Dance Studies Research Articles

Analysis of the Importance of Demeanor Training to the Study of Chinese Folk Dance—Taking Uighur Dance as an Example

Chinese folk dance has a long history and is quite abundant. It is an indispensable source of Chinese classical dance, court dance and professional dance creation. Chinese folk dances are characterized by unpretentiousness, diverse forms, rich content, and vivid images. But these require professional dancers to express through professional training. Even amateur dances need to be completed through well-trained and emotionally full actors.[1] In the process of training, in addition to the necessary basic skills and other physical training, we also need to train the demeanor. We often say that the eyes are the windows of the soul, and the folk dance is more about expressing a feeling to the audience. If the dancer don’t have a good performance and face expression, he or she can’t express the dance work at all. Therefore, this article takes the training of national folk dance as the starting point, combining technical training, stage performance, professional dancers and amateur dancers, taking the Uygur as an example.

A History of Theory and Method in the Study of Religion and Dance

AbstractThe relationship between religion and dance is as old as humankind. Contemporary methods for studying this relationship date back a century. The difference between these two time frames is significant: scholars are still developing theories and methods capable of illuminating this vast history that take account of their limited place within it. A History of Theory and Method in the Study of Religion and Dance takes on a primary challenge of doing so: overcoming a conceptual dichotomy between “religion” and “dance” forged in the colonial era that justified western Christian hostility towards dance traditions across six continents over six centuries. Beginning with its enlightenment roots, LaMothe narrates a selective history of this dichotomy, revealing its ongoing work in separating dance studies from religious studies. Turning to the Bushmen of the African Kalahari, LaMothe introduces an ecokinetic approach that provides scholars with conceptual resources for mapping the generative interdependence of phenomena that appear as “dance” and/or “religion.”

Dance Exposure Tracking in a Liberal Arts Collegiate Dance Department

ABSTRACT Dancers in a liberal arts program of study are an underrepresented group in the field of dance science and dance education literature. Dancers in this environment come with a broad range of interests and typically strive for high academic achievements outside of their dance studies. Therefore, their patterns of training and injury might be different than dancers typically studied in this field. This study sought to track dance exposure within a liberal arts collegiate dance department as it was hypothesized that dancers’ actual dance exposure time (AE) would be greater than their registered exposure time (RE). Self-reported injuries were also collected to assess incidence of injury. The findings of this study suggest a high incidence of injury and a statistically significant difference in AE versus RE. A customized periodization training program is recommended to assist institutions in combating these patterns within their own program.

Sons e Espacialidade, os Caminhos nos Cantos e Danças Guarani

Neste artigo faço uma reflexão sobre a importância das transcrições nos estudos de músicae de dança indígenas, realçando os percursos interpretativos que me levaram a compreensão de que nos rituais guarani são percorridos caminhos que levam os participantes ao encontro dos heróis criadores e a outros seres espirituais. Defendo o esforço dedicado a criar ferramentas teórico-metodológicas para realizar transcrições que auxiliem a escuta e a observação dos rituais em movimentos que, dialogicamente, auxiliem no entendimento desses universos.

Danças em Fricções. Danças e desobediências do Corpo


 
 
 O artigo propõe abordar influências culturais na construção da dra- maturgia dançada para aprofundar o estudo sobre a chamada Dança Afro Contemporânea, com recorte para as praticadas na cena artística. O objetivo deste artigo é estudar como criações artísticas podem estar imbricadas em associação direta com fios de memória e, como tais criações acabam por assumir uma certa identidade em dança, como opção descolonial. Logo, procuramos analisar processos e escolhas da dramaturgia do corpo e da cena. Nosso eixo de análise temática reme- te assim aos conceitos e processos de coreógrafos e criadores de dança que manifestam, em um nível mais profundo, um afro contínuo de princípios estéticos e utiliza alguns princípios teóricos de Gilroy, Karenga, Mignolo e Puma de Ayala.
 
