New Books in Performing Arts

By Marshall PoeArts Performing Arts

New Books in Performing Arts episodes

December 29, 2017 Edward Ross Dickinson, “Dancing in the Blood” (Cambridge UP, 2017)
In his new book, Dancing in the Blood: Modern Dance and European Culture on the Eve of the First World War (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Edward Ross Dickinson charts the development of modern dance in the turbulent decades of the early twentieth century. Arguing that modern dance provided the aesthetic tools to address the central features of modernity, Dickinson illustrates its impact on Euro-American cultural life, as well as on ideas about gender, nation, race, science, spirituality, and selfhood. Furthermore, he ties the development of modern dance to the emergence of mass culture and the work of marketing modernity. As becomes evident in his analysis, these ideas were fraught with contradictions as modern dance was seen to be both chaste and sexual, scientific and spiritual, universal yet grounded in racial difference. Dancing in the Blood thus provides fascinating insight into the development of modern dance, not only as an artistic genre but as part of the larger project of modernity.
Edward Ross Dickinson is Professor in History at UC, Davis. He received his PhD from UC, Berkeley, and has taught at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand and the University of Cincinnati, Ohio. His research interests include the history of social policy, especially in the German child welfare system, and welfare policy in New Zealand; the history of sexuality in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Central Europe; and debates about sexuality, sexual morality and sexual radicalism in Europe and the US. He is completing a book-length interpretive essay on the history of the world in the long twentieth century, which will appear in 2018.

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32 min
December 08, 2017 Mark Fleischman, “Inside Studio 54” (Rare Bird Books, 2017)
Studio 54 opened its doors 40 years ago and since that time it has held a place in American popular culture. Studio 54 was the place to go dancing to great music, mingle with celebrities and beautiful people, and do drugs night after night. In his historical and cultural memoir as the owner of Studio 54, Mark Fleischman takes readers behind the scenes and the into the basement rooms and dark corners of the night club. Inside Studio 54: The Real Story of Sex, Drugs, and Rock ‘n Roll from Former Studio 54 Owner (Rare Bird Books, 2017) introduces readers to the Studio 54 of the 1980s which Fleischman took control over after the original owners went to jail for tax evasion. Fleischman shares stories of celebrities, drugs, and day in and day out partying. He presents how he initiated theme nights and created ways to make the night club a destination for cultural icons of the decade. Through his journey of making Studio 54 the in club of the 1980s after disco was declared dead, Fleischman also shares his story of addiction and recovery, finding a new life through Rancho La Puerta and sobriety. Fleischman’s Inside Studio 54 is a no-nonsense view of a cultural landmark that gives readers interested in popular, music and celebrity culture insight behind the scenes of the most famous night club in the world.
Rebekah Buchanan is an Associate Professor of English at Western Illinois University. Her work examines the role of narrative in people’s lives. She researches zines, zine writers and the influence of music subcultures and fandom on writers and narratives. You can find more about her on her website, follow her on Twitter @rj_buchanan or email her at [email protected].

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54 min
October 09, 2017 Julia Fawcett, “Spectacular Disappearances: Celebrity and Privacy, 1696-1801” (U. Michigan Press, 2016)
“How can the modern individual maintain control over his or her self-representation when the whole world seems to be watching?” This is the question that prompts Julia Fawcett‘s new book, Spectacular Disappearances: Celebrity and Privacy, 1696-1801 (University of Michigan Press, 2016). Drawing on a diverse range of material to analyze some of England’s earliest modern celebrities, Fawcett offers a fascinating glimpse into the paradoxes of their eighteenth-century autobiographical performances. More than just the rise of celebrity culture she argues, these performances can help deepen our understanding of the making – and unmaking – of the modern self. Using creative, playful and transgressive techniques, the celebrities in Fawcett’s study experimented with presenting themselves as legible to curious publics even as they obscured their identities through ‘overexpressive’ acts that helped enable their spectacular disappearance. The result is a tantalizing narrative that continues to fascinate, three centuries later.
Julia Fawcett is Assistant Professor in the Theatre Dance and Performance Studies Department at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests include Restoration and eighteenth-century theatre and performance, performance historiography, the intersections between literature and performance, autobiographical performance, urban space, celebrity, gender, and disability studies. She received her PhD in English Literature from Yale University, and has published essays in PMLA, The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, and Modern Drama. Fawcett is currently working on her next book, Unmapping London: Performance and Urbanization after the Great Fire.
Sitara Thobani is Assistant Professor in the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities, Michigan State University. Her research focuses on the performance arts in colonial and postcolonial South Asia and its diasporas, especially as these relate to formations of nation, gender, sexuality and religion. She received her DPhil in Social and Cultural Anthropology form Oxford University, and is the author of Indian Classical Dance and the Making of Postcolonial National Identities: Dancing on Empire’s Stage (Routledge 2017).

