Alien Bodies: Representations of Modernity, 'Race' and Nation in Early Modern Dance

by Burt; Ramsay

• ISBN13: 9780415145947
• ISBN10: 0415145945
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781134758340
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-03-26
• Publisher: Routledge
• More Book Details

Summary

Blurring the conventional distinction between modern dance and ballet, African American dance, gymnastics and dancing as popular entertainment,Alien Bodieslooks at the way the dance of the 1920s and 1930s mediated the experience of modernity. Through an examination of work by key dancers and choreographers including Josephine Baker, Jean Borlin, George Balanchine, Katherine Dunham, Martha Graham, and Doris Humphrey,Alien Bodiesshows that during the jazz age dance became a privileged site for defining the lived experiences of modernity and contributed to the creation of new desires and identities.

Table of Contents

List of figures	vii	(1)
Acknowledgements	viii
1 Introduction	1	(19)
2 Choreographing the disturbing new spaces of modernity	20	(37)
The social experience of metropolitan modernity	25	(10)
Three ballets of modern life: Parade, Skating Rink and The Big City	35	(12)
The big city at night	47	(7)
Conclusion	54	(3)
3 `Savage' dancer: Tout Paris goes to see Josephine Baker	57	(27)
Baker's Africa	64	(7)
Baker and Parisian negrophilia	71	(6)
Baker and the slender modern body	77	(3)
Dislocation, disruption and frenzy	80	(4)
4 The chorus line and the efficiency engineers	84	(17)
Kracauer and the mass ornament	86	(13)
Conclusion	99	(2)
5 Totalitarianism and the mass ornament	101	(20)
The politics and modernity of mass gymnastics	106	(6)
The mass ornament, National Socialism, and docile bodies	112	(6)
The embodiment of modernity	118	(3)
6 Dancing across the Atlantic	121	(11)
7 American moderns	132	(28)
Choreography and modern American life	136	(4)
Choreographing the new communities of consumption	140	(2)
Serenade	142	(3)
New dance	145	(9)
Stormy weather	154	(4)
Conclusion	158	(2)
8 Primitivism, modernism and ritual in the work of Mary Wigman, Katherine Dunham and Martha Graham	160	(30)
Modernism, psychoanalysis and anthropology	166	(7)
Shango	173	(6)
Monotony: Whirl Dance	179	(2)
Primitive Mysteries	181	(6)
Conclusion	187	(3)
9 Conclusion	190	(6)
Notes	196	(11)
Bibliography	207	(11)
Index	218