 

Caroling Like Clockwork: Technologies of the Medieval Dancing Body in Dante’s Paradiso

Dance studies scholars have explored the interrelatedness of dance, text, and technology in productive ways. Reorienting such an approach toward a medieval perspective, this article focuses on how Dante poeticizes dance in Paradiso, the third section of his Commedia. I begin by exploring Paradiso’s representations of technology and kinesthesia. Dante, I argue, converges clockwork and dance imagery and, in doing so, simulates the experience of sacred phenomena. Next, I examine the vernacular technologies of Dante’s dance language, which demonstrate linguistic mastery, envision a just society, and articulate an ethical approach to love. Ultimately, I posit that Dante’s rendering of dance in poetry overcomes the limits of verbal communication and formulates a moralizing discourse.

Effects of 12 Weekly Folk Dance Studıes on Some Physıcal Suıtabılıty Parameters of Works of Dıfferent Local Area in Prımary School Age Chıldren

In this study, it was aimed to determine the effect of Artvin region and Antep region folk dance program applied for 12 weeks on some physical fitness parameters on children at primary education level. The study aimed to examine the development of some of the motoric characteristics of folk dance studies of different regions applied in the 9-10 year old children two days a week. In Gaziantep region, 12 girls and 7 boys (X age =10±0.61), totally 19 children, and Artvin region as 10 girls and 5 boys (X age =10), totally 15 children participated in the study. Flexibility, Vertical Jumping, Stopping Long Jump, 20 m Sprint test values were evaluated before (pre-test) and end (test) 12 week application. For the analysis of the data, Wilcoxon t test was used in non-paramatic tests in SPSS 20 package program. There were significant differences in sit-in, vertical jump (p<0.05), stopping long-jump, and 20-meter sprint values while the Artvin group did not show any difference in weight values (p<0.05). In the Antep region, there were significant differences in weight, sit-reach, vertical jumping and 20 meters sprint values while the practice group did not show any difference in stopping long jump values (p<0.05). As a result, it has been observed that Artvin region and Antep region folk dances conducted for 12 weeks cause some physical values of children to develop and that the orientation of primary school children to folk dances has a positive and important effect for children.

Klassenzimmerchoreographie

Abstract This article investigates a class room sequence with the methods of dance studies. Hence the teacher’s behaviour is seen as a stage performance. With a main method of dance theory, the Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) teacher’s handling of the classroom space, including body effort and shape, is analysed. Following Daniel Stern’s conceptualisation of forms of vitality I consider the teacher’s behaviour, focusing on the phenomenology and the temporal contour of feelings of anger. In terms of movement, this essay explores the dynamic experience of vitality affects.

Research on the Status and Development Countermeasures of Square Dance Based on Yongchuan District of Chongqing

With the rapid economic growth, the people have a higher pursuit of physical health and spiritual culture, so square dances spread all over the streets and are an important part of the cultural life of the people and a key form of expression. Through the study of square dance, it is possible to seek a good development platform for mass sports and to better promote the development of national fitness. This topic takes the current status of square dance in Yongchuan District of Chongqing as the research object, investigates the development of square dance here, and applies SWOT analysis to the research results, establishes a structural model and conducts a factor analysis finally. From the research, rules will be summed up, problems be found and recommendations be come up with to provide some basis for filling the gaps in the study of square dance in Yongchuan District, and also to offer references for the development of square dance in other regions.

Study of (Royal) Court Dances through History of Exchange between Korea and Southeast Asia –with focus on similarities of type and element

Study of (Royal) Court Dances through History of Exchange between Korea and Southeast Asia –with focus on similarities of type and element

Where we dance (ecologically) together: reading Ananya Dance Theatre’s Roktim: Nurture Incarnadine

In September 2015, Ananya Dance Theatre premiered Roktim: Nature Incarnadine, an evening-length dance about women of color, seeds, food systems, and soil. Roktim weaves dancers’ biographies with myth, history, and science to form an epic narrative intersecting environment and social difference—an environmental justice biomythography. This work is an unconventional example of an environmental dance in both aesthetic and content. Through a year of ethnographic fieldwork and participation with the company, I explore aspects of Roktim and how my own body becomes implicated in the work. Using literature from eco-dramaturgy, eco-criticism, dance studies, and environmental justice, I consider how the performance and a reading of it contributes a corporeal perspective to critical sustainability.

