Engaging Bodies : The Politics and Poetics of Corporeality

Winner of the Selma Jeanne Cohen Prize in Dance Aesthetics (2014)For twenty-five years, Ann Cooper Albright has been exploring the intersection of cultural representation and somatic identity in dance. For Albright, dancing is a physical inquiry, a way of experiencing and participating in the world, and her writing reflects an interdisciplinary approach to seeing and thinking about dance. In her engagement as both a dancer and a scholar, Albright draws on her kinesthetic sensibilities as well as her intellectual knowledge to articulate how movement creates meaning. Throughout Engaging Bodies movement and ideas lean on one another to produce a critical theory anchored in the material reality of dancing bodies. This blend of cultural theory and personal circumstance will be useful and inspiring for emerging scholars and dancers looking for a model of writing about dance that thrives on the interconnectedness of watching and doing, gesture and thought.Hardcover is un-jacketed. Cover 1 Engaging Bodies 2 Title 4 Copyright 5 Dedication 6 Contents 8 Preface 10 Introduction: Situated Dancing 18 I PERFORMANCE WRITINGS 36 1 Pooh Kaye and Eccentric Motions 39 2 Johanna Boyce 42 3 Improvisations by Simone Forti and Pooh Kaye 44 4 Song of Lawino 48 5 Joseph Holmes, Sizzle and Heat 50 6 Performing across Identity 53 7 In Dialogue with Firebird 57 8 Dancing Bodies and the Stories They Tell 61 9 Embodying History: The New Epic Dance 67 10 Desire and Control: Performing Bodies in the Age of AIDS 72 II FEMINIST THEORIES 78 11 Mining the Dancefield: Spectacle, Moving Subjects, and Feminist Theory 81 12 Writing the Moving Body: Nancy Stark Smith and the Hieroglyphs 93 13 Auto-Body Stories: Blondell Cummings and Autobiography in Dance 109 14 Femininity with a Vengeance: Strategies of Veiling and Unveiling in Loïe Fuller’s Performances of Salomé 132 III DANCING HISTORIES 156 15 The Long Afternoon of a Faun: Reconstructions and Discourses of Desire 159 16 Embodying History: Epic Narrative and Cultural Identity in African-American Dance 165 17 Matters of Tact: Writing History from the Inside Out 192 18 The Tanagra Effect: Wrapping the Modern Body in the Folds of Ancient Greece 205 IV CONTACT IMPROVISATION 226 19 A Particular History: Contact Improvisation at Oberlin College 229 20 Open Bodies: (X)changes of Identity in Capoeira and Contact Improvisation 235 21 Present Tense: Contact Improvisation at Twenty-five 247 22 Feeling In and Out: Contact Improvisation and the Politics of Empathy 254 V PEDAGOGY 264 23 Dancing across Difference: Experience and Identity in the Classroom 267 24 Channeling the Other: An Embodied Approach to Teaching across Cultures 280 25 Training Bodies to Matter 287 VI OCCASIONAL PIECES 296 26 The Mesh in the Mess 298 27 Through Yours to Mine and Back Again: Reflections on Bodies in Motion 305 28 Physical Mindfulness 309 29 Researching Bodies: The Politics and Poetics of Corporeality 311 30 Strategic Abilities: Negotiating the Disabled Body in Dance 314 31 Dancing in and out of Africa 335 32 Rates of Exchange 338 33 Moving Contexts: Dance and Difference in the Twenty-first Century 342 34 Three Beginnings and a Manifesto 352 35 Improvisation as Radical Politics 355 36 Space and Subjectivity 360 37 Strategic Practices 365 38 Resurrecting the Future: Body/Image/Technology 371 39 Falling 377 40 The Tensions of Technē: On Heidegger and Screendance 384 41 Falling 387 Afterword 396 Acknowledgments 398 Index 400 ABOUT THE AUTHOR 409 For Albright, Dancing Is A Physical Inquiry, A Way Of Experiencing And Participating In The World, And Her Writing Reflects An Interdisciplinary Approach To Seeing And Thinking About Dance. In Her Angagement Both As A Dancer And A Scholar, Albright Draws On Her Kinesthetic Sensibilities As Well As Her Intellectual Knowledge To Articulate How Movement Creates Meaning--publisher's Description. Introduction: Situated Dance -- Performance Writings -- Feminist Theories -- Dancing The Histories -- Contact Improvisation -- Pedagogy -- Occasional Pieces. Ann Cooper Albright. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.