Early Modern Dance Research Articles

Unpeeling the banana dance: The quare fugitivity of Joséphine Baker

Unpeeling the banana dance: The quare fugitivity of Joséphine Baker

Shared space and between space: Considering Jewishness and race through interspecies dancing1

This autoethnographic text describes a dance and personal historical research process during COVID-19 quarantine and Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. As implications of a changing planet and unequal cross-cultural impacts and responsibilities become ever more clear, this research explores assimilation into Whiteness in Ashkenazi Jewish American lineage and how that relates to interspecies dancing. What is lost in this story of assimilation? What might interspecies collaborations teach us about relating cross-culturally? Whiteness and Jewishness are considered through histories of speaking and losing Yiddish and the role of Jewish dancers in early modern dance in New York. Interviews about Yiddish and assimilation are in dialogue with an improvisational dance practice with a border collie dog (whose ancestors helped colonize the United States). This interspecies movement practice and others (including complex evolutionary histories) connect to biologist Donna Haraway and anthropologist Anna Tsing for insights about collaboration across differences. In thematically bringing Jewishness into performance practice, this research unravels layers of resistance, privilege and present racial inequities. The text looks to Audre Lorde and civil rights activist Eric K. Ward for coalition building practices: finding connection and finding ourselves are to be changed by our encounters without losing ourselves in the process.

Between Cloister and Court, Virtue and Virtuosity: Gestural Discourse in Medieval Monastic Literature and Early Modern Dance

Scholars of Early Modern dance treatises have long recognized the crucial connection in these texts between exterior manifestations of courtly behavior and interior affects. The dancing courtier is to display a virtuosic correspondence between physical and subjective grace, elegance, and virtue. Among the historical sources for this correlation are overlooked texts from twelfth-century reform movements within European monasticism. This essay examines one such treatise, Hugh of St. Victor’s De institutione novitiorum (On the Instruction of Novices), as a key source for gestural theory, representing the elite monastic body as a prototype of the Early Modern courtier.

Footprints of the Dance: An Early Seventeenth-Century Dance Master's Notebook by Jennifer Nevile

Reviewed by: Footprints of the Dance: An Early Seventeenth-Century Dance Master's Notebook by Jennifer Nevile Carolyn James Nevile, Jennifer, Footprints of the Dance: An Early Seventeenth-Century Dance Master's Notebook (Drama and Theatre in Early Modern Europe, 8), Leiden, Brill, 2018; hardback; pp. 286, R.R.P. €129.00; ISBN 9789004361799. Most of the knowledge we have about early modern European dance comes from formal treatises written by dance masters who aimed to market their skills to potential patrons. Jennifer Nevile's book presents a much rarer source: an anonymous, early seventeenth-century notebook of a teacher who probably operated a dance school in Brussels. Of unknown provenance before the mid-nineteenth century, the manuscript was acquired by the Kungliga Bibliotek in Stockholm in 1880 (Cod. Holm S253). It contains a record of the professional activities of a dance master and his associates, as well as a collection of recipes and other practical remedies for everyday ailments and for warding off dangerous illnesses such as the plague. Nevile's monograph focuses entirely on the dance-related material. It provides a facsimile of all the manuscript pages in this category and transcriptions and English translations of the texts. An introduction and six short chapters of analysis place the documents into the context of what is already known about the history of dance and the dance masters who worked in various parts of Europe between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. Written in fifteen different literary hands, eight of which appear only once or twice, and six musical hands, the Kungliga Bibliotek notebook includes a list of ballet titles, six ballet plots, brief descriptions and signatures of the students who attended the dance school, a canon of geometric figures for dance groups [End Page 248] of various sizes, as well as detailed instructions for a display of dancing with military pikes. These last two categories are undocumented elsewhere. The guide to an exhibition of dancing with a pike provides an unusual level of insight into the staging of a popular genre of entertainment that combined elements of martial drill with intricately choreographed dance sequences that displayed the rhythm, balance, physical strength, and dexterity of the participants. Nevile draws on her extensive knowledge of early modern dance to arrive at an educated guess about the geographical provenance of the notebook. She suggests that Brussels was its most likely place of origin, since that city was the centre of a thriving culture of dance and music in the early seventeenth century. A large entrepreneurial class, and the status of Brussels as the centre of royal government, ensured that there was a ready supply of wealthy and ambitious individuals who sought to advance themselves socially by becoming expert dancers. There was also an eager audience for the ballets, masquerades and other spectacles staged during carnival by the court and by the city's militia guilds, so there were plenty of opportunities for those who received dance lessons to display their skills in public and to attract the admiration of their peers. Nevile concludes that the notebook, almost all of it written in French, was likely compiled to record and showcase the range of lessons taught at a particular dance school and the fashionable spectacles that could be staged by its pupils. Signatures and brief descriptions of some 128 students, originally on separate folios, were pasted into the notebook, perhaps to provide evidence of the distinguished clientele that the school attracted. Most of the 120 names are German or Flemish, but French, German, English, and Danish students also attended lessons, sometimes as part of a trip abroad. Women as well as men took classes, although most female students probably received instruction at home, rather than in the premises of the dance master, so were more likely to be local pupils. As the author points out, the material included in the notebook shows that the dance master and his colleagues had close ties to Paris and were familiar with the musical culture of the French royal court, knowledge that was essential to attract students interested in learning the latest fashionable dances and airs from France. While this book will be interesting to non-specialists, its...

