Dance History(s): Imagination as a Form of Study

Thomas F Defrantz, Annie-B Parson

Book cover for Dance History(s): Imagination as a Form of Study
Book cover for Dance History(s): Imagination as a Form of Study

Dance History(s): Imagination as a Form of Study

Dance History(s): Imagination as a Form of Study

Thomas F Defrantz, Annie-B Parson

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Description

A multivoiced dance history book, authored by twelve diverse choreographers

In an effort to deepen our understanding of what dance is and how it has functioned throughout human history, this prismatic book project is dedicated to an artist-centric perception of dance history. This book interrogates the history of dance from the subjective, poetic perspective of a choreographer. Diverse dance artists from the American dance field contribute prismatic, disruptive perspectives on how dance has unfolded over time and what dance history is. They reimagine the question: What is dance history? Twelve illustrated booklets, each written by a working choreographer, address the subject of dance history from nonacademic, subjective, poetic perspectives. The books model a way of enlarging and complicating how we view dance history by giving the authorial microphone to artists, to learn how their embodied perceptions relate to or diverge from the dominant dance canon. With contributions by mayfield brooks, Thomas F. DeFrantz, Maura Nguyen Donohue, Keith Hennessy, Bebe Miller, Okwui Okpokwasili, Eiko Otake, Annie-B Parson, Javier Stell-Fresquez, Ogemdi Ude, Mariana Valencia, and Andros Zins-Browne. Published by Dancing Foxes Press and Wesleyan University Press. Produced by Big Dance Theater with the generous support of The Howard Gilman Foundation, The Starry Night Fund, Big Dance Theater's Board Designated Fund, Virginia and Timothy Millhiser, and King's Fountain., reviewing a previous volume

About the Author

ANNIE-B PARSON is a choreographer and artistic director of Big Dance Theater. Parson has also made choreography for rock shows, marching bands, symphonies, movies, museums, objects, augmented reality, and people: David Byrne, David Bowie, St. Vincent, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Wendy Whelan, Laurie Anderson, Nico Muhly, Jonathan Demme, and the Martha Graham Dance Co. THOMAS F. DEFRANTZ is professor at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, and director of SLIPPAGE: Performance, Culture, Technology, a research group that explores emerging technology in live performance applications. DeFrantz received the Outstanding Research in Dance award from the Dance Studies Association in 2017.

Critical Reviews

"What emerges from the collection is a sense of dance history as invocation and list, elegy and collagewith twelve contributors, the book becomes polyphonic, singing that dance history goes here, and here, and here: to the border, the ocean, the ring shout; to Michael Jordan's slam dunk, and the Lindy Hop, and big joyous parties in working-class Latinx Chicago."--Kyle McCarthy, The Brooklyn Rail

Publishing Information

Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
Pub date: 2024-09-03
Length: 312 pages

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