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36 min
September 07, 2017 Joanna Dee Das, “Katherine Dunham: Dance and the African Diaspora” (Oxford UP, 2017)
By drawing on a vast, never-utilized trove of archival materials along with oral histories, choreographic analysis, and embodied research, Katherine Dunham: Dance and the African Diaspora (Oxford University Press, 2017) offers new insight about how this remarkable woman built political solidarity through the arts. One of the most important dance artists of the twentieth century, dancer and choreographer Katherine Dunham (1909-2006) created works that thrilled audiences the world over. As an African American woman, she broke barriers of race and gender, most notably as the founder of an important dance company that toured the United States, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Australia for several decades. The author makes the argument that Dunham was more than a dancer she was an intellectual and activist committed to using dance to fight for racial justice. Dunham saw dance as a tool of liberation, as a way for people of African descent to reclaim their history and forge a new future. She put her theories into motion not only through performance, but also through education, scholarship, travel, and choices about her own life.
The book examines how Dunham struggled to balance artistic dreams, personal desires, economic needs, and political commitments in the face of racism and sexism. Katherine Dunham: Dance and the African Diaspora analyzes Dunham’s multiple spheres of engagement, assessing her dance performances as a form of black feminist protest while also presenting new material about her schools in New York and East St. Louis, her work in Haiti, and also traces Dunham’s influence over the course of several decades from the New Negro Movement of the 1920s to the Black Power Movement of the late 1960s and beyond.
Dance historian Joanna Dee Das is a dancer, a scholar, and an Assistant Professor of Dance at Washington University in St. Louis. She is passionate about teaching dance history from a global perspective and linking theory and practice in the classroom. Her research interests include dance in the African Diaspora, musical theater dance, the politics of performance in the twentieth century, and urban cultural policy. She received her Ph.D. in History from Columbia University, her M.A. in American Studies, from New York University, and her undergraduate degree in Dance and History, also from Columbia University. Her writing has appeared in Dance Research Journal, Journal of American History, Journal of African American History, Journal of Urban History, and Studies in Musical Theatre. This is her first book.
James P. Stancil II is an educator, multimedia journalist, and writer. He is also the President and CEO of Intellect U Well, Inc. a Houston-area NGO dedicated to increasing the joy of reading and media literacy in young people. He can be reached most easily through his LinkedIn page or at [email protected].

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48 min
July 10, 2017 Dana Mills, “Dance and Politics: Moving Beyond Boundaries” (Manchester University Press, 2017)
Dance & Politics: Moving Beyond Boundaries (Manchester University Press, 2017) by Dana Mills, considers dance as a political expression from a number of perspectives, situating the analysis within a framework of contemporary political theory. Mills notes that dance has always been with us, as humans, but that we do not usually think about it as part of our political discourse in the same way that other performative or artistic expressions are integrated into political discussions and political life. Mills’ book argues that dance, as a language or means of communication, should be considered from the dancers’ perspective but also from the audience or the receivers’ experience and understanding, as well as the choreographers’ point of view, and the interactions of the other dancers involved. Mills digs into the overarching question of how can we expand our notion of what is political so that dance is included, trying to also understand why it has often been excluded from the notion of the political. The book elaborates on how and why dance is political, how dance can give voice to subversive discourse, how it can articulate feminist perspectives, and how it can provide opportunity and outlet for those marginalized within society and politics.
The scope of the book is global–integrating not only the groundbreaking work of Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham as the building blocks for thinking about dance and politics–but exploring the Gumboots dance and development in South Africa; the One Billion Rising concept and diffusion to western countries, and non-western appropriation of the movement; and the integration of dance into human rights advocacy in Israel and in Palestine. The book concludes with another example of the role of dance within yet another community, the Native American communities in North America. Throughout the book, Mills teases apart the issues of the body as a political entity, while also exploring the conceptual notion of political space where dance is performed, and how the body is part of an understanding of political space. These questions are vital to consider in context of contemporary political theory and what we understand to be political discourse.

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47 min
March 29, 2017 Carrie J. Preston, “Learning to Kneel: Noh, Modernism, and Journeys in Teaching” (Columbia UP, 2016)
Carrie J. Preston‘s new book tells the story of the global circulation of noh-inspired performances, paying careful attention to the ways these performances inspired twentieth-century drama, poetry, modern dance, film, and popular entertainment. Inspired by noh’s practice of retelling stories in different styles and tenses, Learning to Kneel: Noh, Modernism, and Journeys in Teaching (Columbia University Press, 2016) also weaves together a number of writing styles, and incorporates Preston’s own lessons in noh chant, dance, and drumming and experience writing plays based on noh models and choreographing dances with noh-related gestures throughout the book. The result is a fascinating exploration of the relationships between pedagogy and performance traced through the work of Ezra Pound, W. B. Yeats, Bertolt Brecht, Samuel Beckett, and others. Learning to Kneel pays special attention to the politics of performance and pedagogy and the themes of submission and subversion, and urges a rethinking of many assumptions that we bring to understanding noh and its translations.