Bridging Gesture, Gesticulation, and Early Modern Dance: Rilke's Veitstänzer in The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

ABSTRACTWalking through the streets of Paris, the protagonist Malte notices a man making jerky and unpredictable movements, most likely resulting from the neurological disease Veitstanz. This scene from Rainer Maria Rilke's prose work The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge focuses on the man's range of bodily movements. I argue that this scene can be read as a literary dance highlighting a battle between gesture and gesticulation. The Veitstanz symbolizes the beginnings of modern dance seeking expression through the body. I develop the transition from gesticulation to dance by comparing the Veitstanz to performances that Rilke witnessed from 1902 to 1910 and to his modern aesthetic, developed through close interaction with Rodin's work. By watching the man's performance, Malte is forced to learn and write about the abrupt and angular aesthetics of early modern dance.

Repetition as a methodology: Costumes, archives and choreography

Abstract This article considers how costumes contribute to choreographic aesthetics through their capacity to be repeated. I develop different conceptions of repetition – replication (copying); representation (appearance within a frame that represents an image); and reproduction (as construction or manufacture) of costume objects and ideas over time. Being interested in the material process of making and wearing costumes, it also investigates how repetition leads to the possibility of invention. Using Walter Benjamin’s concept of the dialectical image to discuss costumes as objects within a dance archive and within live choreography, it examines an early modern dance form called Natural Movement (NM) as well as seminal postmodern works from the 1970s. It elaborates on the iconic functions of costume in contemporary choreography in relation to Roland Barthes’ writings on the ‘fashion system’, and considers how the costume becomes a sign of its own history. Part of this project to understand repetition requires recognition that the movement quality of texture in a garment, actualizes the experience of affective work taking place in choreography. The experience of repetition in the costume-object therefore leads to a more critical response towards the role of costume in dance and performance.

Concerning the spiritual in early modern dance: Émile Jaques-Dalcroze and Wassily Kandinsky advancing side by side

Abstract In the decade before the outbreak of World War I, the newly emerging field of modern dance became one in which writers and visual artists, who rejected the materialism of nineteenth-century culture and society, explored ideas of the spiritual. This article gives a new historical reading to such ideas around dance in the period just before the outbreak of the Great War by focusing on two seemingly disparate figures. It considers the ways in which the musician Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, who devised the influential form Eurhythmics, and the visual artist Wassily Kandinsky, who pioneered the idea of abstraction in painting, discussed the spiritual in relation to dance and performance. It places this discussion in the broader context of its time by considering the artists and intellectuals around these two figures, with particular reference to two Englishmen, father and son, M.E. and M.T.H Sadler who travelled to Germany in the summer of 1912 to visit Kandinsky and Jaques-Dalcroze, and published the first books in English discussing their work. This new historical reading considers the role of dance in contemporary early twentieth-century discussions about the spiritual, and the range of different meanings that the term embraced during this period.

Early Modern Dance and Theatre in Finland

Abstract Early modern dancers established a foothold in theatres and opera houses from the 1910s onwards when the focus of many avant-garde theatre directors shifted from literary text to the actor’s body and its expressive potentialities. This article explores the interplay between early modern dance and theatre in Finland by focusing on three dance scenes that Maggie Gripenberg (1881–1976) composed for theatre and opera performances in Helsinki in the 1920s and 1930s. The developments in Finland will be connected with the international trends that Gripenberg and her Finnish collaborators absorbed from the West as well as from Russia. The article also suggests that by exploring early modern dance in the context of theatre and opera, it is possible to obtain a more balanced picture of the development of modern dance in Finland.

