The Oxford Handbook of Dance and the Popular Screen (Oxford Handbooks)

This text offers new ways of understanding dance on the popular screen in new scholarly arguments drawn from dance studies, performance studies, and film and media studies. Through these arguments, it demonstrates how this dance in popular film, television, and online videos can be read and considered through the different bodies and choreographies being shown. Cover The Oxford Handbook of Dance and the Popular Screen Copyright Contents List of Contributors About the Companion Website Introduction: Dance on Screen PART I SCREENED HISTORIES 1 An Australian in Paris: Techno-Choreographic Bohemianism in Moulin Rouge! 2 A Different Kind of Ballet: Rereading Dorothy Arzner’s Dance, Girl, Dance 3 Communities of Practice: Active and Affective Viewing of Early Social Dance on the Popular Screen 4 Disciplining Black Swan, Animalizing Ambition 5 Gene Kelly: The Original, Updated 6 Appreciation, Appropriation, Assimilation: Stormy Weather and the Hollywood History of Black Dance 7 Hip-Hop in Hollywood: Encounter, Community, Resistance PART II THE COMMERCIAL BIG SCREEN 8 Dirty Dancing: Dance, Class, and Race in the Pursuit of Womanhood 9 Displace and Be Queen: Gender and Interculturalism in Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights (2004) 10 “It’s Sort of ‘Members Only’.”: Transgression and Body Politics in Save the Last Dance 11 “The White Girl in the Middle”: The Performativity of Race, Class, and Gender in Step Up 2: The Streets 12 Affect-ive Moves: Space, Violence, and the Body in RIZE’s Krump Dancing 13 A Taste of Honey: Choreographing Mulatta in the Hollywood Dance Film 14 “He’s Doing His Superman Thing Again”: Moving Bodies in The Matrix PART III MUSIC VIDEO AND TELEVISUAL BODIES 15 Girl Power, Real Politics: Dis/Respectability, Post-Raciality, and the Politics of Inclusion 16 Denaturalizing Coco’s “Sexy” Hips: Contradictions and Reversals of the Dancing Body of a Chinese American Superstar in Mand 17 Single Ladies, Plural: Racism, Scandal, and “Authenticity” within the Multiplication and Circulation of Online Dance Disco 18 The Dance Factor: Hip-Hop, Spectacle, and Reality Television 19 Defining Dance, Creating Commodity: The Rhetoric of So You Think You Can Dance PART IV SCREENING NATIONHOOD 20 Hatchets and Hairbrushes: Dance, Gender, and Improvisational Ingenuity in Cold War Western Musicals 21 Some Dance Scenes from Cuban Cinema, 1959–2012 22 “Shine Your Light on the World”: The Utopian Bodies of Dave Chappelle’s Block Party 23 Of Snake Dances, Overseas Brides, and Miss World Pageants: Frolicking through Gurinder Chadha’s Bride and Prejudice PART V CYBER SCREENS 24 Monstrous Belonging: Performing “Thriller” after 9/11 25 Dancing “between the Break Beats”: Contemporary Indigenous Thought and Cultural Expression through Hip-Hop 26 Dancing with Myself: Dance Central, Choreography, and Embodiment PART VI CONCLUSION 27 Values in Motion: Reflections on Popular Screen Dance Index The Oxford handbook of dance and the popular screen' sets the agenda for the study of dance in popular moving images - films, television shows, commercials, music videos, and YouTube - and offers new ways to understand the multi-layered meanings of the dancing body by engaging with methodologies from critical dance studies, performance studies, and film/media analysis. Through these arguments, the chapters demonstrate how dance on the popular screen might be read and considered through the different bodies and choreographies being shown. Questions the contributors consider include: How do dance and choreography function within the filmic apparatus? What types of bodies are associated with specific dances and how does this affect how dance(s) is/are perceived in the everyday? How do the dancing bodies on screen negotiate power, access, and agency? How are multiple choreographies of identity (e.g., race, class, gender, sexuality, and nation) set in motion through the narrative, dancing bodies, and/or dance style? What types of corporeal labors (dance training, choreographic skill, rehearsal, the constructed notion of "natural talent") are represented or ignored? What role does a specific film have in the genealogy of Hollywood dance film? How does the Hollywood dance film inform how dance operates in cultural meaning making? Whether looking at Bill "Bojangles" Robinson's tap steps in Stormy Weather, or Baby's leap into Johnny Castle's arms in Dirty Dancing, or even Neo's backwards bend in The Matrix, the book's arguments offer a powerful corrective to the lack of accessible scholarship on dance in the popular screen The Oxford Handbook of Dance and the Popular Screen sets the agenda for the study of dance in popular moving images - films, television shows, commercials, music videos, and YouTube - and offers new ways to understand the multi-layered meanings of the dancing body by engaging with methodologies from critical dance studies, performance studies, and film/media analysis. Through thorough engagement with these approaches, the chapters demonstrate how dance on the popular screen might be read and considered through bodies and choreographies in moving media. Questions the contributors consider include: How do dance and choreography function within the filmic apparatus? What types of bodies are associated with specific dances and how does this affect how dance(s) is/are perceived in the everyday? How do the dancing bodies on screen negotiate power, access, and agency? How are multiple choreographies of identity (e.g., race, class, gender, sexuality, and nation) set in motion through the narrative, dancing bodies, and/or dance style? What types of corporeal labors (dance training, choreographic skill, rehearsal, the constructed notion of'natural talent') are represented or ignored? What role does a specific film have in the genealogy of Hollywood dance film? How does the Hollywood dance film inform how dance operates in making cultural meanings? Whether looking at Bill'Bojangles'Robinson's tap steps in Stormy Weather, or Baby's leap into Johnny Castle's arms in Dirty Dancing, or even Neo's backwards bend in The Matrix, the book's arguments offer powerful new scholarship on dance in the popular screen. The Oxford Handbook of Dance and the Popular Screen sets the agenda for the study of dance in popular moving images - films, television shows, commercials, music videos, and YouTube - and offers new ways to understand the multi-layered meanings of the dancing body by engaging with methodologies from critical dance studies, performance studies, and film/media analysis. Through thorough engagement with these approaches, the chapters demonstrate how dance on the popular screen might be read and considered through bodies and choreographies in moving media. Questions the contributors consider How do dance and choreography function within the filmic apparatus? What types of bodies are associated with specific dances and how does this affect how dance(s) is/are perceived in the everyday? How do the dancing bodies on screen negotiate power, access, and agency? How are multiple choreographies of identity (e.g., race, class, gender, sexuality, and nation) set in motion through the narrative, dancing bodies, and/or dance style? What types of corporeal labors (dance training, choreographic skill, rehearsal, the constructed notion of "natural talent") are represented or ignored? What role does a specific film have in the genealogy of Hollywood dance film? How does the Hollywood dance film inform how dance operates in making cultural meanings? Whether looking at Bill "Bojangles" Robinson's tap steps in Stormy Weather , or Baby's leap into Johnny Castle's arms in Dirty Dancing , or even Neo's backwards bend in The Matrix , the book's arguments offer powerful new scholarship on dance in the popular screen.