Dancing in the office: A study of gestures as resistance

Following the art-body-ethics turn in management studies we use dance as an analogy in order to explore how the body can resist organisational control in office work contexts. We argue that in office work gestures can be a site of post-recognition resistance. Drawing on two art videos and on dance studies, we explain that this is operated either through arrest or through flow. In fact aesthetic experiments in gesturing disrupt the work rhythm needed for organisational efficiency and enforced by organisational control. This allows us to contribute primarily to the literature on resistance in organisation studies and relatedly to the growing literature on dance in organisation studies through demonstrating how dance can be a source of resistance.

Stepping out of line: (Re)claiming the diva for the dancers of Broadway

Abstract Working from the terms and examples set in musical theatre, opera and ballet, this article expands the definition of Broadway’s diva to include the powerful performances of Broadway’s dancing divas Gwen Verdon, Chita Rivera and Donna McKechnie. Drawing on gender and queer studies in performance, musical theatre studies and dance studies, this article reframes the musical theatre diva in a way that acknowledges the virtuosity of the body as tantamount to that of the voice. By highlighting the dancing diva, I make a case for her as collaborator, translator and artist of her own instead of simply as a muse for male directors, choreographers and composers. Finally, by featuring Verdon, Rivera and McKechnie, I point to the dancing diva’s essential impact on the evolving artistry of musical theatre in the twentieth century by highlighting their contributions to the narrative power of dance and their roles in establishing unique expectations for the triple-threat performer.

Cybernetic Approach of the “Κ’na” Dance: The Construction of Ethnic and National Identity in Nea Vyssa, Thrace , Greece

AbstractThe research field of this project is the area if Greek Thrace, which is a great geopolitical-cultural unity that was divided - due to political process - in three subareas that were distributed to three different countries: Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece. A dance happening that took place before the lining of the boundaries to date in the Greek and Turkish Thrace is that of “K’na”. “K’na” is a female dance happening which is danced to date by the people of both areas in spite of their religious beliefs, social - economic and cultural development. The purpose of this project is to study the different expressions of this dance in Nea Vyssa and examine if these are related to matters of search and conformation of ethnic and national identity of this group under the terms of the social cybernetics. Data was gathered through the ethnographic method as this is applied to the study of dance and the interpretation of the data was based on the theoretical visuals of the social-cybernetic according to the inspection model of identity that Burke proposed. From the data analysis, we established that the dance of “K’na” in Nea Vyssa constructs and reconstructs not only the ethnic but the national identity of the groups who use them in order to react to the messages they receive via the communication with “the important others”.

Gender and Dance in Modern Iran: Biopolitics on Stage

Gender and Dance in Modern Iran: Biopolitics on Stage

부랴트족 요호르와 야쿠트족 오수오하이 원무(圓舞) 연구

부랴트족 요호르와 야쿠트족 오수오하이 원무(圓舞) 연구

Gilles Deleuze and Dance: Reviewing the Reception of Gilles Deleuze in Dance Studies in Korea

Gilles Deleuze and Dance: Reviewing the Reception of Gilles Deleuze in Dance Studies in Korea

The Case of The Sexy Jewess: Dance, Gender, and Joke-Work in U.S. Pop Culture by Hannah Schwadron

