Men's Dance Research Articles

VARIATIONS OF ELEMENTS OF THE NATIONAL MEN'S DANCE («ZHOLBARYS ZHUREK» BASED ON A DANCE PERFORMANCE)

Abstract. Men's dance in the Kazakh dance art requires special attention in modern choreography. The development of dances for men, the scientific formulation of its history, and development trends are among the most pressing problems in modern dance art. Therefore, this scientific article is devoted to discussing the essence of the national dances of the Kazakh people, including dances for men, ways of their formation and development. The article is based on Almat Shamshiev's dance «Zholbarys zhurek» changes in the national men's dance elements were scientifically differentiated, and various scientific methods and receivers were used in scientific research. In order to determine the essence of men's dance, methods of historical and chronological systematization, differentiation, comparison, and control were used. In comparison, he tried to reveal the features of the dance of the guys through the dance the «Balbirauyn», and gave specific examples of what dance elements were added and what movements and postures were transformed according to the dance «Zholbarys zhurek». He concluded that the development of human consciousness, and the transformation of society are standard with the passage of time, and in this regard, new views appear in the art of dance, the release of new works, and the transformation of existing dance elements is a natural phenomenon and a modern necessity. Today, men who are engaged in the art of dance pay attention to the ability to flex, flexibility. It shows that some dance moves used only in girls ' dances in the past are successfully used in men's dances today. However, he says, in performing movements, the guys dance flexibly in a manner that corresponds to their masculine nature. However, he emphasizes that in making changes, it is necessary to constantly pay attention to Kazakh dances' essence and central national nature. Several recommendations were given on further developing Kazakh men's dance, increasing interest in it in society.

Russian Traditional Dance as a Language of Intraethnic Communication

Introduction. The article aims to determine the nature of the participation of folk dance in the process of forming the ethnic and national identity of the Russian people. For this purpose, the dance is considered as a means of social communication and analyzed by the example of the most common variants of its application in the practice of everyday and festive communication of the Russian rural population of the Nizhny Novgorod region of the second half of the 20th century. Materials and Methods. In the process of working on the article, a comparative historical method was used, which allowed us to present the dynamics of the historical development of traditional dance from the end of the 19th to the second half of the 20th centuries. The structural and functional method was also used which made it possible to determine the main functions of dance culture in the life of the rural community. These methods were used in combination with the analysis of historiographical works and sources, as well as methods of field research. Results. Russian folk dance has undergone a number of changes over a certain historical period. Initially, it had a ritual and cult significance, developed within the framework of the male military tradition, and was used in the rituals of the calendar and wedding cycles. In the 20th century, the communicative potential of dance began to be directed to the rural community. Dance becomes the universal language of festive communication. It acquires the significance of one of the components of national identity after the Victory in the Great Patriotic War. Discussion and Conclusion. The ethno-cultural significance of dance in the life of a rural community in the second half of the 20th century can be illustrated by the culmination of the annual village festival. During it, the dance of men, successors of their kind, heirs of the winners and defenders of the Fatherland, brings a final, life-affirming and archaic meaning to the general emotional unity. It proclaims the right of all participants in the holiday to live in their own land and honor their ancestors.

ҚАЗАҚ ЕРЛЕР БИІНІҢ ДАМУ МӘСЕЛЕСІ

The history of dance art is difficult to access because it does not have well-defined physical artifacts such as stone tools, sculptures, hunting tools or rock paintings that have survived for thousands of years. It is impossible to determine exactly when the art of dance became a part of human culture. The art of Dance has held different functions in each society. One of them is social communication and communication. It was used in folk festivals and rituals. The art of dance was also used as a method of treating sick people, people who are in depression and stress. The most basic also considered the art of dance as a means of conveying feelings between men and women. In this scientific article, the author, reviewing the history of dance of the peoples of the world, pays attention, including to the development of men's dance. Studying the development of Kazakh men's dance, he shows the facts that hinder it. Tries to find ways to solve the problems mentioned. Formulates with concrete evidence the benefits of dance art for human life and health.

