scholarly journals The Dancing Body: Hopping Anyone?'

Author(s):  
Evadne Kelly

How can the body which is constantly changing inspire understanding about life and about knowledge? I am inspired by memories of seeing and participating in dance that felt inclusive. These memories remind me that dance can be a gift, to both the participant and the observer, of a sense of freedom, agency and collective. The left wing modern dance movement in New York, toyi-toyi from the South African anti-apartheid movement, and radical cheerleading at a protest of the Free Trade Area of the Americas are all examples of this. I want to draw from this understanding of dance in order to allow for feelings of abundance, empowerment and agency in my writing about the dancing body and hope. I am filled with a sense of the possibilities for history and memory in subverting hegemony through the dancing body. I can see how history or memory also embodies the on-going creation of the landscapes of the present. It is not just the constructed narratives that those with the power to do so produce about themselves and others' pasts. I want to bring some of life's patchiness into my own attempt to tell a story based on a different writing structure so that I might play with structure in a way that breaks with modern ideas of progress and knowledge production. The story itself has something to do with the body, memory and dance. Part of my goal is to adopt a writing style that mimics this story.

Author(s):  
Victoria Phillips Geduld

Jane Dudley, a key figure in the radical dance movement of the 1930s, was a choreographer who developed her own distinctive voice within the modern dance idiom and an educator who trained numerous dancers both in the United States and in England. An early member of the New Dance Group (NDG), she oversaw the creation of group works such as Strike (1934), while choreographing solos such as Time is Money (1934), in which she used the modern dance idiom to embody a worker’s oppression on the assembly line. A striking performer, Dudley joined the Martha Graham Company in the mid-1930s. At the same time, she continued to develop her own repertoire, in part through the Dudley–Maslow–Bales Trio, whose founders—Sophie Maslow, William Bales, and herself—remained committed to the social ideals of the 1930s long after they had abandoned the making of overtly political works. Dudley’s loyalty to NDG extended over several decades during which it became a major New York training venue, offering inexpensive classes and professional training to promising students, including many African Americans. From 1970 to 2000, Dudley directed the London School of Contemporary Dance, transforming it into one of Europe’s leading modern dance institutions.


2013 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Kosstrin

Anna Sokolow (1910–2000), an American Jewish choreographer known for her social statements, led the workers dance movement and performed as a soloist with Martha Graham. She imbued her dancesStrange American Funeral(1935) andCase History No.—(1937) with proletarian ideology that spoke to 1930s working- and middle-class audiences aligned with values of revolutionary and modern dance. These choreographies spoke to a political atmosphere focused on social justice while they appealed to a broad dance-going public. Sokolow's Graham training engendered a modernist aesthetic in her choreography that led critics to consider her work universal instead of marked as coming from a working-class left-wing Jewish dancer. This article argues that while narratives about Sokolow's work downplay her Communist affiliations, these ideals played a critical role in her choreography and in her navigation of international Communist circles. As Sokolow's choreography reinforced her politics, so too did her affiliations support her dance work.


2010 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henrietta Bannerman

Martha Graham writes in her autobiography Blood Memory that she was bewildered, or, as she puts it “bemused,” when she heard how dancers referred to her school as “the house of the pelvic truth” (Graham 1991, 211). We might perhaps agree with Graham that this is not the best description for a highly respected center of modern dance training; neither does it match Graham's image as an awe-inspiring and exacting teacher, nor does it suit the seriousness with which her tough technique is regarded. But the house of the pelvic truth does chime with stories about Graham's often frank method of addressing her students. She is reputed to have told one young woman not to come back to the studio until she had found herself a man. At other times she would tell her female students, “you are simply not moving your vagina” (211). Add to this other stories about the men in the company suffering from “vagina envy” (211), and it can be readily understood that the goings-on in the Graham studio gave rise to its nickname, “house of the pelvic truth.”In British dance circles of the 1960s, it was not rumors of the erotic that attracted most of us to Graham's work or persuaded us to travel to New York in search of the Graham technique. There was little in the way of contemporary dance training in Britain at this time, and we had been mesmerized by the beautiful and rather chaste film A Dancer's World (1957), in which Graham pronounces: a dancer is not a phenomenon … not a phenomenal creature.… I think he is a divine normal. He does what the human body is capable of doing. Now this takes time…it takes about ten years of study. This does not mean he won't be dancing before that time, but it does take the pressure of time, so that the house of the body can hold its divine tenant, the spirit. (1962, 24)


Author(s):  
Victoria Phillips Geduld

Established in 1932 by six young Jewish women in New York City, New Dance Group (NDG) trained leaders of the American modern dance. Founded with the desire to combine radical left-wing politics with dance, NDG proclaimed in its first anniversary bulletin in March 1933: "Dance is a Weapon of the Class Struggle." The early NDG included concert dance soloists, a men’s group, ensembles that performed in union halls, and a folk dance unit.