Reviewed by: The Case of The Sexy Jewess: Dance, Gender, and Joke-Work in U.S. Pop Culture by Hannah Schwadron Grace Kessler Overbeke THE CASE OF THE SEXY JEWESS: DANCE, GENDER, AND JOKE-WORK IN U.S. POP CULTURE. By Hannah Schwadron. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018; pp. 216. Building on critical work interrogating Jewish female stereotypes like the Jewish American Princess and the Jewish Mother, Hannah Schwadron's impressively multidisciplinary study introduces the Sexy Jewess, the newest addition to the canon of analytically rich, persistent Jewish female representations. Exploring case studies ranging from the "downwardly mobile" Jewish neo-burlesque performers to the capitalistic Porn Princess Joanna Angel, Schwadron argues "that what is so funny about Jewish girls is their self-conscious looks and internalized cultural anxieties about failing to fit in, when fitting in is trite and tiresome for emboldened women who would rather strive to be comically eccentric" (164). Although not a study of traditional concert dance, this text exemplifies the potential for analysis of embodiment and choreography throughout a variety of pop-culture media. Sensitive to the differing demands of her multimedia case studies, Schwadron takes an aptly mixed-methods approach. In her first chapter, she uses performance ethnography to examine New York's Jewish neo-burlesque circuit. Analyzing interviews and Hannukkah-themed performances by the Schlep Sisters, Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad, and others, she explores the way that the nostalgic form of neo-burlesque also traffics in comic nostalgia for a period in which Jews were not yet wealthy or white. Her ethnographic method allows her to attend to [End Page 265] her subjective position as "not in the show but not quite simply a spectator either": in thick description, she recounts her experiences serving as an usher for the Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad troupe and making conversation with warm-up acts at the 2014 Menorah Horah, elaborating her auxiliary role and its impact on her writing with incisive self-awareness. The resulting text is an unparalleled example of scholarship that thematizes the liminal position of an ethnographer in a way that is productive and not apologetic. Her methodological innovations here are one of the book's greatest strengths, as she "pushes against a range of disciplinary codes that demand objectivity [and] suspect the feeling body," giving readers vivid descriptions suffused with pointed insights about both the objects of analysis and her own subject position as a scholar (49). Addressing the archival evidence of her case studies in the next two chapters, Schwadron takes a historical approach. In chapter 2 she traces the embryonic Sexy Jewess, from Fanny Brice, Sophie Tucker, and Betty Boop, through performances by Sexy Jewesses of the 1960s and '70s: Barbra Streisand, Bette Midler, Gilda Radner, and Madeline Kahn. Using these case studies, she demonstrates a variety of facial, vocal, and gestural strategies that these performers deployed as "the funny girl body [was] becoming sexy"—including comic dance sequences (often parodic ballets of Swan Lake), racial impersonation (like Tucker's blackface performance), and the foregrounding of stereotypical negative elements of Jewish women (such as sexual apathy) (76). Chapter 3, "Comic Glory (and Guilt)," follows the developing Sexy Jewess through the next thirty years, during which the glory of celebrity platforms is tempered by the guilt of mainstream white access. Specifically, Schwadron reads performances by Sandra Bernhard, Sarah Silverman, and comedy duo Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson, finding significant parallels in the ways in which these contemporary Sexy Jewesses both satirize and embody attempts to use Jewish ethnic Otherness to appropriate blackness and sexual freedom. Chapter 4 draws on queer theory and scholarship theorizing horror films, performing a close reading of the mainstream ballet movie Black Swan (2010) to highlight "horror plots of Jewish racial passing and sexual deviance" (110). As a scholar-practitioner of dance, Schwadron is exceptionally attuned to "the inseparability between doer and the thing being done" (112). Exemplifying this heightened sensitivity to embodiment, she skillfully analyzes both the implied Jewishness of the film's characters and the (somewhat) public Jewish identities of the four lead actresses. The fifth chapter engages interlocutors like Ariel Levy (Female Chauvinist Pigs) and Jane Ward in the feminist discourse on...

Olivera Mladenovic and folk dances in the context of Serbian ethnology

Olivera Mladenovic was born in 1914 in Skopje (Macedonia), but her entire professional and private life was connected to Belgrade and Serbia. Olivera Mladenovic received her BA both in Yugoslav Literature and Serbian Language with the Old Church Slavonic Language, and in Ethnological Studies, while also receiving a PhD in the latter in 1965, because she considered that ethnology was important for further study of folk dances. The main subject of research by this scientist was folk dances, as she terminologically defined the subject of her study. Olivera considered folk dances from a scientific point of view, but she also practically contributed to the preservation and promotion of this phenomenon, organizing various seminars, holding lectures, participating in folklore festivals and, finally, establishing National Folk Dance and Song Ensemble of Serbia Kolo. In this paper, using primarily archival sources and then accessible literature, I will show how Olivera Mladenovic contributed to Serbian ethnology as a scientific discipline by researching folk dances. [Project of the Serbian Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, Grant no. 177027: Multietnicitet, multikulturalnost, migracije -savremeni procesi]