Sissy Lessons

Sissy Lessons

Rivne Polissya as an Authentic and Archaic Cultural Region of Ukraine: Choreographic Component of the Heritage

The aim of this paper is to analyze the complex of historical prerequisites of forming the choreographic component of art heritage of the Rivne Polissya in the past and the present. Social and political, ethnic, cultural and natural circumstances of forming the art of dance in a retrospective are highlighted.Research methodology. The author uses the integrated approach caused by need of the involvement of the comparative and historical method which fixes similarity between the cultural phenomena as certificates of community of their origin. The application of culturological methodology which includes sociocultural approach –as it focuses attention on the unity of culture and sociality, taking into account scientific achievements of a choreology, cultural science, ethnography, history, etc. has been integral to the study.Results. It is established that non-ritual dancing repertoire in the northern areas of the Rivne region is submitted by specific local dances. There were twists — pair dances where participants move around in one direction, exchanging at the same time partners; buckwheat — women’s dance which was carried out during agricultural works with the corresponding refrain; chumak subject dance of the hopak group; small pillows — dance of men and women who went around, having joined hands; a drill — dance which was carried out by the three of dancers. All-Ukrainian genres of the national dances were also widespread in the northern Rivne region.The historical prerequisites of forming the choreographic art of residents of the Rivne Polissya were found in the specified region owing to different natural, social and political, social and economic and ethnic circumstances, where traditional dancing culture of the Ukrainian population characteristic of the north of Ukraine was created. Considerable influence of material and spiritual culture of the Belarusian ethnos was a considerable factor too.Novelty. An attempt is made to analyze Ukrainian choreographic arts in Rivne Polissya from the point of view of changes of cultural eras.The practical significance. The results of the study can be used in developing the monographs and publications on the history of dance in the authentic ethnographic regions of Ukraine.Keywords: historical prerequisites, spiritual culture, material culture, Ukrainian Polissya, Rivne Polissya, subregion, Poleshuks, choreography, dance, art.

Magic Mike, Dirty Dancing, and the (Empty) Promise of Heteromasculinity

In 1987, Eddie Murphy performed a comic sketch about white men dancing that would inform future movers and makers of white male dancing in American popular culture, helping to create a trope mocking white men for their inability to dance, most often referred to as the “white man dance.” At that time, Saturday Night Live, with the help of its host Patrick Swayze, fresh off the popularity of his work in sleeper hit Dirty Dancing, contributed to the trope itself with a sketch comparing the hypermuscular physique of Swayze vs. the flabby physique of comedian Chris Farley. Almost thirty years later, American popular culture would see a return to a renewed interest in the dance film with the stripper film Magic Mike. This article argues that although Magic Mike, like Dirty Dancing, relies on the makeover trope as its narrative and thematic engine, Magic Mike revises the popular dance film format to instead focus on the relationship between two men, Mike and Adam, rather than on a heterosexual partnering. Magic Mike’s focus on this male-to-male relationship inevitably comments on the exchange between heteronormative masculinity and compulsory heterosexuality and their assumed whiteness.

Sex difference in attractiveness perceptions of strong and weak male walkers.

Men and women accurately assess male physical strength from facial and body morphology cues. Women's assessments of male facial attractiveness, masculinity, and dominance correlate positively with male physical strength. A positive relationship also has been reported between physical strength and attractiveness of men's dance movements. Here, we investigate men's and women's attractiveness, dominance, and strength assessments from brief samples of male gait. Handgrip strength (HGS) was measured in 70 heterosexual men and their gait was motion-captured. Men and women judged 20 precategorized strong (high HGS) and weak (low HGS) walkers on attractiveness, dominance, and strength, and provided a measure of their own HGS. Both men and women judged strong walkers higher on dominance and strength than weak walkers. Women but not men judged strong walkers more attractive than weak walkers. These effects were independent of observers' physical strength. Male physical strength is conveyed not only through facial and body morphology, but also through body movements. We discuss our findings with reference to studies suggesting that physical strength provides information about male quality in contexts of inter- and intrasexual selection. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 28:913-917, 2016. © 2016Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Book Review: When Men Dance: Choreographing Masculinities across Borders