2008 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Helle Winther

Artiklen tager afsæt i om der eksisterer et uudnyttet potentiale i at inddrage krop og bevægelse i terapeutiske sammenhæng i forhold til både almen og personlig udvikling og psykiatriske behandlinger. Artiklen afdækker også hvordan danse- og bevægelsesterapier begyndte at arbejde med sammenhæng mellem krop psyke og samfund, samt de hastigt udviklende europæiske tiltag og postmoderne forskningsmæssige tendenser indenfor det danse- og bevægelsesterapeutiske fælt. Helle Winther: Dance Therapeutic Traces – from Ritual Dance to Global Networks and Postmodern Challenges While dance movement therapy (DMT) is a relatively new and unknown field in Denmark, it is a well-known profession used in both psychiatry and private practices in many other countries. In spite of many different theoretical views, today there is a large degree of agreement that the body and psyche, as well as one’s relationship to the surrounding world must be regarded as a cohesive dynamic and organic unit. The fundamental question of the article is, whether there is an unused potential in using body and movement in therapeutic settings and whether body, movement and dance can touch people when words are not enough. The text enlightens the historical roots and traces of DMT through a long time pe185 riod stretching from original ritual dances to the early modern dance personified in Mary Wigman, Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham. These three dancers inspired the next generation and the six pioneers of dance therapy – in the text portrayed through Marian Chace and Mary Whitehouse. The works of these pioneers have worldwide traces today, and these traces are shortly described. After that an actual dance therapy form Dansergia is introduced and finally the postmodern tendencies within the current international research field of DMT are mirrored in the past, the present and the possibilities for steps in the future.


Author(s):  
Stacey Prickett

In the midst of the economic and social upheaval of America’s Great Depression, a group of young modern dancers came together in 1932 to form the Workers Dance League (WDL) in New York City. Advocating for the power of dance to change society, the WDL reached out to workers to recruit both audience members and participants. The WDL functioned as an umbrella organization, sponsoring concerts and lecture-demonstrations, as well as leading debates about the artist’s responsibility to society. Two strands of dance practice developed under the label of revolutionary dance: emerging modern dancer-choreographers (including Anna Sokolow, Jane Dudley, Sophie Maslow, and José Limón), and a more agit-prop style performed by recreational groups attached to the city’s unions and cultural groups, some directed by Edith Segal. Inspired by Marxist ideals, the participants’ focus on raising consciousness of working-class identity shaped the WDL’s mission until its name change to the New Dance League in 1935. A shift occurred with the instigation of Popular Front policies by the Comintern (the Communist International), although the WDL was not officially a Communist Party organization. During its three years of existence, the WDL helped a vibrant left-wing dance movement flourish in the United States by taking dance to workers, bringing workers into the dance world, and reinforcing a proletarian identity.


2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 115-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sören Scholvin

Regional integration via the Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA) received a significant boost when the South African parliament signed the corresponding agreement in October 2018. This article uncovers the convictions and objectives that drive South Africa's commitment to the TFTA. It reveals that South Africa sees the TFTA as a means of “developmental regionalism,” which is expected to facilitate region-wide industrialisation based on value addition in regional value chains (RVCs). For this purpose, South Africa seeks to coordinate industrial policies within the TFTA and rehabilitate infrastructure jointly with the regional states. In addition to explaining the logic behind these goals, and analysing how far they have already been achieved, the article also highlights important challenges to South Africa's vision for the TFTA. It calls the prospects of developmental regionalism into question, being particularly sceptical about the way in which RVCs are conceived.


Author(s):  
Heidrun Panhofer

Departing from the Cartesian theory of body–mind duality, this chapter concerns the concept of body memory as it emerges from embodiment approaches. Building on concepts such as ‘kinetic melodies’ and the embodied mind, it advocates ‘thinking in movement’. Uniting minds and bodies has far-reaching implications for research and practice in dance and dance movement psychotherapy, hence a simple methodology of how to access the knowledge of the body is described. A process of writing–moving–writing invites the mover to focus on a significant moment to explore, and then bring it to movement. The mover is invited to work with ‘somatic modes of attention’, focusing on any extero- and interoceptive sensations. Clinical applications of the technique are discussed. The chapter aims to encourage educators, therapists, and researchers in dance and movement to make use of their knowing and remembering bodies, thus contributing to a global kind of knowledge in their field.


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