An Introduction to Dance and Gender

Chapter 1 introduces the relationship between dance and gender, inquiring into the ways dance is gendered in Western society today and the significance of these findings. An extensive review of literature covers feminist perspectives, social construction of gender, gender equity, men in dance, queer theory and GLBT studies, plus gender roles in modern dance, ballet, social, religious, popular and recreational dance. Two of the most-discussed issues within the literature since the mid-1990s are the presentation of women’s bodies onstage, and how male dancers disrupt traditional ideas of masculinity. Dance outside the gender binary is also considered. Gender roles onstage, in class, in rehearsal, in company leadership, in postsecondary dance departments, and in choreographer funding are sites of inquiry within this book of empirical research studies and essays.

Identity Matters: Teaching Transgender in the Women’s Studies Classroom

Teaching transgender studies is often assumed to fall under the purview of gender and women’s studies programs and the GLBT studies programs often nested there where claims have been made on the territories of gender and sexuality. The questions that have long plagued these programs persist: Is our subject matter women and men, gays and lesbians, transgender people? Or is it rather the production of those categories and how they come to matter? What, exactly, is the object of our study, when that object is so often our own subjectivities and a necessarily moving target? Identities are historical artifacts rather than static realities, so to teach identity-based programs is to risk further calcifying the very categories that operate to oppress those of us who live on the margins of them. At the same time, those categories are necessary to our understanding of very real material histories of oppression and resistance; to teach as if identity is mere figment would render invisible the very real legacies of domination that must be understood if they are to be undone.

The Diva and the Demon: Ingmar Bergman Directs The Rose Tattoo

In this article Dirk Gindt discusses Ingmar Bergman's 1951 production of Tennessee Williams's The Rose Tattoo in the small Swedish town of Norrköping, demonstrating how Bergman methodically ignored the tragicomic nature of the play in order to develop and exaggerate its comic and grotesque elements. After extensive cuts and alterations in the script, the character Serafina delle Rose became even more overpowering than in the original text and dominated the action from beginning to end. Karin Kavli, a leading lady in Swedish post-war theatre and a frequent collaborator with Bergman, played the character not as a mourning widow but as a possessed disciple of Dionysus in an unabashedly entertaining and sexualized production which, despite reservations from critics, became a success with audiences. Dirk Gindt now works as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Stockholm University. He is co-editor of Fashion: an Interdisciplinary Reflection (Stockholm: Raster, 2009), and has published numerous articles in journals such as Nordic Theatre Studies, The Tennessee Williams Annual Review, Theatre Survey, and Fashion Studies, as well as chapters in edited volumes. He is the editor-in-chief of Lambda Nordica: Journal for GLBT-Studies, for which he has edited a special issue on masculinities (2008) and a double issue on queer fashion (2009).