'The Great Choreographer': Embodying Space in <em>Fuenteovejuna</em>

Social dances embody and perform kinesthetic structures of courtesy and courtship. The relative positions of dancers, their gestures, eye contact and posture, and manipulation of personal accoutrements (hats, gloves, fans, etc.), communicate at once both social hierarchies and personal desire. The Spanish comedia appropriates culturally-embedded notions of space and movement to create dramatic meaning. Lope’s Fuenteovejuna structures dramatic space by dislocating the habitus of early modern dance. This essay addresses the means by which dance and kinesthetic movement structure and communicate the 'dislocated habitus' of Lope’s early modern corral stage. Although attempts to reconstruct a complete dance, or even an individual dance step, will never be completely accurate, supporting evidence reveals culturally-laden structures of body carriage, body interactions, and treatments of space that can inform interpretations of Spain’s classical theater.

From training to artisanal practice: rethinking choreographic relationships in modern dance

In the first part of the twentieth century early modern dancers created both a new art form and the forms of group social organisation that were its condition of possibility. This paper critically examines the balletic and disciplinary ‘training’ model of dancer formation and proposes that the assumption of training in dance can obscure other ways of understanding dance-making relationships and other values in early modern dance. An ‘artisanal’ mode of production and knowledge transmission based on a non-binary relationship between ‘master’ and apprentice and occurring in a quasi-domestic and personalised space of some intimacy is proposed as a more pertinent way to think the enabling conditions of modern dance creation.

Study on Male Dancer’s Position in Early Modern Dance - Focus on ‘Shawn and His Men Dancers’ -

Study on Male Dancer’s Position in Early Modern Dance - Focus on ‘Shawn and His Men Dancers’ -

Archives of the Dance (22): Pioneer Women – Early British Modern Dancers (The National Resource Centre for Dance, University of Surrey)

Pioneer Women was an AHRC-funded project based on archives held at the National Resource Centre for Dance, University of Surrey. This article focuses on the two largest collections, that of Madge Atkinson and Natural Movement, and Ruby Ginner's Revived (later Classical) Greek Dance. Their work is situated within the broad cultural context of the early 20th century, and the archival holdings are evaluated for their potential in offering a re-conceptualisation of early British modern dance.

Pre-Hispanic Music Survivals from the Canary Islands

This article discusses the evidence, mainly ethno-historical, for music and dance in the Canary Islands prior to the incorporation of the archipelago in the Crown of Castile during the fifteenth century. The survival of essential elements of pre-Hispanic music and dance is noted in some present-day dance forms, as are related customs in some of the islands’ main festivals. The relationship between pre-Hispanic dance and the Renaissance and early modern European dance, in the Canaries, is described and identified as an area for future research.

Danseterapeutiske spor - fra rituel dans til globale netværk og postmoderne udfordringer

Artiklen tager afsæt i om der eksisterer et uudnyttet potentiale i at inddrage krop og bevægelse i terapeutiske sammenhæng i forhold til både almen og personlig udvikling og psykiatriske behandlinger. Artiklen afdækker også hvordan danse- og bevægelsesterapier begyndte at arbejde med sammenhæng mellem krop psyke og samfund, samt de hastigt udviklende europæiske tiltag og postmoderne forskningsmæssige tendenser indenfor det danse- og bevægelsesterapeutiske fælt. Helle Winther: Dance Therapeutic Traces – from Ritual Dance to Global Networks and Postmodern Challenges While dance movement therapy (DMT) is a relatively new and unknown field in Denmark, it is a well-known profession used in both psychiatry and private practices in many other countries. In spite of many different theoretical views, today there is a large degree of agreement that the body and psyche, as well as one’s relationship to the surrounding world must be regarded as a cohesive dynamic and organic unit. The fundamental question of the article is, whether there is an unused potential in using body and movement in therapeutic settings and whether body, movement and dance can touch people when words are not enough. The text enlightens the historical roots and traces of DMT through a long time pe185 riod stretching from original ritual dances to the early modern dance personified in Mary Wigman, Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham. These three dancers inspired the next generation and the six pioneers of dance therapy – in the text portrayed through Marian Chace and Mary Whitehouse. The works of these pioneers have worldwide traces today, and these traces are shortly described. After that an actual dance therapy form Dansergia is introduced and finally the postmodern tendencies within the current international research field of DMT are mirrored in the past, the present and the possibilities for steps in the future.

