Moving words: re-writing dance

Abstract

This volume joins Corporealities: Dancing, Knowledge, Culture and Power, ed. by Susan Foster (CH, Jun'96), Dance, Gender, and Culture, ed. by Helen Thomas (CH, Nov'93), and several other recent collections in focusing on ways dance may best be defined, analyzed, and interpreted in relation to postmodernist methods and concepts. Morris (Sonoma State Univ.) uses her introduction to contextualize the 17 essays. Written by academics and critics working in the US and the UK and approaching the subject from a wide variety of perspectives, these pieces are a welcome contribution to dance studies literature. The writers address numerous concerns: some focus on a single dance by a particular choreographer (e.g., as in Leslie Satin's elegant and complex "Being Danced Again: Meredith Monk, Reclaiming the Girlchild"); others consider a larger frame and discuss dance history/dance styles in relation to interdisciplinary and intertextual discourse (Amy Koritz's "Re/Moving Boundaries: From Dance History to Cultural Studies"). Taken together these essays provide fertile reading for courses in sociology/anthropology, dance, and gender studies. Each essay is followed by notes and a bibliography. Twenty-two black-and-white photos and illustrations are also included. Upper-division undergraduates and up.