Dance and Other Slippages: Critical Narratives on Women, Dance, and Art by Rina Angela P. Corpus

Reviewed by: Dance and Other Slippages: Critical Narratives on Women, Dance, and Art by Rina Angela P. Corpus Clarissa Cecilia Mijares Ramos Rina Angela P. Corpus Dance and Other Slippages: Critical Narratives on Women, Dance, and Art University of the Philippines Press, 2013. 143 pages. The literature on Philippine dance by Filipino writers is so scanty that every published contribution is considered valuable. Rina Angela P. Corpus's Dance and Other Slippages, however, begs to move outside that category of "just-another-valuable-contribution" toward being a piece of substantial scholarship that could pave the way for a shift in perspectives in Philippine dance studies. Corpus was a volunteer and meditation teacher at the Brahma Kumaris Center for Spiritual Learning in Tagaytay City. In that tranquil city south of Manila she finalized her two books on dance, Defiant Daughters of Dancing (University of Hawai'i Press, 2017) and Dance and Other Slippages—the former, based on her master's thesis; the latter, a compilation of essays spanning over ten years of introspection (1999–2013). She was assistant professor in the Department of Art Studies of the University of the Philippines (UP) in Diliman, where she earned her undergraduate degree in Art Studies and her [End Page 107] master's in Art History. She moved to Melbourne in 2016 for her PhD in Dance at the Victorian College of the Arts in the University of Melbourne. Corpus has not only written about Filipina contemporary dancers, but for a brief moment she was a contemporary dancer herself. She studied classical ballet in her youth and was affiliated with the Quezon City Ballet. She also took classes and dance workshops with Ballet Manila, Swiss Chamber Ballet International, Perry Sevidal Ballet School, and Limon Dance Institute in New York. In 2006 she directed and performed in a dance-solo-show titled "The Four Faces of Woman: A Dance-Exhibit Celebrating Women and Spirit," which was supported by UP's Office of Initiative in Culture and the Arts, the Anthrosophia Wellness Foundation, Inc., and the National Commission on Culture and the Arts. Corpus's affinity for dance and interest in understanding and facilitating meaning making are fleshed out in her 2013 publication. Offering a feminist-postmodernist approach to dance criticism, she seeks to "challenge the previous 'paternal' authorities of the 'great art' and 'grand dance' canons" (xiii). This approach to dance allows her and her work to stand out in a sea of Philippine dance performance critics who have mostly taken to formalistic and historical-materialist approaches. None of this is to say that Corpus disregards history. In fact, in Dance and Other Slippages she chronicles the lives of Filipina dance-artists and lays out a purposely selected dance repertoire for posterity. Her interest in history and historicity is evident in her previously published works. Corpus has been consistent in anchoring her research methodology on dance biographies as evident in Defiant Daughters of Dancing. Through her inquiry into the lives and artistic expressions of dance-artists, Corpus provides insights on the sociopolitical landscape of Philippine contemporary dance. She applies this kind of probing in Dance and Other Slippages, which focuses on the reading of dance performances and the retelling of dances through conversations about their conceptualization and production of dance. The book consists mostly of reviews of dance productions from 1999 to 2012. With over eight chapters, it is a compilation of textual analyses of dance performances and gallery shows that focus on women. She begins her reviews with layouts of analytical frameworks, citing feminist theorists whose ideas she applies to the reading of dance texts. Her carefully curated repertoire list consists of materials that have women as either subjects or producers. [End Page 108] This book should be lauded for providing space for independently produced dance shows. Featured in Dance and Other Slippages are dance-artists and performances that can be considered to have thrived outside traditional theater and the formal support structures for the arts in the country. Keeping true to her postmodernist preferences, Corpus conscientiously includes independently produced dance events that have not received ample exposure and patronage, such as Agnes Locsin's Sabel, Gerard Mercado's Daragang Magayon, Angela Baguilat and...