Gender in American Protestant Dance: Local and Global Implications

In the field of dance studies much discourse surrounds notions of gender identity and women's rights within Western dance traditions. One group of scholars asserts that early modern dance practice successfully resisted patriarchal notions. Another contends that early modern dance perpetuated traditional assumptions. A third perspective proposes that early modern dance realized a simultaneous reiteration and subversion of traditional gender roles. In similar fashion, this paper delineates the parameters of a growing subset in contemporary dance and religious practice, the field of contemporary professional Christian dance, and explores the ways in which these groups reify traditional gender roles through choreographed depictions of rigid gender binaries while simultaneously subverting them through the introduction of the female body and the female voice into the traditionally male-dominated Protestant worship space. In terms of its relevance to global feminisms, contemporary professional Christian dancers reify and subvert traditional gender roles on a global scale through international touring and arts-based missionary outreach programs.

Going Native: Ethics and American Cultural Appropriation of Butoh Dance

Inspired by an illustration entitled “Traditional Japanese Physique” in an American text on Butoh dance, this paper probes the conception of and relationship to such a body within American Butoh dance. What is this notion of a “Japanese body,” and what are the ethics of appropriating it? How do we talk about the body in a dance form that grew from a specific cultural context but is now considered a global form? I address these questions with reference to “Orientalization” in early American Modern Dance and related practices in contemporary American Butoh. Applying Edward T. Hall's model of cross-cultural communication to dance studies, I discuss ways in which American dancers and dance scholars might approach the Butoh body in nonessentializing terms. This paper is intended to open up conversation about cultural appropriation in artwork and the complexities of Butoh dance as a global practice.

I See America Dancing: Selected Readings, 1685–2000 edited by Maureen Needham. 2002. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, xiii + 249 pp., photographs, bibliographies and fdmography, appendix, index. $44.95 cloth; $18.95 paper.

Representing dancers, scholars, admirers, and critics, I See America Dancing is a diverse collection of primary documents and articles about the place and shape of dance in the United States from colonial times to the present. This volume offers a lively counterpoint between observers of the dance and dancers' views of what they do when they dance. Dance traditions represented include the Native American pow-wow; tribal music and dance activities on Sunday afternoons in New Orlean's Congo Square; the colonial Playford Balls and their modern offspring, country line dancing; and the Buddhist-inspired Japanese Bon dances in Hawaii. Anti-dance perspectives include government injunctions against Native American dancing and essays from a range of speakers who have declared the waltz, the twist, or the senior prom to be a careless quick-step away from hell or the brothel. I See America Dancing examines the styles that have marked theatrical dance in America, from French ballet to minstrel shows, and presents the views of influential dancers, choreographers, and the pioneers of early modern dance in Specific pieces examined include George Ballanchine's ballet Stars and Stripes, Yvonne Rainer's protest piece Flag Dance, 1970, and Sonj Mayo's Naked in America. Covering historical social attitudes toward the dance as well as the performers and their works, I See America Dancing is a comprehensive, scholarly sourcebook that captures the energy and passion of this vital artform.

Alien Bodies: Representations of Modernity, “Race” and Nation in Early Modern Dance. By Ramsay Burt. London and New York: Routledge, 1998; 222 pp.; illustrations. $70.00 cloth, $20.99 paper.

<i>Alien Bodies: Representations of Modernity, “Race” and Nation in Early Modern Dance</i>. By Ramsay Burt. London and New York: Routledge, 1998; 222 pp.; illustrations. $70.00 cloth, $20.99 paper.

Bird's Eye View: Dancing with Martha Graham and on Broadway, by Dorothy Bird and Joyce Greenberg; with a foreword by Marcia B. Siegel Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997. xxvii + 259 pp., illustrations and index. $25.95 hardcover.

This autobiography looks at the career of Dorothy Bird (1912-1996) who debuted with the Graham Group in 1931, on the invitation of Martha Graham, and remained a company member and Graham's demonstrator until 1937. She then embarked upon a decade-long career on Broadway, becoming the only dancer of her generation to work with all the major choreographers in concert and on the Great White Way. After retiring from the stage she taught dance over the years to many students on Long Island. This work acts as an account of the development of early modern dance, the career of Bird, and gives an inside view into the work of Martha Graham.

Dancing women: female bodies on stage

Acknowledgements. List of Illustrations. Introduction. 1. The Romantic Ballet 2. The Russian Imperial Ballet 3. Early Modern Dance 4. Early Modern Ballet 5. Modern Dance 6. Modern Ballet Envoi.