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1 hr 12 min
October 03, 2016 Alisa Solomon, “Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof” (Metropolitan, 2013)
In Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof (Metropolitan, 2013), Alisa Solomon, Director of the Arts and Culture concentration in the MA program at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, traces how and why the story of Tevye the milkman, the creation of the great Yiddish writer Sholem-Aleichem, was reborn as blockbuster entertainment and a cultural touchstone. She examines the pre-history of the first adaptations, the core story of the development of the broadway musical, and the fascinating afterlife of the musical including adaptations in Israel and Poland. This book is a great read and the essential volume on Fiddler on the Roof.

Max Kaiser is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne. He can be reached at [email protected].
44 min
June 23, 2016 Anthea Kraut, “Choreographing Copyright: Race, Gender, and Intellectual Property Rights in American Dance” (Oxford UP, 2015)
Is it possible to lay claim to ownership of a dance? Is choreography intellectual property? How have shifting conceptions of race and gender shaped the way we think of dance, property and ownership? In Choreographing Copyright: Race, Gender and Intellectual Property Rights in American Dance, Anthea Kraut wrestles mightily with these questions as she presents the first book by a dance scholar to focus explicitly on matters of copyright and choreography. Combining archival research with critical race and gender theory, Kraut offers new perspectives in this cross-genre history of American Dance. Professor Kraut’s research addresses the interconnections between American performance and cultural history and the raced and gendered dancing body. Her first book, Choreographing the Folk: The Dance Stagings of Zora Neale Hurston, was published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2008, and received a Special Citation from the Society of Dance History Scholars de la Torre Bueno Prize for distinguished book of dance scholarship. Her teaching interests include American and African American dance history, critical race theory, and methods and theories of dance studies. Dr. Anthea Kraut is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Dance at the University of California, Riverside.

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38 min
March 02, 2016 James Nott, “Going to the Palais: A Social and Cultural History of Dancing and Dance Halls in Britain, 1918-1960” (Oxford UP, 2016)
In his new book Going to the Palais: A Social and Cultural History of Dancing and Dance Halls in Britain, 1918-1960 (Oxford University Press, 2016), cultural historian James Nott charts the untold history of dancing and dance halls in Britain in the first half of the twentieth century. This exploration reveals the transformations of working-class communities, and of the changing notions of femininity, masculinity and leisure that occur in this period. To do so, Nott navigates us skillfully between the perspectives of the dance hall owners, dance teachers and innovators. He them leads us to consider the point of view of enthusiastic jiving individuals. Finally, we take our place on the sidelines with the onlookers and killjoys alarmed by this ‘craze.’
This kaleidoscope of voices and images illuminates the role of the dance hall as a social space. It is argued that the dance hall brought together men and women in search of fun, but also provided them with a safe space to try out identities and behaviors. Nott claims that the spread and success of the dance hall reached the whole country. He situates it within the democratization process of British culture that was led by commercialism in the 1920s and 1930s, and even more so after the Second World war.
Nott points to the American origins of the music and dances that dominated the dance hall. But also suggest that a national style was forged on the dance-floor and via the business models and publicity methods of the institution. Consequently, he maintains, a uniquely British space was born.
The story of the rise and fall of the dance hall is constructed through its economic history. Its financial success and decline are analyzed with sources from the day’s trade press, the archives of individual companies and the regulation and licensing records of towns and cities. The cultural role of the dance hall is revealed through its representation in local and national press. Oral interviews, contemporaneous social surveys and Mass Observation reports are woven together to construct the experience of going to the palais. The result is a superb analysis of gender and race relations, as well as a fascinating look at an industry that had once rivaled cinema as an ultimate pastime.
Dr James Nott is a social and cultural historian at the University of St Andrews. He is the author of Music for the People: Popular Music and dance in Interwar Britain (OUP, 2002) and co-editor of Classes, Politics and Cultures: Essays in British History in Honour of Ross McKibbin (OUP, 2011).

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1 hr 2 min
October 27, 2015 Clare Croft, “Dancers as Diplomats: American Choreography in Cultural Exchange” (Oxford UP, 2015)
What’s missing from our understanding of the role of dancers in the context of American Cultural Diplomacy? Clare Croft‘s first book, Dancers as Diplomats: American Choreography in Cultural Exchange (Oxford University Press, 2015) provides a range of thoughtful, well-researched responses to this question. By exploring the ways in which dancer’s bodies were operationalized and “deployed” on behalf of the US State Department during the Cold War as well as at the dawn of the 21st century, Dancers as Diplomats centers the work of dancers and choreographers as ambassadors, provocateurs and global leaders. Including more than 70 interviews with dancers who traveled on these international tours, the book centers the voices of artists actively engaged in this very particular kind of cultural work.
Clare Croft is a historian, theorist, and dramaturg, working at the intersection of dance studies and performance studies. She specializes in 20th and 21st century American dance, cultural policy, feminist and queer theory, and critical race theory. Professor Croft holds a PhD in theatre history and criticism with an emphasis in Performance as Public Practice from the University of Texas-Austin and an MA in performance studies from New York University. Dr. Croft is Assistant Professor of Dance in the School of Music, Theatre and Dance at the University of Michigan.

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48 min

About New Books in Performing Arts

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This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.