Book Review: When Men Dance: Choreographing Masculinities across Borders

Kordax und Methe: Lasterhaftes Treiben in byzantinischer Zeit

Following antique traditions the Byzantines assessed the kordax, a dance of men, usually accompanied by songs and a kithara, and the methe, i. e. drunkenness, mostly negative. Based on an earlier publication of the same author, additional texts from the Middle Byzantine period are taken into account and evaluated in the present study. It becomes obvious that both terms and their inherent assessment are frequently combined in the written sources. In this connection the allegations of kordax and of methe were often used as a means of polemic and ridicule towards specific persons, whereas no direct moral criticism was attached to them. Among the writers and theologians of the Late Byzantine period a rise in the negative attitude towards kordax and methe can be discerned. Henceforward, both kordax and methe were equated with vice: not only that the ethical pressure was growing in the tight religious context of Christianity, but also generally in a society which had become morally more sensitive and also tended more often than before to use the accusation of kordax and methe in a figurative, symbolic sense as a means of polemic and satire.

When Men Dance: Choreographing Masculinities Across Borders edited by Jennifer Fisher and Anthony Shay. 2009. New York: Oxford University Press. 422 pp., photographs, appendix, index, $29.95 paper.

When Men Dance: Choreographing Masculinities Across Borders edited by Jennifer Fisher and Anthony Shay. 2009. New York: Oxford University Press. 422 pp., photographs, appendix, index, $29.95 paper. - Volume 44 Issue 1

Choreographing Asian America by Yutian Wong. 2010. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. x + 280 pp. notes, bibliography, index. $27.95 paper.

choreographers or events to ausdruckstanz, which informed a certain moment of nation building, enables the reader to see changes in scale. Whereas Keefe showcases individuals, Hardt shifts to masses and the communities that chal- lenge national formation and the processes of mechanization associated with capital. Many of the other pieces provide thick descriptions of movement vocabularies that construct masculinities in different contexts. In the contributions by dancers Fred Strickler and Rennie Harris, artists and teachers of differ- ent generations respectively from the Midwest and East Coast of the U.S., dance seems to have insinuated opposing masculinities within the communities in which each came of age. Such accounts of the diverse means by which movement registers and enacts larger social anxieties attendant to constructions of masculi- nity recur throughout the book. From Jennifer Fisher’s and Jill Nunes Jensen’s respective explorations of the hyperbolic imagination and expression of gendered relationships in classical ballet to Stephen Johnson’s essay on transvestite acts in Juba’s minstrel shows, this collection encourages both thinking through the body as scripted through matrices of gender but also the body as a sight of negotiation, perhaps even resistance, to the norms that obtain in a given time and place or through highly codified forms of corporeal expression. Here Juba’s self- conscious play of gender might become the sur- prising antecedent to the choreography of Alonzo King. To be clear, my pairing of these two pieces does not gesture toward some ima- gined racial link but rather to an awareness of the constraints regulating people’s expressive capacities at distinct moments in time. For me, the collection produces its most substantive arguments in relation to how mas- culinity physically manifests under and as differ- ent regimes of power (e.g., Namus Zokhrabov’s recounting of the politics within the Azerbaijan State Dance Ensemble). The invention of traditions, the propping up of national and international discourses on particular demon- strations of masculine power, the assertion of moving men as an exercise in modernity— these are the elements of the book that promise to advance dance and masculinity studies together. Along this line, the “legacies of coloni- alism” section furthers the steps begun by some of the earlier contributions. The emphasis here on overlapping disciplinary mechanisms that inform the perception of moving bodies articu- lates why bodies matter in particular configur- ations, spaces, and times (Anthony Shay’s essay, for example, includes a wide overview of these issues). The labor of dancers harnessed to imperialist and nationalist ideals, often sim- ultaneously, is worth exploring because the pro- cesses of empire and nation-state formation have long been analyzed in gendered terms. But the work here insists that these sorts of ana- lyses must not only function at the level of dis- cursive abstraction. Enactments of power can be the subtle acts of bodies moving independently or together; perhaps this is the principal reason to study when men dance. However, the Introduction emphasizes pho- bia; When Men Dance is situated as a response to strategies that have marginalized dancing males. In this vein, the project seems not so distant from that of institutions such as The Gold School (a dance education venue in Massachusetts), which recently premiered its anti-bullying piece “accept ME.” Perhaps the field of dance studies requires this intervention. The editors seem to think so, for the Appendix reveals questions posed to generate discussion of stereotypes faced in the course of men’s dancing careers. Because the brief narratives continually return the reader to the potential difficulties in choosing to be a male dancer, the volume as a whole shades a bit too much toward the therapeutic, at least for me. On the other hand, a nice bit of therapy for $29.95 is a good deal, and the reader will certainly learn something along the way. Sean Metzger Duke University Choreographing Asian America Choreographing Asian America by Yutian Wong. 2010. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. x + 280 pp. notes, bibliography, index. $27.95 paper. doi:10.1017/S0149767711000453 “Can you name an Asian American choreogra- pher?” (1)—so begins Yutian Wong’s ground- breaking study, Choreographing Asian America. This book carefully and critically fills the silence that would presumably follow this question. I suggest silence because the two sites the DRJ 44/1 • SUMMER 2012

