Ballet Bodies

Ballet Class ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 223-246
Author(s):  
Melissa R. Klapper
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
Artistic Integrity ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Popular Representations

Dance is a fundamentally embodied art, and the ballet body has always been a contested site. Modern dance pioneers distinguished their fledgling art form by denouncing ballet as unnatural and particularly unsuited for the modern American dancer. Concerns about the pernicious effects of the idealized ballet body, especially on girls and young women, led to sharp medical and psychological concerns that seeped into popular representations of ballet class. Feminist critiques of ballet for supposedly oppressing women gained currency at the end of the twentieth century. Whatever the merits of such critiques, ballet can also be empowering for women in terms of bodily strength and artistic integrity, as seen in the controversial figure of the ballerina.

Shaping Jazz

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Damon J. Phillips
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Recording Industry ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Long Run

There are over a million jazz recordings, but only a few hundred tunes have been recorded repeatedly. Why did a minority of songs become jazz standards? Why do some songs—and not others—get re-recorded by many musicians? This book answers this question and more, exploring the underappreciated yet crucial roles played by initial production and markets—in particular, organizations and geography—in the development of early twentieth-century jazz. The book considers why places like New York played more important roles as engines of diffusion than as the sources of standards. It demonstrates why and when certain geographical references in tune and group titles were considered more desirable. It also explains why a place like Berlin, which produced jazz abundantly from the 1920s to early 1930s, is now on jazz's historical sidelines. The book shows the key influences of firms in the recording industry, including how record labels and their executives affected what music was recorded, and why major companies would re-release recordings under artistic pseudonyms. It indicates how a recording's appeal was related to the narrative around its creation, and how the identities of its firm and musicians influenced the tune's long-run popularity. Applying fascinating ideas about market emergence to a music's commercialization, the book offers a unique look at the origins of a groundbreaking art form.

Italian Minor Theatre, 2000–14: the Development of ‘Short Forms’ and the Politics of the Stage

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (03) ◽  
pp. 195-208
Author(s):  
Silvia Mei
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
Minor Literature ◽  
Philosophical Concept ◽  
Short Forms ◽  
Research Fellow ◽  
History Of ◽  
Expressive Dimension ◽  
The University

Brevity in experimental Italian theatre is not merely an expressive dimension of scenic creation, but a forma mentis, a conceptual vocation of young companies. The 2000s produced a minor theatre in Italy – first because of the reduced stage size, and second because of the brevity of works such as installation pieces. Moving from the linguistic disintegration of the historical avant-gardes of the twentieth century, this theatre is especially inspired by the visual arts, even though its historical roots remain fragmented and art is still seen in the synthetic language of modern dance and Futurist variety. Short forms actually become a tool for crossing artistic genres and languages. Starting from Deleuze’s and Guattari’s philosophical concept of minor literature, in this article Silvia Mei explores and analyzes work by such Italian contemporary companies as gruppo nanou, Città di Ebla, Anagoor, Opera, ErosAntEros, and Teatro Sotterraneo – all representative of what can be called installation theatre, a new theatrical wave that crosses the boundaries and specificities of artistic language, leading to the deterritorialization of theatre itself, a rethinking of the artistic work as well as its relationship with the audience. Silvia Mei is Adjunct Professor of the History of Theatre Directing and Theatre Iconography at the University of Bologna, having been a Research Fellow at the University of Turin. Her recent publications include ‘La terza avanguardia: ortografie dell’ultima scena italiana’, in Culture Teatrali, No. 14 (2015), and Displace Altofest (Valletta: Malta 2018 Foundation).

Kazuo Ohno's World from Without and Within. By Kazuo Ohno and Yoshito Ohno. Translated by John Barrett. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2004; pp. 344. $34.95 paper.

2005 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 315-317
Author(s):  
Kurt Wurmli
Keyword(s):  
Academic Research ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
Deep Understanding ◽  
Research Centers ◽  
The West ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Art Form ◽  
The World ◽  
Inside View ◽  
Scholarly Attention

Kazuo Ohno and Tatsumi Hijikata are recognized as the most influential creators of the contemporary Japanese dance form known today as butoh. Since its wild and avant-garde beginnings in the late 1950s, butoh has evolved into an established and appreciated art form throughout the world. Despite its popularity and strong influences on the international modern dance world, butoh only recently became an accepted subject for academic research in Japan as well as in the West. With the new opening of butoh research centers and archives—such as the Ohno Dance Studio Archives at BANK ART 1929 in Yokohama, the Kazuo Ohno Archives at Bologna University in Italy, and the Hijikata Tatsumi Archives at Keio University in Tokyo—serious scholarly attention has been given to the art of butoh's founders. However, the lack of firsthand sources by butoh artists reflecting their own work still poses great limitations for a deep understanding of the art form. Kazuo Ohno's World from Without and Within is not only the first full-length book in English about the master's life and work, but also offers a rare inside view of butoh.

