic theorising of the audience phenomenon of immersion by disassociating it from the participatory and interactive nature of immersive theatre practices, and locating it instead in the reception of contemporary British dance. It argues that by looking to rasa, the art reception theory as laid out in the Natyashastra (an ancient Indian dramaturgical treatise), immersion can also be theorised and experienced as an embodied and psycho-physical state that transpires between any audience, any artist and any piece of art that is premised on gestural codes of communication, regardless interactive participation. If rasa is immersion, as demonstrated through the context of contemporary British dance, then this article simultaneously de-Sanskritises (and de-exoticises) this very concept that has become many western scholars' principal intrigue within the Natyashastra. The article then further challenges western preconceptions of rasa as a culturally loaded and temporally specific concept that is only experienced through interactions with Indian art, as per its codifications nearly two millennia ago. In order to exemplify this argument, the article draws on two case studies from the field of contemporary British dance: Desh (2011) by the British-Bangladeshi dancer and choreographer Akram Khan and Yesterday (2008) by the Israeli choreographer Jasmin Vardimon. While distinct in many ways, Desh and Yesterday embody shared themes and aesthetic in the forms of border-identity politics, character transformations through body-markings and intermediality. Through comparative analyses the article argues that in these pieces, audiences can experience immersion, but it is not through physical interactivity as championed by immersive theatre practices. Instead, here, immersion is triggered as an embodied state, accessed from within the audience's interiorities and attuned-ness to twenty-first global migration politics, enhanced by their first hand lived knowledge and/or second hand mediatised awareness of what is at stake for bodies at borders, vis-à-vis volatile migrant identity-politics.

Recognizing the NOW in UK Contemporary Dance

Abstract This transcript replicates Rosemary and Claire’s use of series of (perhaps) contentious statements as a starting point for dialogue around Contemporary Dance in the United Kingdom, which formed a keynote presentation at the Questioning the Contemporary in 21st Century British Dance Practices Symposium (July, 2014). Thinking of the future, they reflect back but mainly ask about what we are doing now and why, since one cannot make work for the future but only for the present. Both believe in the possibility of a truly Contemporary Dance sector in the United Kingdom and bring their own perspectives as practitioners to it – as artist and producer, respectively. How do our systems, knowledge and beliefs impact upon the work we create, the work we value and the way we support and nurture our most important asset, our artists?

Questioning the Contemporary in twenty-first-century British dance practices

Abstract

White Roots, Grey Flowers? Multiple Conceptions of Early Australian ‘Jazz’ and Pre-‘Jazz' History

Jazz history has largely been documented by individuals with deep respect and affection for the tradition, or a particular aspect of it. Their perspective has therefore often been aesthetic, qualitative and retrospective—who played the most ‘authentic’, virtuosic or innovative jazz and what were the black musical roots of the self-aware (if aesthetically divided) jazz movement that was manifest throughout the western world by the late 1930s? Consequently, the narrative of early jazz, in particular, is often reduced to a rigid pantheon of (mostly) male (mostly) African-American ‘Greats’, as epitomized in the controversial 2001 Ken Burns mega-documentary, Jazz. This article explores the different ways in which early Australian jazz-related history has been constructed by examining the perspectives or frames of reference adopted by Australian amateur and professional scholars, including collector-discographers, who have contributed to research into the ‘roots’ of what was perceived to be ‘jazz’ in Jazz Age (1918–1928) Australia. In examining the outcomes of their research, the article demonstrates that, far from being mysteriously transplanted from black New Orleans culture around 1918 like some exotic plant in a pot, so-called ‘jazz' and ‘jazzing’ in Jazz-Age Australia was largely the product of African-American-inflected white American and British popular entertainment, dancing and dance music trends, grafted onto a colonial history of blackface minstrelsy and the 1910s craze for Irving-Berlin-style ragtime song and dance music.

I can feel his heart beating through the sole of my foot: Reflections on improvisation from a dancer finding her feet

Abstract This article delves into the experiences of a recent graduate exploring improvised dance. By analysing experiences of performing, watching and reflecting, this article questions the role of the dancer within improvised performance, and gives insight into the discovery, self-reflection and development involved in the journey of an improvising performer. The article discusses and reflects upon the practice of British dance artists, including Kirstie Simon, Julyen Hamilton and Rosemary Lee, through the eyes of the enquiring and developing dancer: each of these practitioners has influenced and moulded improvisational practice in the United Kingdom since the 1970s. In addition to this discussion of practice, the article also draws upon the published research of artists including Nina Martin and Susan Sgorbati in order to explore the concerns of improvised performance as negotiated by the performer. From a consideration of the thoughts, reflections and observations that occur in the moment of improvised performance, this article examines how dancers engaging with improvised performance are involved in a journey that provokes, challenges and questions concepts of authenticity, honesty and presence. It questions the processes through which dancers are able to negotiate these concerns to fully engage, with both fellow performer and audience, in improvised performance.

Intersections between the academic and ‘real’ worlds of dance at the British Dance Edition 2014: a report

Intersections between the academic and ‘real’ worlds of dance at the British Dance Edition 2014: a report

Only This Time

I have recently been working with and for British choreographer and dance artist Freddie Opoku-Addaie on a piece that lands somewhere in the outer realms of dance, near the border of performance and the hinterlands of sculpture. The solo work became Show of Hands and was performed with Opoku-Addaie’s collection of twenty-two carved wooden hands sculptures. It was a work driven by biography and in particular by his history as a footballer. The language of the soccer field became a tool for looking at an existential space with the performer set against the clock and the empty space, dodging and diving through a shifting set of tasks until the final whistle. So to speak.

Dance Britannia: The Impact of Global Shifts on Dance in Britain

The music and dance of African Diasporan artists has impacted current dance practice in Britain, and their legacies are testament to the global circulation of artistic ideas. This paper discusses the British Dance and the African Diaspora research project which seeks to write Black British dance artists and their legacies back into history. It aims to understand the nexus of aesthetic, institutional, and conceptual problems that have rendered these dancers invisible.Since the 1970s, a number of black British-based dancers has been teaching and producing performance work in a variety of dance styles. It was influenced by the context of anti-colonialism and the struggle for independence, which has been the motivation for the post-war generation of Caribbean and Asian artists who migrated to Britain. These historical and cultural contexts form the basis for our argument for new approaches to frameworks for analysis of the work of black British dance artists.

Dorothy Madden (1912–2009), American Revolutionary. A Centenary Tribute

Dorothy Madden was an inspirational dancer, teacher, writer and choreographer; she studied with many of the great figures of American modern dance including Holm, Nikolais, Graham, Humphrey and Limón, and in particular Louis Horst, whose protégé she became. In the early 1960s she was invited to the UK by the Ministry of Education to introduce her approach to American modern dance into the British education system. As is noted in Valerie Preston-Dunlop and Luis Espana's film The American Invasion 1962-72, her work was seminal to the development of contemporary dance in the UK. Her students who include choreographers Rosemary Butcher, Sue Maclennan and Janet Smith as well as educationalists June Layson, David Henshaw and Stuart Hopps, helped shape British contemporary dance. This essay is based on interviews made with Madden in the late 1990s, research into her archive held at Trinity Laban, and interviews with her colleagues and students. It provides a historical overview of her work and explores her lasting, though largely forgotten, influence on the development of contemporary dance in the UK.