Clubbing Masculinities: Gender Shifts in Gay Men's Dance Floor Choreographies

This article adopts an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the intersections of gender, sexuality, and dance. It examines the expressions of sexuality among gay males through culturally popular forms of club dancing. Drawing on political and musical history, I outline an account of how gay men's gendered choreographies changed throughout the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. Through a notion of “technologies of the body,” I situate these developments in relation to cultural levels of homophobia, exploring how masculine expressions are entangled with and regulated by musical structures. My driving hypothesis is that as perceptions of cultural homophobia decrease, popular choreographies of gay men's dance have become more feminine in expression. Exploring this idea in the context of the first decade of the new millennium, I present a case study of TigerHeat, one of the largest weekly gay dance club events in the United States.

Male dance moves that catch a woman's eye.

Male movements serve as courtship signals in many animal species, and may honestly reflect the genotypic and/or phenotypic quality of the individual. Attractive human dance moves, particularly those of males, have been reported to show associations with measures of physical strength, prenatal androgenization and symmetry. Here we use advanced three-dimensional motion-capture technology to identify possible biomechanical differences between women's perceptions of 'good' and 'bad' male dancers. Nineteen males were recorded using the 'Vicon' motion-capture system while dancing to a basic rhythm; controlled stimuli in the form of avatars were then created in the form of 15 s video clips, and rated by 39 females for dance quality. Initial analyses showed that 11 movement variables were significantly positively correlated with perceived dance quality. Linear regression subsequently revealed that three movement measures were key predictors of dance quality; these were variability and amplitude of movements of the neck and trunk, and speed of movements of the right knee. In summary, we have identified specific movements within men's dance that influence women's perceptions of dancing ability. We suggest that such movements may form honest signals of male quality in terms of health, vigour or strength, though this remains to be confirmed.

‘Death to the Prancing Prince’: Effeminacy, Sport Discourses and the Salvation of Men's Dancing

For much of the 20th century, dance writers and critics regularly bemoaned a shortage of male dancers. As one writer put it, the average American father would rather see his son dead than performing on stage in tights. This article looks at commentary about male dancing as a means of understanding popular conceptions of effeminacy. It addresses the way discourses about sport, physical prowess and hard bodies have been appropriated in attempts to validate the manliness of male dancers. Drawing on works by dance educators, critics and dancers, such as Gene Kelly and American modern dancer Ted Shawn, the article looks at gendered notions of the body and movement and the way these have been shaped by the late 19th-century conflation of effeminacy and homosexuality. The athleticism and muscularity of male dancers were to have brought them mainstream respect; that they have yet to do so at all but elite levels reminds us that even the hardest bodies must be read through the limitations of the discursive contexts in which they move.

Dance and Gender in Ancient Jewish Sources

Dance is often represented in ancient texts and iconography as an activity in which the two genders have specific, defined roles. In ancient Hebrew there are even different terms to denote men's dance and women's dance. Does this mean that the term itself is gendered and it merely describes in different words the same thing when men perform and when women perform, or does it also suggest that there was a formal distinction between the way men danced and the way women did? The author suggests that the distinction was one of strictly delineated gender differences in the dance.