We Worked and Made Beautiful Things

2019 ◽  
pp. 80-97
Author(s):  
Jenny Tone-Pah-Hote
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
American Indian ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Family Relationships ◽  
Public Display ◽  
Early Twentieth Century

During the early twentieth century, Kiowa people expertly deployed material culture as symbols of themselves as a people. Beadwork specifically illustrated the significance of kinship and is use and exchange among people, which constructed family relationships and a sense of belongingness. Beadwork and other expressive forms were highlighted in the American Indian Exposition, a fair, and an event, which provided a venue of public display that encouraged intertribal competition. The chapter also examines the representation of young women as American Indian Exposition princesses.

Cut and paste

2018 ◽  
pp. 25-65
Author(s):  
Anna Dahlgren
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Victorian Britain ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Close Study ◽  
History Of ◽  
Illustrated Press

Chapter 1 considers the mechanisms of breaks and continuities in the history of photocollage with regard to gender, genre and locations of display. Collage is commonly celebrated as a twentieth-century art form invented by Dada artists in the 1910s. Yet there was already a vibrant culture of making photocollages in Victorian Britain. From an art historical perspective this can be interpreted as an expression of typical modernist amnesia. The default stance of the early twentieth century’s avant-garde was to be radically, ground-breakingly new and different from any historical precursors. However, there is, when turning to the illustrated press, also a trajectory of continuity and withholding of traditions in the history of photocollage. This chapter has two parts. The first includes a critical investigation of the writings on the history of photocollage between the 1970s and 2010s, focusing on the arguments and rationales of forgetting and retrieving those nineteenth-century forerunners. It includes examples of amnesia and recognition and revaluation. The second is a close study of a number of images that appear in Victorian albums produced between 1870 and 1900 and their contemporary counterparts in the visual culture of illustrated journals and books.

Burrowes, Leslie (1908–1985)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larraine Nicholas
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Teacher Training ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
Aesthetic Education ◽  
Original Dance ◽  
Dance Training ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Teacher Training Colleges ◽  
British Teacher

Dancer, choreographer, and teacher Leslie Burrowes was the first British recipient of the full certification of Mary Wigman’s Dresden School, which licenced her to teach Wigman’s modern dance technique to amateurs and professionals. Before beginning her training with Wigman in 1930, Burrowes had studied and performed with Margaret Morris, whose "free dance" method belonged to the Hellenic and Duncanesque nonballetic dance techniques of early twentieth-century Britain. Burrowes rejected her original dance training in favor of Wigman’s expressionism, returning to London in 1931 to proselytize on its behalf and to serve as Wigman’s official British representative. Burrowes’ attempts to establish Wigman’s dance in Britain were largely unsuccessful, caught in the squeeze between the better-established ballet and Hellenic dance. However, she is an important figure in the development of modern dance in Britain, providing a thorough aesthetic education to some of the teachers and lecturers who, from the 1940s, were instrumental in establishing Laban-based modern dance in British teacher training colleges and schools.

Delsarte, François (1811–1871)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carrie J. Preston
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Personal Development ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
The United States ◽  
Silent Film ◽  
Actor Training ◽  
Physical Culture ◽  
Professional Performance ◽  
Bodily Expression

A performer and teacher of voice and movement, François Delsarte developed a theory of expression that influenced modern dance, actor training, poetic recitation, silent film, and physical culture in the early twentieth century. His ideas and methods were brought to the United States in 1871 by his student, Steele Mackaye (1842–1894), and then adapted by performers, physical culturists, and reformers into a diverse set of movements known as Delsartism. Extremely popular from the 1880s through the 1920s, Delsartism promoted physical exercises and poetic recitation for health and personal development as well as for professional performance. The movement traveled back to Europe to establish trajectories in many fields of modernist aesthetics and education, all emphasizing bodily expression, classical ideas of beauty, and a unique, improvable selfhood.

Chinese Revolutionary Ballet

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaomei Chen
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Future Development ◽  
Political History ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Folk Dance ◽  
Chinese Tradition ◽  
Socialist Realist ◽  
Significant Performance ◽  
The Impact

Introduced to China in the 1920s, Western ballet evolved into a significant performance genre in modern and contemporary China. Its popularity grew in the twentieth century when political history, revolutionary wars, the impact of Western cultures, and the artistic visions of a new and modern state all played a significant role in the formation of Chinese revolutionary ballet. The revolutionary ballets took over this Western classical form and transformed its aesthetics, turning an elite spectacle into a socialist realist portrayal of everyday life and its challenges. The introduction of Western ballet into China can be traced to 1894, when the first Sino-Japanese War broke out. At that time, Yu Rongling (裕容龄) traveled to Japan with her father, a Manchu aristocratic diplomat of the Qing Court. She learned modern Japanese dance before pursuing a formal training in Western ballet in Paris, and her teachers included Isadora Duncan. Yu’s quick rise to stardom on the Western stage brought her into the Qing Court, from 1904 to 1907, as a lady-in-waiting to entertain Empress Dowager Cixi (慈禧太后), who developed an interest in Western modern dance. Yu also initiated a combination of Western modern dance with traditional Chinese folk dance, therefore paving the way for the future development of a unique choreography which blended Western and Chinese tradition.

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