Dance and Performance Studies

An illuminating investigation into the ‘professionalization’ of classical Indian dance forms in Britain, Towards a British Natyam critically analyzes the cultural, social, and political frameworks that make a ‘profession’ within the arts possible, highlighting the transformational power of classical Indian dance within society to decenter white supremacy and recenter pluriversality.

Through a diverse range of case studies from Oceania, Asia, and Europe, and interdisciplinary approaches, Perspectives in Motion explores visual approaches to performance in global cultural contexts, offering new critical and ethnographic frameworks for understanding and experiencing practices of music and dance across the globe.

Contrary to persistent depictions of an ethnically and economically homogeneous Japan, “ghetto” or “gangsta” J-hop music gives voice to the suffering, deprivation, and social exclusion experienced by many modern Japanese. 24 Bars to Kill gives a fascinating ethnographic account of this music as well as the subculture around it.

Lullabies and Battle Cries examines the relationship between music, emotion, memory, and identity in Northern Irish republican parading bands, exploring how rebel parade music provides a foundational idiom of national and republican expression, acting as a critical medium for shaping new political identities.

The songs of the beloved Irish poet Máire Bhuí Ní Laeire (Yellow Mary O’Leary) explore themes of colonial subjection, oppression and injustice, representing an integral contribution to the development of anti-colonial thought in Ireland. Singing Ideas explores the significance of her work, and the immense power of her chosen medium.

Staging Citizenship explores a wide range of Roma performances and representations—from live music and cultural performances to Gypsy soaps and reality TV shows, demonstrating how disenfranchised urban Roma claim cultural citizenship and belonging in music, dance, activism and everyday encounters.

Across varied domains, music and dance both emerge from and give rise to intimate collaboration. This theoretically rich collection takes an ethnographic approach to understanding the collaborative dimension of sound and movement in everyday life, drawing on genres and practices in contexts as diverse as Japanese shakuhachi playing, Peruvian huayno, and the Greek goth scene.

Odissi dance has transformed over the centuries from an Indian temple ritual to a transnational genre performed—and consumed—throughout the world. Building on ethnographic research in multiple locations, this book reveals the complexity of odissi as it is practiced today, at the intersection of identity, nationalism, tradition, and neoliberal economics.

This original and cross-disciplinary book studies the experiences of Yosemite park visitors in order to understand human connection with and within natural landscapes. It grounds a sophisticated semiotic analysis in the lived experiences of parkgoers, assembling a collective account that will be of interest in disciplines ranging from performance studies to cultural geography.

Every year, young adults from Western nations travel to Brazil to train in the dance/martial art of capoeira. This ethnography uses the concept of apprenticeship pilgrimage—studying with a local master at a historical point of origin—to explore how non-Brazilians learn their art and claim legitimacy within capoeira communities.

Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in New York and Dakar, this book explores the Senegalese dance-rhythms Sabar from the research position of a dance student. It features a comparative analysis of the pedagogical techniques used in dance classes in New York and Dakar, which in turn shed light on different aesthetics and understandings of dance, as well as different ways of learning, in each context. Pointing to a loose network of teachers and students who travel between New York and Dakar around the practice of West African dance forms, the author discusses how this movement is maintained, what role the imagination plays in mobilizing participants and how the ‘cultural flow’ of the dances is ‘punctuated’ by national borders and socio-economic relationships. She explores the different meanings articulated around Sabar’s transatlantic movement and examines how the dance floor provides the grounds for contested understandings, socio-economic relationships and broader discourses to be re-choreographed in each setting.

A historically informed ethnography of creativity, agency, and the fashioning of selves through the different life stages in urban Senegal, this book explores the significance of multiple engagement with dance in a context of economic uncertainty and rising concerns over morality in the public space.

Dance is more than an aesthetic of life – dance embodies life. This is evident from the social history of jive, the marketing of trans-national ballet, ritual healing dances in Italy or folk dances performed for tourists in Mexico, Panama and Canada. Dance often captures those essential dimensions of social life that cannot be easily put into words. What are the flows and movements of dance carried by migrants and tourists? How is dance used to shape nationalist ideology? What are the connections between dance and ethnicity, gender, health, globalization and nationalism, capitalism and post-colonialism? Through innovative and wide-ranging case studies, the contributors explore the central role dance plays in culture as leisure commodity, cultural heritage, cultural aesthetic or cathartic social movement.

The last century has seen radical social changes in Ireland, which have impacted all aspects of local life but none more so than traditional Irish music, an increasingly important identity marker both in Ireland and abroad. The author focuses on a small village in County Clare, which became a kind of pilgrimage site for those interested in experiencing traditional music. He begins by tracing its historical development from the days prior to the influx of visitors, through a period called "the Revival," in which traditional Irish music was revitalized and transformed, to the modern period, which is dominated by tourism. A large number of incomers, locally known as "blow-ins," have moved to the area, and the traditional Irish music is now largely performed and passed on by them. This fine-grained ethnographic study explores the commercialization of music and culture, the touristic consolidation and consumption of “place,” and offers a critique of the trope of "authenticity," all in a setting of dramatic social change in which the movement of people is constant.

Court dance in Java has changed from a colonial ceremonial tradition into a national artistic classicism. Central to this general transformation has been dance’s role in personal transformation, developing appropriate forms of everyday behaviour and strengthening the powers of persuasion that come from the skillful manipulation of both physical and verbal forms of politeness. This account of dance’s significance in performance and in everyday life draws on extensive research, including dance training in Java, and builds on how practitioners interpret and explain the repertoire. The Javanese case is contextualized in relation to social values, religion, philosophy, and commoditization arising from tourism. It also raises fundamental questions about the theorization of culture, society and the body during a period of radical change.

Dancing at the crossroads used to be young people's opportunity to meet and enjoy themselves on mild summer evenings in the countryside in Ireland until this practice was banned by law, the Public Dance Halls Act in 1935. Now a key metaphor in Irish cultural and political life, "dancing at the crossroads" also crystallizes the argument of this book: Irish dance, from Riverdance (the commercial show) and competitive dancing to dance theatre, conveys that Ireland is to be found in a crossroads situation with a firm base in a distinctly Irish tradition which is also becoming a prominent part of European modernity.