Zarraf, a Tuareg Women's Wedding Dance

One evening, during wedding celebrations among the Kel Ewey Tuareg, Amina, a renowned singer who had just completed songs accompanying men's dancing, took me aside and gestured for me to follow her. Still at the festival grounds, but off to one side and away from the crowd, Amina and a group of about ten other women spontaneously formed a small circle, facing each other. They held their robes high, enveloping their circle, tentlike. Dancing in place and looking downwards, the women shook their hair, shoulders, and torsos. They sang no lyrics, but pronounced guttural sounds in the throat. This dance lasted only about five minutes; it concluded as quickly and informally as it had begun, and the group disbanded, returning to the general festivities. There followed more drumming, female choral singing, and male dancing. Men circulated about the dance space, and couples wandered off together into the shadows. is a special dance performed by a group of young women at evening wedding festivals. It is brief, spontaneous, unaccompanied by any instruments, following men's more prolonged dancing called tende n tagbast, accompanied by drumming and choral singing. Unlike other wedding dances, this dance is not performed at every celebration. Rather, it appears to occupy a place as something extra, optional, as if an encore to the more standard dances. No one formally requests it, and its mixed-sex, mixed-class audience, while present, does not gather around it as closely or attentively, or mark it off so publicly as performance as at other dances. Spectators keep their distance, more like bystanders than audience. I saw zarraf performed on several occasions, after midnight, at festivals during the seven-day wedding ritual. At the informal instigation of one woman, a small group of young women of diverse social origins, but predominantly matrilineally related noblewomen (sisters and cousins of the bride) quickly form a small tight circle, and dance in place facing each other, faces looking toward the ground, shaking their torsos and shoulders, and holding their robes high, which has the effect of a veil or tent, enveloping and closing their circle off from the outside. The guttural vocables (called t-hum-a-hum), associated with the spirits, are usually made by men in the audience during spirit-possession exorcism rituals held for women (Rasmussen 1994a, 1994b). provoked some cryptic responses, suggesting it is erotic. Women performers laughingly but firmly ejected a small boy who innocently entered their circle. Men friends told me later that zarraf was an obscene dance; women described it enigmatically as having to do with spirits. Amina, normally open and articulate in her explanations of local practices, was reticent about zarraf. She would only give a mischievous smile and say, Zarraf is a woman's and repeatedly mention a single word: Spirits, spirits! (eljenan or Kel Essuf in Tamacheq, often used interchangeably). Yet this dance, unlike the dance during rituals held for those possessed by the Kel Essuf spirits or people of solitude (Rasmussen 1994a, 1994b), does not feature trance nor does it coincide with spirit-possession exorcism rituals. Tuareg do not consider women performing it to be possessed and the dancers themselves define it not as possession but as a distinct kind of dance (agabas), entirely separate from female spirit possession. In its imagery and performance context, zarraf evokes more generalized beliefs about connections between dance, music, sexuality, and gender. Women in Tuareg society enjoy high social prestige and own property.(2) In local cosmology and mythology, women are believed to be closer to the spirits. In cosmology and ritual, spirits and Iblis (the Devil) are identified with sexuality, love, and reproduction. These figures are believed to walk about at night, and attend festivals held after daytime rites of passage. The form and performance context of this dance and its evocative qualities are addressed in this article. …

