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- Writing Dancing in the Age of Postmodernism
A leading critic traces three decades of contemporary dance from Balanchine to breakdancing
Drawing of the postmodern perspective and concerns that informed her groundbreaking Terpsichore in Sneakers, Sally Banes's Writing Dancing documents the background and developments of avant-garde and popular dance, analyzing individual artists, performances, and entire dance movements. With a sure grasp of shifting cultural dynamics, Banes shows how postmodern dance is integrally connected to other oppositional, often marginalized strands of dance culture, and considers how certain kinds of dance move from the margins to the mainstream.
Banes begins by considering the act of dance criticism itself, exploring its modes, methods, and underlying assumptions, and examining the work of other critics. She traces the development of contemporary dance from the early work of such influential figures as Merce Cunningham and George Balanchine to such contemporary choreographers as Molissa Fenley, Karole Armitage, and Michael Clark. She analyzes the contributions of the Judson Dance Theatre and the Workers' Dance League, the emergence of Latin postmodern dance in New York, and the impact of black jazz in Russia. In addition, Banes explores such untraditional performance modes as breakdancing and the "drunk dancing" of Fred Astaire.
WRITING CRITICISM/ HISTORY
Jill Johnston: Signaling Through the Flames
Working and Dancing: A Response to Monroe Beardsley's "What is Going on in a Dance?" with Noël Carroll
Criticism as Ethnography
On Your Fingertips: Writing Dance Criticism
Power and the Dancing Body
THE EURO-AMERICAN AVANT-GARDE
Balanchine and Black Dance
An Introduction to the Ballet Suedois
Soiree de Paris
Kasyan Goleizovsky's Ballet Manifests
Merce Cunnighams Story
Cunnigham and Duchamp with Noël Carroll
THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN CONNECTION
To the Beat, Y'all: Breaking is Hard to do
Breakdancing: A Reporter's Story
Lock Steady
Critic's Choice: Breakdancing
Breaking
A House is Not a Home
Breaking Changing
The Pleasin' in Teasin'
The Moscow Charleston: Black Jazz Dancers in the Soviet Union
OTHER SUBCERSIONS: POLITICS AND POPULAR DANCE
Stepping High: Fred Astaire's Drunk Dances
The Men at John Allen's Dance House
Red Shoes: The Workers' Dance League of the 1930's
POSTMODERN DANCE: FROM THE SIXTIES TO THE NINETIES
Judson Rides Again!
Choreographic Methods of the Judson Dance Theater
Vital Signs: Steve Paxton's Flat in Perspective
Meredith Monk and the Making of Chacon: Notes from a Journal
Dancing from a Journal
Dancing on the Edge
"Drive," She Said: The dance of Molissa Fenely
Self-Rising Choreography
Transparent Living
No More Ordinary Bodies
Happily Ever After? The Postmodern Fairytale and the New Dance
Pointe of Departure
Classical Brinksmanship: Karole Armitage and Michael Clark
Terpsichore in Sneakers, High heels, Jazz Shoes, and On Pointe: Postmodern Dance Revisited
Dancing {with/to/before/on/in/over/after/against/away from/without} the Music: Vicissitudes of Collaboration in American Postmodern Choreography
La Onda Próxima: Nueva Latina Dance
Dance and Spectacle in the United States in the Eighties and Nineties
Dancing in Leaner Times
Going Solo
Notes
Index
SALLY BANES is Professor of Theatre and Drama and Chair of the Dance Program at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She has served as editor of Dance Research Journal and as a senior critic at Dance Magazine, and has published essays in numerous periodicals, including the Village Voice. Terpsichore in Sneakers: Post-Modern Dance (Wesleyan paperback, 1987) was the first exploration of postmodern dance.
"Impressively rich and varied . . . A very important addition to the literature of the field for graduate students in dance history, performance art history, post-modern culture and for interested undergraduates doing research in these areas."
~Janice Ross, Stanford University
"Sally Banes has followed the development of postmodern dance more thoroughly than anyone. She is the person to analyze the nature and significance of this important movement"
~Selma Jeanne Cohen
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