Perspectives on American Dance, livre ebook

Dancing embodies cultural history and beliefs, and each dance carries with it features of the place where it originated. Influenced by different social, political, and environmental circumstances, dances change and adapt. American dance evolved in large part through combinations of multiple styles and forms that arrived with each new group of immigrants. Perspectives on American Dance is the first anthology in over twenty-five years to focus exclusively on American dance practices across a wide span of American culture. This volume and its companion show how social experience, courtship, sexualities, and other aspects of life in America are translated through dancing into spatial patterns, gestures, and partner relationships.

This volume of Perspectives on American Dance features essays by a young generation of authors who write with familiarity about their own era, exploring new parameters of identity and evaluating a wide variety of movement practices being performed in spaces beyond traditional proscenium stages. Topics include "dorky dancing" on YouTube; same-sex competitors on the TV show So You Think You Can Dance; racial politics in NFL touchdown dances; the commercialization of flash mobs; the connections between striptease and corporate branding; how 9/11 affected dance; the criminalization of New York City club dancing; and the joyous ironies of hipster dance. This volume emphasizes how dancing is becoming more social and interactive as technology opens up new ways to create and distribute dance.

The accessible essays use a combination of movement analysis, thematic interpretation, and historical context to convey the vitality and variety of American dance. They offer new insights on American dance practices while simultaneously illustrating how dancing functions as an essential template for American culture and identity.

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction
Jennifer Atkins, Sally R. Sommer, and Tricia Henry Young

Part 1. Virtual Space, Reframed Dances

Chapter 1. How One Awkward, Chubby, Bespectacled White Boy from New Jersey Got All of YouTube Dorky Dancing, and Why We Should Thank Him for It
Latika L. Young

Chapter 2. So You Think You Can Dance Straight? Same-Sex Ballroom and Reality Television
J. Ellen Gainor

Chapter 3. Syndicated Bodies: Expressions of American Identity in NFL Touchdown Dances
Dawn Springer

Chapter 4. Displays of Disruption: A Decade of Flash Mobs
Kate Mattingly

Part 2. Intimate Spaces, Staged Subversions

Chapter 5. (Post) Pious and Porn Spectacles: Frontier Choreographies of the U.S. Jewess
Hannah Schwadron

Chapter 6. Pole Dancing for Jesus: Healthy Bodies, Healthy Souls
Michelle T. Summers

Chapter 7. Dancing the Brand: Striptease, Corporeality, and Corporatization
Jessica Berson

Chapter 8. Bgirls as Drag Kings
Ansley Joye Jones

Part 3. Public Spaces, Political Statements

Chapter 9. Receptions of Descent and Politics of Agora: 9/11 Changed the Way They Saw It; Everybody Jumped into the Pool
Sally R. Sommer

Chapter 10. The Land of Dance Crimes: Social Dancing and the New York City Cabaret Laws
Ina Sotirova

Chapter 11. Dancing in the Dark: Defining and Defending the Elusive Hipster Dance Aesthetic
Patsy Gay

List of Contributors

Index