An Experiment in Looking: Reexamining the Process of Observation

In Autumn I985 Allison Jablonko, an anthropologist, and Elizabeth Kagan, a certified movement analyst and choreographer, set out to explore the possibility of using Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) to derive meaning from archival footage of the Maring people of Papua New Guinea.1 We wished to broaden the analysis of Maring movement style which Jablonko had completed in 1967 (Jablonko 1968a). Because it had been designed for an anthropological audience unfamiliar with disciplined movement observation, that analysis was strictly limited to counting body parts used, types of forms traced in space, and the degree of synchrony both among individuals and between body parts moving together. The core of the study had been a microanalysis (i.e., frame-by-frame of 5-20 second-long movement segments) of about two-dozen examples of common movements in daily life and in men's dance from the 68,ooo feet of research footage shot by Allison and Marek Jablonko in 1963 and I964 among the Maring. In 1968 theJablonkos had returned to the Maring and filmed an additional 46,000 feet which Kagan and Jablonko used for the present study (Jablonko and Jablonko 1968). A precise application of LMA to this research material promised to be an exciting experiment because, in anthropology, movement per se is rarely examined. Even when dance is the primary focus of a study, details of costuming, story line, and the symbolic meaning of gestures have customarily been more fully treated than the actual movement. Yet, as studies using LMA have revealed, it is also in the movement itself that characteristics of a culture are profoundly embedded (see Bartenieff 1980; Lomax, Bartenieff, Paulay I968). We wanted to ascertain the extent to which a skilled movement analyst could look at culturally unfamiliar behavior and, without knowing anything about the culture, derive useful observations that would extend traditional anthropological analyses. An observer already familiar with a people's social organization, mythology, and so forth, might inadvertently project that knowledge onto the visible behavior, thus failing to notice

Interpreting Androgynous Woman: Female Aging and Personhood among the Kel Ewey Tuareg

In anthropological theory, many scholars argue that older women acquire higher status and greater authority due to their culturally status and the cessation of their sexual reproductive roles upon menopause (Turner 1957:151; Skultans 1970:639-671; Mernissi 1975:72; Fuchs 1977:61; Ortner and Whitehead 1981:8-9; Poole 1981:116-165). I examine these theories against the backdrop of Tuareg concepts of woman as person and female aging. Specifically, I explore ritual events where older women play a central role in symbolic role reversal or inversion at life-crisis rites. At a ceremony called asegherele held at sundown the night preceding a baby's nameday ceremony, old women dance with pestles held lance-like over their heads and motions that resemble those of men's dances at festivals. This dancing of old women stands in stark contrast to their everyday behavior displaying dignity and restraint. Normally, older persons of either sex, and women of all ages, do not dance in this fashion before a gathering. When young women dance their style is markedly different from that of Tuareg men, who dance flamboyantly in public. Young men dance at nightly festivals marking marriages and namedays. They hold a long lance or sword over the head and, in pairs, approach a standing chorus of women. This dance, accompanied by a chorus and a tende drum, is also held occasionally following spirit possession rituals. During the asergherle rite, but at a distance, a gathering of male relatives pound millet for eghajira (an infusion of pounded millet, dates, and goat cheese) to be served at the isem or nameday on the following day. Therefore, elderly women at the prenameday ceremony appear, on the surface, to enact men's roles while the men perform women's tasks. The second event I focus on is the marriage ritual, during which an elderly woman is seated beside the groom as he awaits the bride's arrival in the wedding tent. Tuareg say this enables the old woman to attract all the devils seen as threatening to the bride and groom onto herself. Because she is old, she is not believed to be endangered by them. Elderly women in this context thus appear to act as decoys for devils by virtue of something about their postchildbearing status. The third problem of analysis is the logical fit of these events into a more longterm process; transformations elderly women undergo upon leaving child? hood status, against which theories of androgynous woman may be treated. Old Tuareg women are discouraged from attending musical festivals, playing instru-

Dancers, Mostly Male

The Great Russian Dancers. By Gennady Smakov. Illustrated. 342 pp. New York: Knopf, 1984. $45.00 Baryshnikov in Russia. Text and photographs by Nina Alovert. Translated by Irene Huntoon. 212 pp. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984. $35.00. Men Dancing: Performers and Performances. By Alexander Bland and John Percival. Illustrated. 176 pp. New York: Macmillan, 1984. $35.00. Far from Denmark. By Peter Martins with Robert Cornfield. Illustrated. 242 pp. Boston: Little, Brown, 1982. $24.95. Fernando Bujones. By Fernando Bujones. Illustrated. 184 pp. Rio de Janeiro: Imprinta Gráfica e Editora Ltda., 1984. $24.95.